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August 1st
For decades, when August 1st rolled around, a mild form of depression set in. This was sort of like anticipating fall foliage, although it’s obvious what that foliage will lead to in the US Northeast.
I worked in public schools all my life, from kindergarten through the college level in all sorts of roles. My only private work was the years I worked as an adjunct at my alma mater, and readers who are curious can read about that experience in other commentaries. I did work in a few counseling agencies, but I also painted one summer early in my work history, as making ends meet was not easy in my early days in my primary job. That painting job, with a friend from a school in which I also worked, was humorous in the extreme since we neglected to number the window shutters on a huge colonial and we faced a disaster at the end of that job.
It’s a little difficult to describe the kind of negative feelings about going back to work because most people would say that there need to be no complaints after having 10 weeks of summer off. Indeed, as a counselor in a public high school, four weeks of summer were shaved off of my vacation. Records had to be adjusted after school closed to reflect students’ achievement, or the lack thereof. Just before school opened again, students’ failure(s) in key subjects such as English, history, and math had to be factored into their next year’s schedule. I worked in a high school where failure was rampant and the summer work just mentioned made setting up students’ schedules for the coming year an absolute horror.
I also worked other jobs during those years, so I was only free summers for most of the years when I began working in public schools. But there was still that nostalgia for the days of summer coming to an end with the arrival of August. One summer I rode my bike to the top of a hill in the development where I lived as I finished reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), and I wanted to be anywhere but heading back to school and work. I wanted to be on the open road in a literal sense.
Back to school sales begin a few weeks at the close of the school year. Big box warehouses have had huge and often grotesque Halloween figures on sale for weeks. These are the predilections of the market.
All of these years later, after finally kicking the overrated habit and necessity of work, August 1st still comes with these feelings.