The First Day: Week 1

I remember my very first day of elementary school. 

The school district had already completed its practice runs with the screaming yellow monstrosities that were our buses. I was to take number 61 in my favorite outfit to join Mrs. Havens' kindergarten class. At five years old, I had attended preschool and was accustomed to spending half-days away from the comfort of my parents, but a whole day apart from them brought on renewed trepidation. The added pressure of standardized tests and higher expectations was an altogether fresh source of alarm, and on that first day, I was more than a little apprehensive toward the entire institution.

After seventeen first days of school, you'd think I'd be over the nerves. But today, on my last first day, my heart was doing frantic flips against the walls of my chest.

The day started out normal enough, with me rolling out of bed at 7:30 for an early workout with one of my roommates.  After a satisfying workout, I had breakfast and got ready, and was almost out the door for my first class when my landlord showed up to install a railing on our death-trap equivalent stairs. I made it across campus and through our new science building with two minutes to spare. A public health minor, I am required to take Medical Microbiology. In the past, this class has been chock full of third year pharmacy majors and I discovered that this year was to be no different. As a senior public relations major, I was overwhelmed with a sense that I didn't belong there, at no fault of the instructor or my classmates. Those third-years are still in the first half of their formal education while I'm beginning to wind mine down. As I both brooded over this fact and listened to the instructor's introductory lecture (yes, I was multitasking. I'm a Millennial after all.), I was forced to acknowledge the fact that this day really, truly was my last first day.

At the end of the period, I hustled across campus to the Performing Arts Center and as I pulled open the heavy doors, I could feel myself relaxing; this was home (PAC is headquarters for the Communication Arts department to which the public relations program belongs). Health Communication was the class, and I was eager to get there because I had a few friends in the class, the coursework seemed that it would be interesting and the instructor was one I hadn't had the pleasure of working with before. This first meeting lived up to the expectations I had built for it in my head. I traipsed off to Accounting in the Dicke building feeling both bouyant and amazed at how quickly the first two hours of my day had passed, and eating fruit snacks because in seven straight hours of class, I don't have time for lunch.

I have an unnatural aversion to numbers in general. Math and I have never gotten along, and I'm convinced my checkbook has an inexplicable vendetta against me. So when my Accounting instructor handed us a financial statement for a well-known entertainment company laden with numerical facts and figures, I instantly got a headache and the numbers started tap dancing on the page. I left the building slightly disoriented but vowing to do whatever I had to to make sense of this foreign language.

Back to PAC for Social Media. This class I was definitely excited for, since I had somehow missed the boat on getting into it during my junior year. We were reading and listening and discussing and starting our blogs, and before I knew it, the class was over. It dawned on me that time was moving far too quickly and that I was not OK with this. This was my last first day and I wanted to savor it! Shaking my head and feeling like I was literally dragging my heels through mud, I went back to Dicke for a student organization meeting, which was productive and left me optimistic. Then back to PAC for the Student Planning Committee's annual comedians show with my Zeta Tau Alpha sisters, which was side-splitting as usual, and to help Professor Agozzino with some surveys (thanks for dinner, by the way).

It was a jam-packed day (I didn't make it back home once in 12.5 hours), but instead of feeling tired, I'm weirdly wired. I'm reluctant to go to bed now, even though I'm exhausted, because if I do, then I'll wake up tomorrow and it will not longer be my last first day. I'm not quite ready for that. If today was any indication of how the rest of the year is going to be, come May I'm going to be standing on the stage at commencement with my robe on backwards and my shoes on the wrong feet, wondering how on earth I got there. I'm resolving here and now, where the world can see it, to make every day of my senior year at Ohio Northern University a new favorite day. They say these are the best years of your life, and so far, they've been right. I want them to keep being right. I'm not sure how I'm going to do this, but I think the best place to start is by making sure I know why I do what I do. I'm in a wide variety of campus organizations and sometimes I get bogged down in simply doing so much "stuff" that I lose sight of the importance of that "stuff" and become stressed out and miserable. I will not spend my senior year this way. I will, however, spend my senior year passionately pursuing my interests and building memories with my best friends.