Article November 1, 2004 Issue

BACK TO ...

By Rebecca Odegaard

The Christian Science Monitor

The Keenest Memory I have of going back to school each fall is the abrupt change from bare feet and sandals to brand new tie-up shoes that on the first day felt as if they weighed five pounds each. I loved those shoes. They represented structure and getting down to business, following breezy summers of losing track of days. Mostly, they symbolized newness.

By now, many people have returned—in mind as well as body—from summer freedom to routines of more rigorous work, or class schedules, sports practices, meetings, and obligations. While some undoubtedly welcomed the reining in of summer's carefree mentality and the return to an increase of structure, there are some who dread going "back."

In two recent conversations, one friend of mine, a schoolteacher, was not relishing her return to what she said were the same students with the same problems, the same classes, books, co-workers, and meeting. Another friend, an actor on Broadway, who does eight performances of the same show in one week, night after night, month after month, tells me it's never the same to her. It's ever fresh.

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