Back to School
I really didn't expect it to hit me as hard as it did, but on Monday when I dropped my son off for his first day back at school, I was, well, envious. I want to go back to school. Okay, so as one of my professors in college used to say, I've never really left, but even as a teacher I still hanker after that feeling that I had as a student looking forward to autumn and the beginning of a new academic year. I loved everything about it: shopping for school supplies, getting new clothes (especially sweaters), making covers for my textbooks, color-coding my folders, learning my schedule. No matter how many adventures I had had over the summer, I was always ready to go back. Not that my schools were anything particularly special--no Hogwarts, just ordinary American suburban public schools. But, like Hogwarts, they still seemed magical to me (and, no, I was far from the most popular girl in my year; think Hermione at the beginning of Philosopher's Stone but without Emma Wat...