Going Back in Time

Okay, so I didn't go back in time. But I did go back to my high school during the school day for the first time since I graduated in 2008. While the halls and even atmosphere were so familiar, it was beyond odd to not see anyone from my graduating class or even any of the surrounding classes of 2005-2011. I spent the entire day doing double and triple takes, only to have to remind myself that everyone I went to school with has long since graduated.

Let me back up just a little further. I'm thinking about going back to school for teaching, so I contacted one of my high school English teachers last week. This week, she invited me to observe a few of her classes, and I was really excited about this until my alarm went off at 6:00am. I haven't been up before the sun in quite a while, but despite my slow start, I was on track to be on time. Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate the construction in the high school parking lot or the line at the office to get my visitor's pass. Guess who was a few minutes late to class?

I skirted down the halls like a guilty, tardy high schooler and slid into the classroom where I was greeted by my gracious and understanding teacher-host, as well as two of my younger sister's friends. Though I didn't see anyone from my class, my sister's friends and my friends' younger siblings were more than kind when they saw me in the hallway today. The friendly familiar faces really were so refreshing.

The classes I observed were all in the same room I sat in during English my senior year, along with the collage of photos our teacher printed for us or allowed us to put up throughout the year. The collection spans back at least to the 90s. From my class alone, there was Kara cheesing on the track, Avni looking like a diva, Jackie smiling at her desk, Matt with his mouth hanging open and Paul photo-bombing the background, and my then-boyfriend, Jake, and me on Lumberjack Day, a holiday my class invented and is still celebrated. (Everyone wears flannel the Friday after winter break. We went so far as to build a forest in the parking lot using everyone's discarded Christmas trees.) So many of us, from my grade and the surrounding grades, are made immortal on those walls, and it made me smile, laugh, feel nostalgic, and a little sad about those who I've lost touch with over the years.

Though I got to observe Performance Poetry, Creative Writing, Multicultural Literature, and Publications (the newspaper), my favorite was IB English, the class I took. The class was discussing Hamlet, in just the same way my class did. I looked back to the wall of pictures, which were also speckled with quotes, and found one of my favorite 'IB-isms' from my class:

Why was Fortinbras so shiny?
Because he was Hamlet's foil.
-Fred

I walked through the halls and saw a few of my old teachers, feeling like I was right back in high school, but in a more respected adult way. Being treated just slightly differently made me feel weird, and it was even weirder that the teachers I expected to see, who have since retired, weren't there. Of course I knew things would be different, but when they were it was weird, and it was weirder when things were the same! Behold the paradox of growing up.

In the Publications room (where my sister is the co-editor in chief!), I looked at back issues of Odin's Word - the only title fit for a school newspaper where the mascot is a viking. The Senior Issue from 2006 happened to be at the top of the stack, and I quickly started flipping through. I spent a good amount of time with the class of '06 in my freshman and sophomore years, and it was like hitting rewind to the first time I read the senior shout-outs all those years ago and wished they weren't all leaving for college.

As I flipped through other issues, I noticed photos of George W. Bush and fashion pages displaying girls in short and frayed jean mini-skirts, leggings that stopped at the calf, and Birkenstocks. Think the opening scene of 21 Jump Street, complete with the guys with frosted tips or hair down to their shoulders. I remembered or at least vaguely recognized all the names of the editors and interviewees, and it was hard to believe that we've all moved on in at least one way, shape, or form.

I'm thinking of the I'll-show-'em attitude in Just Friends, and the awkward familiarity when Hannah goes home to the Midwest in Girls, and the happy but odd in/exclusive dynamics of the American Pie series. Pieces of my 'going back' experience are similar, I guess, but maybe I just didn't expect to feel all these things at once. Regardless, all the movies, shows, and books in the world couldn't have prepared me for the mix bag of emotions I felt today. It's only made worse by the five-year reunion emails I've started getting from Classmates.com.

It seems I'm growing up, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Still, with so much ahead I really can't complain about my open-ended and promising future. Plus my sister was kind enough to let me tag along with her for part of the day, and I was mistaken for a substitute teacher on more than one occasion. Despite the emotional roller coaster I rode, I'm putting a mark in the win column for career-Kiley, and that's even without getting into how much fun I had observing and being in a classroom where (at least some of) the students are eager to learn.

Let's hope the next five years are as good to me as the last five have been, and someone send suggestions my way on how to reconcile these crazy conflicting emotions. Or I guess I could just, you know, grow up.

Here and there,
Kiley