Exciting September is all about potential
September is about something quite thrilling, Judith Timson writes. It’s about potential.
Are you ready for September?
Most of us well beyond school age — or even past having kids in any educational setting from Pre-K to post grad — can still summon up that pit of the stomach combination of fear and anticipation as this month arrives.
Another school year for students — and their teachers and parents — to prove themselves. Will it be the best ever or an epic fail?
Well, one thing I know now is that it’s almost certainly a bit of both.
As a child, I aced elementary school. Not only did my Grade 1 teacher uncannily predict my future as a journalist — “She is a joy to teach, but she doesn’t mind her own business.” But I also, by Grade 8, won the trophy for all-round excellence.
That was the high point. By Grade 10 my English teacher had wittily written, of a particularly dubious essay I had conjured on deadline out of my fevered teenage brain: “This is either utter nonsense or a major critical breakthrough.”
By the time I got to university, I was in a little trouble psychologically — anxious, unable to concentrate and not prepared for most classes.
I eventually dropped out after second year.
Decades later, I reframed my inability to finish university as an unplanned triumph.
It allowed me after a summer internship to rush headlong into the real world of journalism, and it was then that my ambition and writing energy came together.
At one point when I was still in university, I went home to my parents and lay in bed, staring at the wall. My parents didn’t understand.
“You’re going to have to toughen up if you want to be in the news business,” my father, a hard-driving newsman told me brusquely as he walked by my room without breaking his stride.
My mother, well-educated, and in the midst of her own domestic crisis — my parents would eventually divorce — was simply not able to help me with my unhappiness.
She would always be my most-trusted ally and supporter, but her generation just got on with it.
I survived mainly because of the support of my best friend at the time. We were roommates and soulmates in second year, and she put up with my foibles — not leaving our student apartment for days, only working hard at the school newspaper, not at my studies — while she went on to get at least one degree from an Ivy League university.
We are very close to this day. She never doubted my potential. Nor I hers.
I did briefly see a school doctor, but there wasn’t enough understanding or help for stalled students struggling with then barely-acknowledged emotional or mental distress.
There still isn’t enough help. Many decades later, that kind of student distress has become a full-blown epidemic.
Call it anxiety, call it depression, call it fear of failure. Or even fear of success. So many kids are suffering. Wonderful promising students whose emotional or mental health challenges can prevent them from reaching their full potential if someone doesn’t help them. I never did get that degree. I still cringe when I can’t even declare on my resumé that I achieved one of life’s adult milestones—getting a BA. Or some other post-secondary certificate. I still admire anyone with that piece of paper.
I’m glad my grown children completed their university education. A degree or any post secondary certificate of course doesn’t guarantee you success, but attaining it is a stepping stone to a productive adulthood, however you define it.
Mine was the last generation who could get away with dropping out. Now, as one former arts executive I know has said about hiring today’s talent: “I don’t care what they got their degree in, but I do look to see they got it.”
Luckily, I found something to do that forced me to grow intellectually, taught me how to do research, and provided me with the tools to earn a living.
A neighbourhood child once called to ask me a question for a school project on how we choose our careers: “What did you want to be at 16? And what did you become?”
It’s a wonderful question, and I was almost embarrassed to admit my answer: I wanted to be a writer/journalist at 16 — and that’s what I became.
To me, my answer conveyed a lack of experimentation or even growth. In fact, the questioner told me later only a very few of those she interviewed became what they first wanted to be. I had the advantage of being a second-generation journalist. But I also seriously never wanted to be anything else.
Many epic failures take place in university and recounting mine as often as I do is my way of expressing solidarity with all that September means to so many students at all levels and their teachers and parents.
September may induce fear and anticipation. But it’s also about something quite thrilling.
September is about potential. There’s no telling how it will all turn out.