New tricks for old dogs

After a while, the first day of school looks a lot like any other

Aaron Levere, Staff

Wednesday morning, September 7. Roughly one ante meridiem. The phone, an archaic rotary-dial relic, wrenches me from my new-found sleep with its fire alarm insistence. My former girlfriend is calling from Vancouver Island with a crisis and needs to talk to my roommate.

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“I have no idea.”

I will have to do. Standing in a dark kitchen — switching the phone from ear to ear, my bare feet chilled and clammy, scratching my bare ass nonchalantly — we work through why she shouldn’t panic that her boyfriend hasn’t called in a couple days even after her last email to him in which she told him that she missed him and that he should realize that this indicated that he should call her, stat. It comes to a resolution. The moral: things are probably not as bad as they seem. I tell her that I need to go back to bed now.

Three hours later. Again, that clanging ring to wake the recently dead. This time it’s the door. Jim has been driving all day from Slave Lake and is back in Winnipeg with a vengeance, albeit a particularly good-natured vengeance, and some great stories to tell, to boot. The best kind of couch-surfer one could hope for. I show him to his couch and go back to bed. We both have to be at school in the morning. Well, in a couple of hours.

He wants to know if I have an alarm and I do have one. Somewhere. But it’s been months since I’ve needed it. “I’m sure I’ll wake up,” I tell him.

* * *

The first day of school used to have certain auspices about it. Even during my first years of university, I would go to bed admittedly excited about starting school the next day. I would wear newish or at least cleanish clothes. I had a virgin notebook, maybe even one for each class, and extra pens, packed and waiting in my bag on school-year’s eve. I would take the time to eat a proper breakfast, drinking coffee leisurely rather than desperately. And for the one and only day of the year, I would arrive on time.

Somewhere along the way, there has been a shift.

I suspect that my perception in the early years was that school interrupted my actual life, which was lived on weekends and holidays.While my summer days were occupied by the routine of a job, punctuated by leisure, school was something for which to prepare and plan because it was always an unknown. It held the question, “What will this year be like?” At school, unlike the relative predictability of summer life, the demands are varied and the stakes, we are told, are higher.

I’ve been indoctrinated. School has become my actual life, while summer has started to feel like an unstructured limbo where I languish without someone telling me what to read and how much to write and by when. I crave deadlines. My body craves its usual diet of coffee and beer and midnight cereal. I shun mornings in favour of reading the newspaper at 3 a.m.. I am student.

School, rather than an annual event that continuously cramps my style, is now the everyday routine that I look to for substance during those interminable, lazy summer days. School is no longer the exception, but the norm. It’s harder to revere the quotidian.

* * *

I do wake up on time. I have to be at school in an hour for a first-day orientation session for graduate students in my faculty, part of which is a seminar on time management. Perhaps they recognize that we have all become a little lax at this point in our academic careers, graduates in asking for extensions and working under self-inflicted pressure. They know us well. Coffee is provided. We all, of course, need coffee and they know that if it is free, we will come.

I have time for a shower, but opt for the rumpled jeans beside my bed. I pull a button shirt over my head and do up the single upper button that facilitated last night’s unshirting. While I rattle around in the kitchen lightly toasting the bread, Jim wakes up. We sit down for coffee and talk about summer adventures, while I have only the faintest awareness in the back of my pudgy summer brain that I should be going soon. I look at the clock, “Aw fuck.”

Excavate my bag from the closet, dump the summer remnants on the floor, find last year’s notebook (singular), there’s probably already a pen in the bag . . . coffee mug?! Check. Whew! Socks, boots, keys, bike and I’m on my way (giving cyclists a lot more bad PR) — arriving casually, sweaty, penless and five minutes late for time-management and my 18th first day of school.





Volume 93 • Issue 5	The Official University of Manitoba Students' Newspaper Website	September 14, 2005

Home About Us Advertise Contact Staff Current Issue PDF Employment Letters to the Editor Meet the Staff Online Archives Personals Volunteer	Font Size Respond Email Print-Friendly New tricks for old dogs After a while, the first day of school looks a lot like any other Aaron Levere, Staff Wednesday morning, September 7. Roughly one ante meridiem. The phone, an archaic rotary-dial relic, wrenches me from my new-found sleep with its fire alarm insistence. My former girlfriend is calling from Vancouver Island with a crisis and needs to talk to my roommate. “She’s not here.” “Where is she?” “I have no idea.” I will have to do. Standing in a dark kitchen — switching the phone from ear to ear, my bare feet chilled and clammy, scratching my bare ass nonchalantly — we work through why she shouldn’t panic that her boyfriend hasn’t called in a couple days even after her last email to him in which she told him that she missed him and that he should realize that this indicated that he should call her, stat. It comes to a resolution. The moral: things are probably not as bad as they seem. I tell her that I need to go back to bed now. Three hours later. Again, that clanging ring to wake the recently dead. This time it’s the door. Jim has been driving all day from Slave Lake and is back in Winnipeg with a vengeance, albeit a particularly good-natured vengeance, and some great stories to tell, to boot. The best kind of couch-surfer one could hope for. I show him to his couch and go back to bed. We both have to be at school in the morning. Well, in a couple of hours. He wants to know if I have an alarm and I do have one. Somewhere. But it’s been months since I’ve needed it. “I’m sure I’ll wake up,” I tell him. * * * The first day of school used to have certain auspices about it. Even during my first years of university, I would go to bed admittedly excited about starting school the next day. I would wear newish or at least cleanish clothes. I had a virgin notebook, maybe even one for each class, and extra pens, packed and waiting in my bag on school-year’s eve. I would take the time to eat a proper breakfast, drinking coffee leisurely rather than desperately. And for the one and only day of the year, I would arrive on time. Somewhere along the way, there has been a shift. I suspect that my perception in the early years was that school interrupted my actual life, which was lived on weekends and holidays.While my summer days were occupied by the routine of a job, punctuated by leisure, school was something for which to prepare and plan because it was always an unknown. It held the question, “What will this year be like?” At school, unlike the relative predictability of summer life, the demands are varied and the stakes, we are told, are higher. I’ve been indoctrinated. School has become my actual life, while summer has started to feel like an unstructured limbo where I languish without someone telling me what to read and how much to write and by when. I crave deadlines. My body craves its usual diet of coffee and beer and midnight cereal. I shun mornings in favour of reading the newspaper at 3 a.m.. I am student. School, rather than an annual event that continuously cramps my style, is now the everyday routine that I look to for substance during those interminable, lazy summer days. School is no longer the exception, but the norm. It’s harder to revere the quotidian. * * * I do wake up on time. I have to be at school in an hour for a first-day orientation session for graduate students in my faculty, part of which is a seminar on time management. Perhaps they recognize that we have all become a little lax at this point in our academic careers, graduates in asking for extensions and working under self-inflicted pressure. They know us well. Coffee is provided. We all, of course, need coffee and they know that if it is free, we will come. I have time for a shower, but opt for the rumpled jeans beside my bed. I pull a button shirt over my head and do up the single upper button that facilitated last night’s unshirting. While I rattle around in the kitchen lightly toasting the bread, Jim wakes up. We sit down for coffee and talk about summer adventures, while I have only the faintest awareness in the back of my pudgy summer brain that I should be going soon. I look at the clock, “Aw fuck.” Excavate my bag from the closet, dump the summer remnants on the floor, find last year’s notebook (singular), there’s probably already a pen in the bag . . . coffee mug?! Check. Whew! Socks, boots, keys, bike and I’m on my way (giving cyclists a lot more bad PR) — arriving casually, sweaty, penless and five minutes late for time-management and my 18th first day of school.


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