Nostalgia

Every year in AP Seminar, the students are given a stimulus packet from College Board for their second performance task. I’ll spare you the details about PT2 (as we call it), but the basic idea is that the kids have to read through the documents, figure out the theme of the documents, and research some topic that uses that theme. The theme this year was nostalgia.

I thought this was an interesting topic to give 15-18 year-olds. They haven’t really lived long enough to be nostalgic for much of anything. I suppose sometimes they may think back to early friendships or vacations they’ve taken, but most of the time, the kids are looking forward: to college, to adulthood, to having families, etc., etc. Nostalgia was definitely something the kids had to research extensively in order to make sense of.

Of course, I am absolutely old enough to be nostalgic (hence the name of my blog), so there I was thinking about the bad old days while my students were looking ahead. Come to think of it, that’s kind of what it’s like being a teacher anyway.

There are many episodes in my nearly fifty years that come to mind from time to time. Some good. Some bad. Many somewhere in between. The time in my younger life that I spend the most time thinking about is college. Not that I wish to go back…necessarily. I just really enjoyed those four years.

This March during Spring Break, we combined a mini vacation to Central Texas with college visits for my son who just finished his Junior year in high school. This was an exciting time for him since it is the beginning of really thinking through what life could be like once he graduates next year. It’s also been exciting for us to see the man that he is becoming.

The trip was also fun for me because my own college experience was easily the most transformative period of my life. The campus of the University of Texas at Austin still, after two and a half decades, makes me more nostalgic than any other place I go. My four years in Austin, for better or for worse, helped shape me into who I am today.

The initial transition from small town to major University was by any measure a shock to my system. New city. New school. New friends. New food. New experiences all around. As an eighteen-going-on-nineteen year old who thought I knew how the world worked, I realized quickly how clueless I really was.

I took in the world around me for the first time and wanted to try everything that was new. I fell in love and out of love. I screamed at football games, and cried after breakups. I may or may not have had too much to drink on occasion, but also enjoyed being the designated driver, knowing my friends and I were getting home safely. “Live, laugh, and love” is an apt description

I could go on and on, but my basic point is that I’m hopeful that wherever my kids decide to go to college (or whatever they decide to do), they will enjoy the experience of being a young adult as much as I did. Because let’s face it, adulting isn’t always that great.

And now writing this as I just completed my twenty third year in education, knowing that I only have five more years until retirement, it’s hard not to look back and think about the thousands of students I’ve taught in a little more than two decades. Those early students likely have families of their own…which is why I have to retire soon. I don’t want to have a child of a former student in my class.

I don’t think I could handle that.

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