["Yeah, but this time we're seniors."
"And we're going to rule the school."]

Growing up in a military area, I went to schools that saw their fair share of new kids. I was always fascinated that a) no matter who they used to be, they could potentially be someone different and b) that might not have been entirely true because new kids always seemed to get filtered to their appropriate social group by lunch on the first day.

And wasn’t autumn meant to be every year’s beginning, a clean slate upon which to write your new self, swagged out in your back-to-school wardrobe still vaguely perfumed with the department store’s essence? In school, you could continue to believe that no matter how badly last year had gone, this year might be an opportunity for everything to go differently, and on that belief had depended the optimism that it remained worth seeing what the future might hold. – Caroline Kettlewell, Skin Game

[Pretty much, this is how I always wind up. Maybe my first-day skirt this year is the same color as Sandy's dress.]

Twenty-two years after my first day of kindergarten, I had my last autumnal first day of school. (College/grad school screws things up with its two first days per academic year, but whatever). In the final weeks of nanny-ing and staring at the stacks of what didn’t get done and the very slim pile of what did, I had that feeling I have every year at that time.

This time, I could be someone different.

Someone different could be anything. The way I dress, the way I do my hair, the public persona I bare, or even just little things like, this is the year I stop procrastinating on my work. (For sport, I made that declaration one last time. It’s never worked in the past, and, a week into the semester, has already proved a bust. If nothing else, you can’t say I’m not consistently myself.)

["New year, new look, new Paige!"]

On TV, in movies, people go for the big change pretty frequently. Sometimes it sticks, mostly it doesn’t. (And, inexplicably, in Degrassi: The Next Generation, Paige claims to be made-over but we’re never given a hint as to who she was prior to the first day of grade eight.) Middle school and high school are mostly the time to be someone new, though I’d argue more people in real life take an honest shot at it freshman year of college, where fewer people are apt to know the former you.

I’d like to say that, by grad school, especially the last year of grad school when one is inching closer to thirty, the enterprise has dwindled down to those idle moments of pre-semester what ifs. Sometimes, though, it seems so much stronger.

["Assume the position."]

In writing fiction, the author creates a new persona for her short story/novel/whatever. The speaker can be the author (new, revised edition). It can be someone entirely different. Someone she’s always wished to be. Someone she knows. A voice that she just couldn’t get out of her head.

["So, I started hanging out with Rayanne Graff, just for fun. Just 'cause it seemed like if I didn't, I would die, or something. ...Things were getting to me. Just how people are -- how they always expect you to be a certain way.... So when Rayanne Graff told me my hair was holding me back, I had to listen. 'Cause she wasn't just talking about my hair. She was talking about my life."]

Something about writing nonfiction, though. That’s always the author (revised edition). The voice of the essay/whatever is always you, slightly altered. You’re you, but maybe a funnier you. Maybe a more serious you. Or more charming. Or more curmudgeonly. Maybe just more. Maybe a little less. To invite a revised edition of yourself into your writing life is to see the very many opportunities for a revised (or new, revised) edition of you in your daily life.

And then you’re dressing for the first day of the semester, wondering who you want to be. Only to get to school fully aware that you’re the you you’ve always been.

[I firmly believe that everywhere I've gotten in life is a direct result of showering every day.]