I love the first day of the block.
It’s the day when the anticipation is still fresh and untainted, though just slightly tinged with anxiety. It’s the day when the coffee is an accessory rather than a necessity. It’s the day when my syllabus is pristine and spotless, and hasn’t yet become a crumpled wreck. It’s a day when I look around at a roomful of people who range from friend to acquaintance to complete stranger, and wonder what kind of community we’ll all have formed by the end of the block.
And it’s the day I can be utterly, completely, unashamedly excited about academics. I, like many other CC students, proudly refer to myself as a nerd. I go weak at the knees at the mention of things like “semantics” or “social construction.” I read books about the Enlightenment in my spare time. I wish I were friends with Oscar Wilde. I actually, genuinely like school–and that goes double for Block 2 of this year. “What class are you in?” is the question on everyone’s lips, and I have my answer ready to go: “Only the best one ever.”
For me and fifteen other students, today is the first day of Beginning Fiction Writing. I have loved almost every single class I’ve taken at CC, but I’ve literally been waiting to take this class since I was twelve years old and discovered that I loved to write. Majors, minors, and all-college requirements managed to distract me for a good three years, but here, finally, in my senior year, I’m returning to the fold. For two whole blocks, reading, writing, and rewriting fiction is my world. I’m ludicrously excited, though slightly terrified. (What? Other people reading what I write? And commenting on it?! Er…)
But that’s the first day of the block: full of promise, anxiety, and horizons waiting to be expanded. Plus: I’m a CC student, and this is my life eight times a year.
Hey, Block 2? Let’s do this.
