First Days

The first few days of a new semester are like a broken record that repeats every year. The same song, same scene, same mayhem repeats and repeats. The sidewalks connecting the campus buildings swell more than ever during passing time as seemingly 95% of the students who don't normally show up to class make a forced showing to the first lecture, or two. The bookstore resembles an ant hill with people coming and going, making their ways through the narrow aisles stacked with books. Taking books out with them, returning books from unwanted classes back in with them.

Professors hand out their syllabi and spend the first class taking care of the "book-keeping," "housework," "mechanics of the class" or whatever other boring phrase they decide to use to describe their unoriginal and rather boring rants that routinely fill up the first day of class. Students sit in their chairs, staring at the professors, yawning, fidgeting, the bold ones get up and leave.

The clock ticks, time goes by, and the class period is up. The crowds that swell the classrooms on the first day disperse within a minute, everyone seems to have a place to go, things to do, and so it goes.