Do you remember that book from elementary school, First Day Jitters? It’s a great book for kids, but when I first heard the story, it never truly resonated with me. The main character, Sarah Hartwell, was nervous about starting her first day at a new school. At the time, though, I had friends at school, the same school I’d been attending all my life, and acquaintances everywhere I looked. Social anxiety, FOMO, stress — well, those were feelings I hadn’t become acquainted with yet. In fact, my biggest worry was deciding which shirt I looked better in: the sparkly purple one, or the sparkly turquoise one.
Fast forward ten years, and I now know exactly what Sarah was feeling. Starting a new school was nerve-racking, because she didn’t know anyone, and she was afraid it’d be hard to adjust. On her way there, her hands got all clammy and she couldn’t breathe, which goes hand in hand with the shaky feeling I felt on my first day of school this year.
The funny thing is, I’m in my third year, so I’ve actually been a student at the University of Waterloo for over two years now. Unfortunately, I started the same year the pandemic did, so I didn’t get to go in person until the first semester of my second year. Even then, my class was only once a week for one hour, and campus wasn’t super busy, because half of all classes were still held online. Plus, it helped that I had a guy from my high school in my class, and that everyone around me was just as nervous as I was.
The semester after that, I started co-op, which threw me off the regular stream — the one that all my high school friends at both Waterloo and Laurier were on, and the one that had 90% of people back on campus for classes. When I went back to school the following semester to wrap-up my second year, it was during the summer. Have you ever been on campus in June? It’s like a freaking ghost town — which I didn’t mind at the time, but it also meant I’d never truly experienced campus at its peak.
So, you can only imagine that when I started school last week, I had the first-day jitters times a thousand. I felt like I was behind everyone I knew — my friends were all a semester ahead of me and they already knew their way around, and my boyfriend started the year before the pandemic, so he was already comfortable on campus. It’s not like everyone around me was in the same boat this time either, since my classes are a mix of second to fourth-year students in a range of different programs. Not to mention, I’m on campus four times a week, which is completely new to me.
Then there are those horrible moments where I’ve had to meet people in random places I’ve never even heard of, and when I ask about the location, I get questions like “You don’t know where the building is? Everyone studies there,” or “How do you not know your way around campus?”, and other comments that make me want to put a paper bag over my head. Don’t even get me started on the nerves I battle when I want to raise my hand in class to answer a question. Basically, I feel like a clueless, tiny first-grader, and it’s not super fun.
The thing I like about that book though, First Day Jitters, is that on the last page you realize that Sarah wasn’t a nervous student worried about being “the new kid” — she was the teacher. When I was younger, teachers were supposed to be invincible, so it was out of the question to think a teacher could be nervous. Just like now, in my head, it seems out of the question that most of the people around me are nervous. They’re more experienced, they’ve been on campus longer, and they know what they’re doing; they’re the teachers. But those are just the first day jitters talking. Or the first month, maybe, since I’m still trying to challenge that way of thinking.
Whatever it is, every once in a while (as silly as it might sound) it helps me to remind myself that no one’s invincible. Teachers, students, dogs, cats; everyone gets nervous sometimes, and everyone gets the freakin’ jitters.