September brings with it a range of familiar actions and sensations that herald the back-to-school season. If you’re a teacher, chances are you’re familiar with at least some of the following situations.

1. The air reeks of Lunchables, baby carrots and Chobani Flips…

…all of which may or may not be stowed away in your own lunchbox. Let’s face it—easy foods are a huge boon at this time of the year. Maybe later on, when you’re back in the swing of things, you’ll find time to make a sandwich or something. For now, enjoy the sweet crinkle of plastic as you peel open today’s lunch.  

2. Twenty individuals have already informed you…

…of their (rather dubious) need to use a restroom. Furthermore, they’ve all requested your approval on the matter. You’re not sure if you should exercise discretion or just tell them to go without asking—you walk a fine line when it comes to bathroom policy.

3. There are more paper cuts than wrinkles on your hands.

You don’t know what you did to get on paper’s bad side, but it’s been giving your hand the business a couple times daily since September started. Between grading, making copies and pinning up policy reminders, you encounter the innocuous material more often than most.

4. Your sense of day is totally out of whack.

Oh snap, your alarm’s going off—time to get up! Is it Tuesday, or what? Do you have a lesson plan ready? Did you set a pot of coffee last night? Drats, you’re pretty sure there are no yogurts left…

Wait a minute. You remember now. It’s Saturday—you just forgot to disable your alarm! With full license to be unconscious all day, you roll back into a nightmare, in which you drop towering stacks of freshly graded papers into an ill-placed playground puddle.

5. Audible flatulence is not met with gracious apology…

…but rather a flurry of fists as the guilty party flees toward the nearest doorknob, giggling all the while. If your students aren’t playing ‘doorknob,’ they’ve attached some other outlandish game to another body function. Or they’re folding Post-its into giraffes. Whatever it is, you’re trying to simultaneously keep up and stay out of the way. You’ve become a referee for classroom fads.  

6. Someone mistook the red ink stains on your sleeve for blood.

They may have freaked out a little. But you can’t help that your students are a little rusty at this whole ‘school’ thing after a three-month stretch of Cheetos, cartoons and shenanigans. You’re not in the best of schooling shape, yourself. Falling asleep while grading papers is a sure way to mark up your clothes. Speaking of which…

7. You keep falling asleep way earlier than you mean to.

Come on—7:30 p.m. again? This time you were standing in front of the AC and drinking a triple espresso. It seems nothing can stop the Sandman once September rolls around. Even drinking half your body’s weight in coffee doesn’t even seem to help with the come-too-soon sleepies. As long as it’s September, you might as well don your pajamas as soon as you get home.

The thing of it is, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

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