'Tis the season. Everyone is going back to school. There's something about the move from August to September that signals a new year for me. It's the time when many of us re-learn what it means to be a student. And more specifically, we re-programme ourselves to write because let's face it, we've used our fingers to tweet, post instagram pictures, blog, scour Netflix and search YouTube. Writing seems almost archaic. Even though I am an avid letter writer, I have felt almost disallusioned with my penmanship over the past summer. I have forgotten how my pen fits into my hand and what it's like to physically hold it to paper. With typing, the words rush from you and swiftly appear on your screen but with writing in real time I feel as if my brain is moving quicker than my hands and words are eluding me. Cutting and pasting is so much easier than TipExing or striking through an ill-fitting word. And yet for some reason I have only ever used my laptop at university once over the past few years. It may be archaic and fewer people may use it as often as they did centuries ago, but there is something about the act of writing that intrigues me.  I don't know. Maybe this struggle with writing is a pscyhological barrier that represents coming to terms with the new year. Maybe it's the same reason why as a child I used to love going back to school just to be able to write the date on the immaculate first page of my exercise book. It was always bittersweet because I knew that the first moment I unleashed ink onto that page, however delicately, was the most important. It set the tone for the rest of the book (and the rest of my school year) but it was at a moment when I'd just returned from the holidays. I could never get my handwriting right despite my continued efforts over the years, so in the end I would make the intention of finishing the book early so I could start over. Writing in the summer is like that. Starting over. What will your font be in the next year? What size font? I prefer small. What type of pen? Fountain or biro? I prefer the fountain. How will you underline the date- single or double? I'd go for the double. Black or blue ink? Definitely blue.

It seems inane and perhaps it is. But as I began to pen a letter to my friend today I thought about how my hands seemed so uncomfortable. I tried writing with a black ink pen and it seemed so unfamiliar I had to change to my regular store-bought blue ink fountain pen. It felt better but I wasn't completely there yet. I think my transition from August to September is slow moving. But I think that's the point. I can't barge into my last year of university. I need to enter it slowly and I feel (in a very corny way, I know) that re-learning how to write is my metaphor for entering back into the 'Academic Sphere'. It will be a gentle transition albeit a messy one. It's not something I can force, but something I must settle into naturally. I have to go through that process of entering all my classes with a clean slate, a chance to start off well. Even though I've been so out of practice that I will inevitably forget the month and have to cross out something, it's something I need to go through.

This will be the last year that I am a student.

I hope I write it well.


T