Last year’s first day — exactly one year ago — was a little strange. In here, I wrote it was a good day, but that was not entirely true. My two on-level classes were, in a word, hyper. Several students were immediately chatty, immediately disruptive, and there were several more students who fed into that. There was a bit of attitude at times, and while I tamped it all down quicky, it didn’t seem to bode well for the rest of the year.

I was right.

Last year’s eighth grade was tough. We’d heard they’d be tough from sixth-grade teachers; we’d heard they’d drive us to insanity from seventh-grade teachers; and we saw the difference immediately.

Most eighth-grade classes are pretty calm at first. Most eighth-grade students are reasonably relaxed those first days, trying not to push boundaries, trying to make a decent first impression. Those kids (rather, many of them) did not do this. And it was a harbinger of things to come.

“This year’s kids are better,” everyone said. We met them all today, and I would have to agree: a night-and-day difference.

One less stress.

Our kids started school with the usual excitement: the Girl is starting her senior year (how in the world is that possible?) while the Boy is starting seventh grade (how in the world is that possible?).

“Enjoy your last first day of school,” I said to her, though that’s not quite accurate. She’s planning on going into bio-engineering, and she’s already accepting/planning on getting a doctorate, so she has plenty more first days of school.

As for the Boy? A snippet of a conversation from a couple of weeks ago says it all: “You have to pay for college?! You have to pay to sit in school?!”