Tiffany's Tuesday Tunes: D is for Desks, Dorms, Division, and Detention

It should come as no surprise that I was an odd child.  My nerd roots are deep, going back to toddlerhood really.  While I cried hard on my first day of kindergarten, asking my mom not to leave me there, after that, there was no looking back.  I was in love with school, and learning.  From the age of 5 to 24, each fall I prepared for another year of educational adventures, and I LOVED it.  I went directly from high school to college, took an extra year of college classes, and then directly from college to graduate school.  Nerd much?

I was so in love with learning that at the end of each school year, the teachers would send me home with extra copies of worksheets we had done all year.  I would do these all summer long, along with workbooks my parents purchased.  Before the first week of summer vacation was over, I had already checked out half a dozen books from the library.  And I counted down the days to the open house, when I would learn who my new teacher would be.

The first fall that I did not prepare to return to classes, I felt an aching sensation.  I felt lost; nearly 20 years of my existence revolved around the newness of fall classes starting.  I still feel a little sad when school starts.  I wish I was in school again.  Oh, I do not miss the drama or the mean girls, the homecoming queens or the quarterbacks.  Nor do I miss the blue books or the high cost of textbooks.  But I do miss the order and structure that comes with being in school.  I often think of returning to college or graduate school, in a variety of subjects, just because I love structured education so much.  For now, I will settle for reading 200 books a year, but who knows what the future may hold.

Whether you loved school, or hated it, whether it was elementary, high school, or college, whether a student or a teacher, school was, and still is, an inevitable force in all our lives.  So here is a playlist to help you ease the transition back to school.