Sometime during the summer of 1987, my father took me to the University of Florida for freshmen orientation. He had a business appointment in Gainesville that day, so we flew up from Miami on a short flight. When I arrived on campus for orientation, I told my academic advisor I did not want to take freshmen writing. He didn’t question me about this decision and just nodded. I also said that I’d major in English since I liked to read. He seemed uninterested in this choice, but wrote it down anyway. When I was done with our short discussion, my father took me to his meeting and asked if I really wanted to return to orientation. I don’t remember my answer, but we ended up in a local movie theater watching Platoon until our return home flight scheduled for later in the same day.
I remember this moment, but I don’t remember my first day at the university soon after. I don’t believe my parents drove up with me. I likely drove up alone, found my dorm, checked in, realized I had to park my car two miles away from the dorm, and was suddenly roommates with five other guys in a three bedroom “suite” (no bathroom or kitchen) for a year. We likely had a first year dorm experience like many others do (eating at an all you can eat pizza place across the street, drinking beer, wanting to fall in love with girls who lived on the other floors, studying at night, telling each other to turn their music down). At least that’s how I remember it. Maybe my parents did drive up with me. Maybe we took two cars. Maybe they flew home. Maybe only one parent came with. I don’t know. Their presence was obviously not memorable if it existed, or it is memorable that I went alone. I simply cannot remember which version of this first day story is true. Were they or were they not with me?
First days are important in education. They demand imagery. Before COVID and my divorce, I’d take pictures of my kids on their first day of school and post them to Facebook as so many other parents I know do. There are many types of Facebook genres (the food pic, the angry rant, the silly thing one’s kid did, the humorous observation, the complaint, etc.). First day of school is one of them. We are proud of our children as they supposedly head off to another place to learn about things we may remember (history, novels) and that we may not (math, chemistry). My kids’ first day of school this year was, like almost every other kid in this country, in front of a computer, logging in to Zoom, Canvas, and Google Classroom. I did not take their pictures and post them to Facebook. I have many pictures of them sitting in front of computers. I felt no need to take this one, indicative of the pandemic and the difficult period they continue to navigate through. A photograph cannot capture this type of first day. Only emotions can. Watching them in front of computers, I may have asked: are they getting the right education? Are they getting the education that will prepare them for a first day at college at some point in their futures? I may one day regret not photographing them, though, if I eventually don’t remember what it was like for them to go to school during a pandemic.
First days of school. The first home one buys. The first beer one tastes. The first time one gets high. The first pet one had. The first time one flew in a plane. First kisses. First dates. The first time one had sex. How quickly I shifted from an educational anecdote to a generic observation regarding sex and romance. We spend a considerable time remembering our first times. We spend a considerable time thinking about relationships. Those relationships are with our children and their first days at school, for instance. And those relationships are with our previous partners. I have been asked many times by women: When was the first time you had sex? I don’t know, I say. I don’t remember. They don’t believe me. “It wasn’t memorable.” “Who was it with?” “Someone.” “You don’t remember?” “I don’t.” “Why not?” “I don’t really know.” “What are you hiding?” “Nothing.”
Why does education mean so much to the generic first time narrative? There are many experiences we can fondly reflect upon for their introduction into our lives. Sex and education tend to be among the most important and the most popular narratives we tell to ourselves and others. Does education’s presence as a dominant first time narrative imply a beginning of learning, a continuation of self-improvement and advancement, a commitment to better opportunities? Do we make our kids’ first days into symbolic markers of our belief that their lives will be good because they went to school? Do we project into their first days our own memories of lockers, backpacks, meeting at the flag pole to fight, crushes, anxiety, school buses, skipping class, teachers we mocked, teachers we adored, rejection (“I don’t need college!”) and then acceptance (“I want a good job!”) of going to college? First generation college students. First in my family. First time. I am not a first generation college student. I am not the first in my immediate family to go to college. I was not the first in my family to go the University of Florida (all four of us did at some point). I am the first to get a PhD. I did not walk, though, for the ceremony so my memory of its acquisition is not very strong. There are no photographs of me in cap and gown, becoming a doctor, supposedly now a learned person. Nobody in my family ever refers to me as a doctor or that I have a PhD. I don’t think they remember.
I could also write about my first day at Indiana University, two years after I dropped out of the University of Florida. I not only have one but two first day undergraduate experiences to remember and reflect upon. If I were to write about that first day at Indiana, I don’t know how I would begin. It resembles my 1987 memory of the University of Florida. I must have driven to Bloomington, likely with my mother and not my father, and she must have flown back to North Carolina afterward. I don’t remember my first day of classes or my first day in the tiny apartment I rented off of Walnut. I remember the final days, like I remember all final days when an experience crashes or leaves us empty: disappointment, heart ache, moving on. I remember my first time back in Bloomington years later at a conference. What do I remember about that year in Bloomington? Not very much. I don’t have any photographs left.
When I received my first academic job at the University of Detroit, what was my first day like? What class did I teach? I must have driven to school. Maybe gone to my office (which I shared for the first semester with a colleague who was about to retire). Maybe I talked with people and new colleagues? What did we say? I don’t know. What was my first day at Wayne State or the University of Missouri or even at the University of Kentucky like? What did I teach? How did I dress? Was I nervous? Confident? Did I do well? I don’t know. I don’t remember any of these first days of teaching. I did not take pictures.
There is obviously a pattern here. Why do I not remember first times or first days? If I posed this question in therapy, what would be the response? I bury first time memories? I’m avoiding engagement with the first time I do something? I regret? In general, I have a good memory. I remember every student’s name in the courses I teach by the end of the first week. I remember songs and their histories (“YES WE KNOW!” my daughter shouts when I tell the tale of Fleetwood Mac iterations or how Otis Redding died in a plane crash for what she believes is the thousandth time). I remember movies and their plots. I remember guitar chords. I remember restaurants I’ve eaten at and streets in other countries and beers I’ve consumed and every time my kids pooped in public. The first days or times of any given experience I’ve had — usually in sex and education — though, remain allusive. It’s as if I fear beginnings. It’s as if I fear that those beginnings eventually become endings.
The reason I remember that orientation story, I think, is because my father talked me out of going to orientation so that we could go to the movies. I was supposed to be learning about what college life would entail, but he felt it was more important to go to a movie. He placed himself before me. He is not the only self-centered person I’ve spent a considerable part of my life with. These are people who diverted me away from one important thing I intended to do or attend to so that person could pursue her own interest, neurosis, trauma, or selfishness. My father and I did not travel to Gainesville in the summer of 1987 in order to watch Platoon. We were there for my orientation. We were there so that I could be oriented for a first time experience. Like students today not experiencing residential college life as it normally exists, I did not experience a freshmen orientation. As an academic and as an academic in administration, I understand the importance of freshmen orientation, how orientation can make a student feel at ease during a sometimes difficult or anxious transition. All of our transitions are marked by anxiety. Leaving home. Breaking up. Starting over. Beginning. First times, as well, disorient. They leave us worried and nervous — what will be, how I will I adjust, can I, is this a mistake, will I fail? Orientation, though, also reveals. It shows what may be possible on campus, what one may major in or not, where social groups congregate, where life exists across quads and dorms and study spaces, and what is this city or town one is new to. I dropped out of college after two years even though I was in Honors and had mostly A’s. Not participating in orientation likely did not cause me to drop out, but at the same time, I had not experienced a pre-first day introduction to the life of a college student as most of my classmates experienced. I did spend those two years with disorientation. I wasn’t living the correct undergraduate life. I had, however, seen Platoon. Today, I remember very little about that movie.
We spend a great deal of time waiting to be introduced. To each other. To new interests. To education. During the summer of 2020, in academia, we debated and discussed a great deal about what the first day of a COVID university semester should look like or how we should introduce students to higher education during such a time period. We guessed. We speculated. We hypothesized. We bemoaned slow university action regarding Fall planning, we critiqued higher education as a whole for pushing forward instead of cancelling the academic year, or we rejected any plan that did not involve going completely remote across the country. Universities were accused of only caring about money, not people. Students and parents wanted a first day experience that remote learning denied. Some of us who teach have expressed concern for those students not receiving the first day or first semester college experience as we believe it should be. Going to college for the first time only happens once — unless you are me and went to two universities. The first day promises so much: Excitement. Being away from home. Meeting new people. Being exposed to new ideas. Being independent. Being social. Changing one’s beliefs or ideologies. How will those whose first day of college began remotely or in the pandemic remember any of this if it never occurred?
My problem is not that I went to college during a pandemic where traditional activities and experiences were cancelled. My problem is that I don’t remember what occurred or didn’t. My first times are like in the movie Memento. Out of order. Mixed up. Confusing. Did they even occur? What images do I still have that remind me of or anchor me in the past? I spend a lot of time lately wondering what did or did not occur. I turn to Facebook memories for confirmation (“oh yes, that really happened…”). I ask my children (“do you remember…”). A year ago I lived one way. Did it really occur? A year later, I live a completely different way. A year ago, students studied in classrooms face to face with teachers they ignored or listened to. A year later, they are behind their computers, watching on Zoom, ignoring or listening to their teachers.
What version of first days am I now in? I think I was wrong. I should have photographed my kids on their first day this year even if their first day was in front of a computer and not in a classroom. I should have photographed them again on their second and their third days as well. I should have compiled a series of photographs of what it was like to sit in front of a computer and stare at several other faces stretched across a Zoom panel as a teacher explained an idea or concept and then assigned work. But I didn’t. I didn’t record their first day. And now, like my father did to me during orientation, I have denied them a highly unique experience to remember. Or, at least, I have denied them the photographic memory that all first day experiences rely heavily upon for proof that such a thing ever occurred.
