One of my colleagues mentioned today how the start of the school year has put her off her hobbies and any productive use of her free time. She feels tired and uninspired and can’t even be bothered to binge watch TV shows.

This is actually a common feeling this time of year.

The start of the school year brings a certain amount of dread at the school where I work, especially for those of us with all three years of junior high school. We pore over class lists to see if old problems have carried over and we cringe when our colleagues lookat our class rolls and laugh and say “Well, better you than me.”

The other issue is that unlike a regular 9-5 job, which can allow you to fall into a monotonous rhythm from one fiscal year to the next, the start of the school year brings a new rhythm of breaks, planning sessions, and classes. Your old planning schedule is now lost and you may or may not get home at a regular time. You might have to get up earlier than last year or you might have a day with too much free time. (Yes, as I’ve mentioned before, this can be a problem.)

Also, because the grades, and therefore the ages of the students change, the new year has a much different vibe then the old one. In my case I have exactly the same grades as last year, but they are in a different pattern and I can already feel the differences from last year.

We’re also in the testing phase where students see what they can get away with and we spend a lot of energy convincing them that they can’t get away with much. But, tricks that worked with one class don’t work with any of the new ones, even when it’s many of the same students, and we spend a lot of energy trying new tricks.

I think part of the problem is that here in Japan there’s only a couple weeks between last school year and this school year and our heads are still stuck in last year. It’s easy to forget that everything has changed.

Eventually we settle into the new rhythm. For better and for worse.