Happy first day of class! This is always an exciting and peculiar time, when breaks are always too short, and there’s a tension between wanting to hold on to unstructured time and the pull to prepare for everything starting up right now.
With my longtime love for the Muppets, I always hope that the start of the semester feels something like Kermit and Fozzie in The Muppet Movie on a road trip: light and fun, shaped by the simple act of moving forward together, with the sense that uncertainty is not isolation. There is something grounding here, particularly right now, for us when long-standing institutions, cultural reference points, and the ways we teach and learn feel increasingly in flux.
Holding anticipation and familiarity together—the energy of what lies ahead paired with the presence of a friend and compassion for one another, even as they face (in their case, literal) forks in the road—feels like the best way to start the semester. I hope it’s an amazing one!