The first week of school was so wonderful, even for nerdy chubby ol’ me. There’s not much work to do, you’ve ransacked Staples or the Dollar Store or your mom or dad’s office for cool new stationary supplies, and there’s a palpable feeling of regeneration and rebirth, like maybe, just maybe, this *entire year* will be as fresh as the electric blue Modrobes you are wearing the HELL out of with that baby T. Here are some ways that us grown ups (lol) can infuse our daily grind with the effervescence of those back-to-school daze:

1. Buy the coolest pens available to you. These may or may not be scented. Take no guff about it. If your boss asks, “Did you take the minutes in…sparkly gel pens?” Look them dead in the face and say, “Magenta means this week, aquamarine is last meeting.” Stone cold profesh.

2. Pack a very good lunch. You know the kind. Tradeables. We’re talking chocolate dipped granola bars, sandwiches with the crusts cut off, maybe a little CAPRI SUN?!? The Alex Mack of drinks?? Will you trade me your Fruit-by-the-Foot for these Dunkaroos and a pog?? Yes.

3. Your local library is still there and it has books for adults too, you know. Reactivate your card and check out an Important Novel or two…and some Sweet Valley High.

4. “Dear Students: If you see a kid eating alone in the cafe, say hello and join him/her. #thatisnice”

5. Make the most of your lunch break by thinking of it as “lunch recess.” Remember how all-out completely bonkers you used to get about lunch recess? It was so much longer than all the other recesses! Go for a walk and enjoy being outside, meet up with friends who work in the area, or really dig in to one of your new library books. Wait hopefully around the bottom of local buildings for the day when the custodian throws all the extra hand balls off the roof and it’s a ruthless finders/keepers free-for-all. Hey, it’s gotta happen someday.

6. Skip a period! It will be just like high school except instead of your geography teacher getting mad at you, you could be pregnant! FUN. (Don’t do this! What a disaster! I am obviously JKKKKK-ing and honestly feel bad about it, in immediate retrospect! Maybe skip a period by experimenting with semi-colons instead; I don’t know.)

You don’t have to be in class to have class, my friends. See you at gym!*

*hahahahahahahahaaaaa, gym. As if I was a part of GYM.