What do you remember about your first day of school?

The trough urinal in the boys room.

The grey carpet in the classrooms and hallways.

The smell of crayons.

Saying the Hail Mary.

The rosary beads on the nuns.

I remember the smell...it was always the same at any school I went to...neither good, nor bad, just first-day-of-school-smell. I'll never forget it, and hate it to this day. And I remember how miserable I was

First day of middle school. My mom wanted me to look nice & picked some awful outfit that I knew would make me look like a spaz. White shorts & a red polo shirt. I wore it, but had a change of clothes in my bag & stopped at a friend's house to change on the way to school. I wore neon orange shorts (it was the 80s) and a "Bud Bowl" t shirt featuring beer bottles wearing football helmets. Guess whose mom got a call from the school that day? I was in deep crap 🤣🤣

My school smelled terrific. I once asked the maintenance man why the school smelled so good and he said that they put cinnamon in the floor wax.

I don't remember a damned thing about my first day of school. I remember other days quite well, because I liked school and had an incredible teacher who was one in a million. The first day, however is a complete blank.

I was worshipped as a God by both the teachers and my fellow students.

First day of high school, had this vivid "My So Called Life" moment. My best friend had kind of drifted away during middle school, grew his hair long & was in a band. Saw him in the hall at his locker & he was surrounded by kids I didn't recognize, & they were definitely his "crew". We made eye contact & he kind of nodded at me & then went back to socializing with his new friends. I was gutted. I knew I was no longer cool enough for him. Fucking harsh.

earrings

caftans!

OP was his name Harry?

The janitor closet.

I went to parochial school my first years. I remember being okay initially when my mom dropped me off at kindergarten, but after I looked out the window with another boy and saw my mother walking away from the school I started to cry. But I was okay from the second day onward. My teacher was great, and she always had this sweet perfume smell which I learned many years later was jasmine. She remains among my favorite teachers. Sadly she died about 10 years later from breast cancer.

Honestly not much. I had been in Nursery School since the age of 3. So 1st grade or even Kindergarten were not a big deal.

White-knuckled terror, scared enough to be sick. All the rules and regulations, standing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the address by the principal over the loudspeaker.

Most of the real causes of anxiety developed later, after the first day.

[quote] The rosary beads on the nuns.

I totally misread this as [bold]“The rosary beads in the anus.”[/bold] At a Catholic school would that be out of the question?

I didn’t know the janitor would spend most of every day in our classroom. The next year, he was gone, and Sister Agnes had left the convent.

My neighbor boy cried when his Mom left him. I was embarrassed for him.

I was scared but my nice teacher put me at ease.

Six years old and it was my first experience with nuns. The old fashioned kind, from the 60's, totally covered head to toe. They were mean and I lived in fear for those 8 years of grade school, with a different nun for each grade. I developed a terrible stammer during those years and to this day I can vividly recall the terror of having to stand in front of the class to read. The saving grace of those years was the aching crush I had on the parish priest who lived in the rectory adjacent to the school. Father Peterson was six-three, athletic (he led the various boy's sport teams) and ginger. Alas, he never made a move on me.

I cried the first day of kindergarten when my mom dropped me off and left. For some reason, the teacher ready to a shine to me, told me not to worry about anything, and I was appointed her "classroom assistant" during the naptime break for the entire year.

That was back in the old days when one teacher had 45-55 students per classroom, and teacher's aides didn't exist.

I remember a little girl showing up late for class. She was cute and the class went silent, just looking at her. People made space for her in our little chair circle. At that moment, it crystalized for me that looks (something you have no control over, esp. at that age) could confer good treatment on a person.

Now, it's interesting to see people get older and fatter, etc.

Playing on the floor. It was a Montessori.

Kindergarten was okay since it was private and I knew most of the other kids because our parents knew each other. My first day of first grade in a public school was a different matter. After my mom left me with the principal that first morning, I was taken to the classroom and didn't know anyone in the room. Up to that point, I had never felt so alone and frightened. After all, we hadn't been properly introduced.

I can't remember much about my first real day of school when I was a kid, but my mom tells me I didn't want her to leave and I'm sure that's the case with most kids. I can remember how scared I was, but I feel like I adapted pretty quickly thanks to some wonderful teachers I had when I was first starting out.

I stayed at the same school until 9th grade when I moved and I do remember almost everything about that day. The fear was back, but this time I lashed out in anger and made a horrible first impression on everyone. I was convinced I'd only be here for a few months and then I'd move back to my old school so I made sure to tell everyone that. What a little asshole. I could have made things so much easier by just being nicer and more approachable.

Lunch was the worst, because whoever you sit with at the beginning of the year is who you're basically stuck with for the rest of your time at school and I sat with a handful of semi-outcasts simply because they seemed nice. We had very little in common, but they became my "tribe" until graduation. We didn't really keep in touch after that. After a year or so, I was able to dart between social groups fairly well and I seemed to be fairly well liked, but I was never the most popular kid in school.

I spent most of middle and high school feeling so alone, because many of my friends had left and gone to other schools after elementary and could never find the right groove. College came along and I met the friends who'd I keep in my life forever. Middle and high school ranged from boring to just plain awful and college was mostly a joy.

There is something about the smell of your first school, isn't there? I had to stop by my old elementary school a few years ago to pick up something from a teacher friend who worked there and right as I walked in, I was hit with that smell. It was never a bad smell. It sort of smelled like an old library book. I was so surprised the smell was still there, because they'd remodeled the school so much in the years since I'd attended that I didn't recognize a thing when I first entered, but that smell was still there. I had to take a moment to get ahold of myself, because it triggered such an emotional response in me that I couldn't understand.

Maybe because that's the last place I think I truly felt 100% pure joy with no responsibilities. The world seemed to full of possibilities and optimism and by the time you get to middle and high school, so many of your dreams have been crushed and people get meaner, the tests get harder, etc. There's so much more to worry about and so many more responsibilities. College was almost like a return to being in elementary school. You had more tests and exams, but there was a certain freedom you had that was invigorating. If I walked onto my college campus again, I'd probably feel the same way I did walking into my elementary school.

It’s funny you ask that and I have a very distinct memory that I probably haven’t thought of in decades. I do remember my mother walking down the hallway and out the door as she left me at kindergarten. It wasn’t traumatic or anything and I walked into the classroom. I think I just was more confused than anything.

Three criers for their mothers in front of the classroom and being the only one not sleeping in the denim sleeping bad on the hard tiled floor.

My mom taught at my school. She and my older brother dropped me off in the care of COMPLETE STRANGERS, and I screamed and wept hysterically. My mother and brother were soon crying as badly as I was. And the principal walked by, and I remember him asking my mother if she needed us all to go home in a very concerned way.

Such a weird thing to go from the family to this place where parents deposit you, and strangers take you.

My Mom dropped me in front of the school. Didn't even get out of the car. She was smoking one of her Pall Malls. Her hair was in curlers.

I told here "Mommy, I don't want to go."

"This is life," she said. "Get used to it." She laid a bit of rubber as she sped off. I stood there watching as the car faded into the distance.

I heaved a deep but gentle sigh as I contemplated this, my new future. I began to walk slowly towards the schoolhouse door.

It sucked!

I was friends with non-identical twins in my neighborhood. One of them was a vomiter. We were pretty nice about it - very young kids can be very kind. He vomited on the first day of school and some kids were NOT nice and that was the beginning of our social education. A couple years later he also started crapping his pants. It was never explained to us except we knew he had a problem.