First Day Energy
When Autumn Arrives with Fresh Eyes
I’m getting ready for the second day of school. The first day of school is always nerve-wracking and exciting. You’ve spent part of the summer preparing. You’re also filled with the confidence that you’ve done this before many times, so surely it can’t be that different. But the past few years have shown that the first day of school can indeed be that different.
The second day of school is when the realities of the school year settle in. When I arrived home after the first day, I was on cloud nine. The energy of the young people, being around them again, is a wonderful antidote to the jadedness and cynicism that being alone with my thoughts for the whole summer produces.
This isn’t a coincidence that we return to the company of young people during the transition from late summer into autumn. The time spent alone pursuing creative projects, including improvements for what will happen in the classroom, moves into unfamiliar territory.
The Snake Goddess represents the Season of Autumn. In my personal framework, the Snake Goddess embodies the element of fire because of her power to spark transformation. Throughout ancient times, people have noticed that snakes can shed their skins and leave them behind, seeming to become young and new again. And snakes are egg-producing creatures, that an egg can lie safely in the ground and from it can hatch new life is compelling because of its connection to our human experience of producing life.
I can’t help but think that this phase of transformation, transformation by fire, when an old forest burns down and a new forest appears, mirrors what happens in the classroom. Although I may think I know all about the problems of the world, the young people I’m meeting are experiencing this for the first time.
“How many of you is this your first day in college?”, I asked them. A significant majority raised their hands. “How many of you is this your first class in college?” A smaller number, but still significant. What an intense reminder of the responsibility I bear. I am providing them with their first taste of what being at university means.
When I stand in front of them, I know I’m there to model what it looks like to be a woman on fire with ideas. In my student evaluations over the past twenty years, comments consistently reference my passion for the subject. I explain to students why and how I think chemistry is beautiful. I explain the power I hope to give them to understand the world around them by understanding how textile materials are made and how they can discuss them.
This transformation I’m about to prepare them for, the transformation I also underwent when I first studied my subject, what a powerful moment to experience afresh yet again.
They have this perspective of youth that encourages me to shed my skin of toughness, my pushing away of the world, my discounting of the power of passion and joy. Of course, it’s easy to think, “Oh, what do these kids today know?” as I tell them about exciting things like books and pencils and paper… perhaps ironically as I talk about what AI can and can’t know about the world. But I’m reminded that their fresh perspective gives me a chance to test my perspective yet again. The classroom is a place where both students and teachers transform, and being an agent in this transformation is an important part of my life.
I sometimes mourn the end of summer as the time when my schedule becomes more restricted, when teaching responsibilities reduce my studio time. Yet, this experience of sharing the underlying scientific premises of my discipline with students provides revitalization for my creative practice. Many artists discover that teaching is a fundamental part of their creative work, and this is true for me.
This moment validates as aspect of the seasonal framework I’ve developed, the somewhat risky move to make autumn the time of transformation by fire. In many season systems, autumn is a time of fading, or decay or death and mourning. But that only works in climates where autumn is followed by a hard freeze, and that won’t happen here for months. For us in Central Texas, this is a time of transformation, of witnessing transformation, as everything changes colors, as we intentionally seek new colors, as we examine ourselves and our work and decide what needs to change, what should be shed.
As I set out to gather new ideas and materials for a fresh season, I will try to carry this “first day” energy with me as long as I can, so I can offer it to colleagues who need encouragement. I will offer it to myself as encouragement when I feel doubtful of the value of what I am making or saying. Even when we aren’t looking, the world is changing. Even when we think we know exactly where the world is going, it can decide to transform overnight… in the flash of a fire, in the shedding of a skin.
For me, the classroom is where the Snake Goddess energy is most visible as I shed the barriers I’ve placed between myself and my passion for ideas. I see young people as a kind of oracle themselves. They bring me messages not from the wisdom of old age, but from the fresh perspective of youth. If I can hear and listen to those perspectives, I too may be renewed.
Welcome to the transition to autumn, where there is hope in an ever-renewing world, this continuous cycle of new perspective. “Kids these days” As long as there are kids these days, we will learn something new. We will be challenged to become new ourselves.
Thank you for reading what emerges from my process.
Gwendolyn
P.S. My next post will be in two weeks instead of one and in that post, I will explain why I am going to a biweekly schedule for the rest of the Autumn