growing upend of summerback to school
A list for the last week of the holidays
The small true things nobody warns you about in the last few days before term starts again.
The last week of the summer holidays has its own particular weather, and I do not mean the sky. I have been thinking about it because someone I know is going into her final year and has the specific look of a person standing at the top of a slide she did not ask to be at the top of. So, for her, and for anyone doing the same walk, a list of things I have noticed to be true.
The shops put the school things out too early and it feels like a threat. Glue sticks in August are the cruellest object in retail.
You will suddenly, on about the Wednesday, want to do all the things you said you would do in June. Learn the guitar. Text the person. Go to the place. This is normal, and you will do roughly one of them, and one is a good number.
The friends you were going to see every day, you saw about four times, and it was enough, and you will spend September pretending it was not enough because that is more romantic.
The night before, you will lay out clothes you will not wear and pack a bag you will repack in the morning, and the ritual of it matters more than any of the items in it.
You are more ready than you feel. Readiness does not feel like anything. It just sits there, quietly, being ready, while you panic on top of it.
The summer was not wasted just because you cannot point to what you did with it. Some of the best things a person does at that age leave no evidence at all. You lay on the floor and listened to a whole album. You had a conversation that went somewhere. You were bored in a way that let an idea in.
And here is the one I most want the person at the top of the slide to know. The version of you that walks back through those gates is not the one who walked out in July, even if nothing dramatic happened, even if you cannot say what changed. You got a summer older. That counts. It always counts. So go easy on the person you were in June. She got you here.
The start of a school year is where The Comet Year begins, with Juno arriving three weeks late with one suitcase of clothes, one box of her old life, and no intention of unpacking either.
More from the journal
More by Wren Ashby
- Why the summer you were sixteen still feels bigger than the ones that came after 18 Oct 2026
- The unremarkable things that turn friends into family 13 Oct 2026
- The books you read at fifteen are reading you back 9 Oct 2026
- The Nobel Prize in Literature is announced on Thursday, and I will be thinking about a different shelf 3 Oct 2026
On the same subject
- The heartbreak nobody sends a card for Wren Ashby · 16 Sep 2026
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House rules
- Sign how you like, but be one person. You may use the name on your account, a name of your own choosing, or none at all. What you may not do is wear somebody else's: no pen name of ours, no member's name but your own, and nothing that reads as the studio or its staff.
- Argue with the point, not the person. Robust disagreement is welcome; contempt is not.
- Nothing unlawful, hateful or harassing, nothing that identifies a private individual, and no advertising.
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What a chosen name is and is not
A chosen name hides you from the room, not from us. Every remark stays linked to the account that wrote it, and the studio can see that link whenever it needs to. Please treat it as a way to speak freely, not as a way to say something you would not put your name to.
Where responsibility sits
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