The smell of the crisp autumn air, the satisfying crack of a brand-new notebook spine, and the light weight of an underfilled backpack—there is something special about the return to campus. Even though January is celebrated for New Year’s resolutions, September is the champion of personal reinvention. For students like us, the calendar really begins on the very first day of the fall term.
Behavioral scientists call this the “Fresh Start Effect.” Research shows that human beings naturally tend to organize their lives into distinct mental “chapters.” According to Technology Networks (2024),the brain appears to separate ongoing experiences into meaningful segments, helping us recognize when one event or phase ends and another begins. In everyday life, milestones such as a birthday, a new month, or the first day of a new school year can act as psychological landmarks. These landmarks make it easier to distinguish between our “past selves” and our “current selves,” creating a sense of a fresh beginning.
Bad habits like procrastination or declining grades stay firmly in the previous chapter. Today, you wipe the slate clean. Leave behind past failures and embrace a new you.
Perhaps that explains why the first weeks of school feel so unusually full of possibilities. We promise ourselves that this will be the year we stop doing homework at 1:00 AM. We decide to finally be more active with people outside our usual friend groups. We sign up for new clubs that we were hesitant to join in the spring.
Even rising up a grade can change the way we think about ourselves. We enter freshman year nervous in an unfamiliar community; enter sophomore year with the confidence that we are no longer the youngest; enter junior year, suddenly hearing about college applications everywhere; and enter senior year experiencing our last “firsts” at ASIJ.
But the obvious problem with the September reset is that September eventually ends. Our new notebooks stay clean only for so long. Our backpacks start getting heavier with piles of assignments. The next thing you know, you find yourself staring at a half-finished Google Doc at 1:00 AM. A fresh start can create the illusion that change is possible, but that doesn’t mean it will make the change happen for us.
The point of a fresh start is not to construct an entirely new personality. Most of us will still carry the same weaknesses, habits, insecurities, and responsibilities we had back in June. But the beginning of the year gives us an opportunity to interrupt routines before they become routines again.
The most meaningful reset is therefore a small one. Sit somewhere different at lunch. Try introducing yourself to the new student in your class. Actually attend the first meeting of the club whose posters you have walked past every day. Speak up when you would rather stay quiet. Start an assignment the afternoon it is given to find out what it feels like to get things done ahead of time.
And September offers another kind of fresh start: the chance to reconsider the identities we have assigned ourselves. Society is great at placing people in categories—the soccer kid, the math whiz, etc. And sometimes, other people’s expectations can perniciously become our own. A new school year doesn’t erase those labels, but it gives us an excuse to test whether they are still true.
That may be the advantage that September offers us over January. Whereas January is in the middle of our school journey, September hands us a blank page. By October, that page will no longer be blank, however. There will be missed deadlines and awkward moments, but I am certain that you will also find new friendships and unexpected interests, and hopefully make decisions that you are glad you made.
The feeling of the first few days of school will soon be gone. Now is our chance to use it. So while our backpacks are still relatively light and our notebooks are still relatively clean, there is a question worth asking: what do you want to do differently this time?
