Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Tenth Grade

It's back-to-school time at our house. Riley starts 10th grade today. I remember Jim and Caleb starting high school. I remember my first day as a sophomore.

What I don't remember is having a lot of choices about classes. I took the advanced math and science; I took the first offering of Sociology; I had a typing class.

But we didn't have a Digital Imaging class. Not even an Analog Imaging class that I recall; Mr. Ingram taught the annual staff to use cameras and develop pictures in a dark room. We had one foreign language; I didn't take it.

I didn't do shop class or home economics but I did join a lot of clubs so I could get in the group picture for the annual. Kids now days don't even call it an annual; it's a year book.

I didn't have a backpack or a long list of supplies for each, separate, individual class. Seems like it was my responsibility to have pencil and paper and keep up with stuff.

And those expensive calculators? We had to show all our work. We had to know the formula. We had to draw our own graphs.

We shared lockers. We wanted to.

Having a kid in tenth grade is supposed to make you feel old but when I compare his sophomore year to mine I feel really old.

I do remember tenth grade being a great year and I hope it is for Riley and his friends, too.