When I was in school, a classmate of mine once returned to campus in September to announce that henceforth, she would be going by her middle name. Goodbye Megan, hello Jules. Her friends spent a week quizzing her about her choice and then moved on. It was a new school year, and everyone was starting over. Someone had a new haircut and pierced ears; someone got glasses; someone stopped playing soccer and joined the band; someone switched lunch tables. Big deal.

I’m jealous of my childhood self now when I remember that every fall we got to start over, as if our lives were getting a routine software upgrade. I cleaned out my book bag, tossed old notebooks, lined up fresh pencils, got my feet measured for new shoes and showed up to school ready to learn. I bemoaned the end of summer, but I also loved the sense of possibility a new grade held. Mystery and possibility don’t come calling for us so often in adulthood. When we get out of school, we lose that annual prompt for reinvention. I miss it.

Without that automatic opportunity to reintroduce ourselves to the world, we get a chance at a reboot only if we manufacture it. So I’ve decided I’m going to look at this fall as if I’m starting the next level in school. If I pick up where I left off, that would put me in (please hold while I count on my fingers …) 40th grade.

I’m starting 40th grade by changing how I allocate my time. First, I’m setting my alarm 12 minutes earlier, downloading the Calm app and adding guided meditation to my mornings. Before I start responding to various stimuli, I want to begin the day on my own terms, in peace. Second, I’ve cut back my hours at my day job, meaning I’ll be able to sit right down to my writing most days instead of opening work email. Will meditating for a few minutes help me take a more serene approach to life? Will I get more work done on my new schedule? Or with less regular income and more solitude, will I go broke and/or insane? In 40th grade, I’ll find out!

I’m not the only one I know with plans to mix things up this fall. There’s something about this time of year, even this far removed from our student days, that signals a fresh start. One of my friends — she’d be in 42nd grade now — is taking the new-school-year-new-me concept literally, starting classes at the same time as her elementary-schoolers, step one of a plan to earn her master's degree and change careers. A friend in 39th grade is finally starting therapy, committed to figuring out whether it’s time to end a relationship that doesn’t seem to be working for her anymore.

Change doesn’t have to be permanent, a lesson I learned with some of my youthful back-to-school reinventions. When I returned to college for my sophomore year, I decided to rebrand myself as a smoker. I liked having a reason to hang out at the periphery of parties, leaning against a doorway, blowing smoke out the side of my mouth. I enjoyed the quick flash of attention I got when I flicked open a lighter. I’m glad I gave it up eventually, but I look back on this ill-advised affectation fondly when I find myself hesitating to try new things. I can always try on a new habit, and if I don’t like it, drop it. Growth is about experimenting as much as it’s about plowing forward.

As a parent, I see my kids reinventing themselves every school year. They’ve gone through their Lego phases, their sporty phases, their drama phases, their communicating-only-via-eyerolls phases. Yet I can see whole stretches of their childhoods where I coasted by in the same phase for years, my routine on caregiving autopilot — wake people up, feed people, drive people, get a little work done, start driving people again, feed people again, put people to bed. Supporting them as they grow into the people they’re becoming takes so much time and energy that unless I actively focus on my own evolution, I can forget that I’m still becoming someone, too.

Recently, I attended a local function for alumni and current students of my alma mater. As one student told me all about how she was designing her own major within the independent study program, I felt a spark of recognition. Designing my own curriculum! Yes, that’s what I want to do. In 40th grade, I will write my own syllabus. I will read books I might normally overlook and listen to people who know things I don’t and go places I haven’t been, because by this time next year, I want to have grown — and not in shoe size.

Mary Laura Philpott (@MaryLauraPh) is the author of the memoir-in-essays “I Miss You When I Blink.”

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