This is an opinion column

The long, lazy summer break is over and the back-to-school photos are out there. They show up on Facebook daily. The children stand in front of their homes in the early morning light, smiling into their parent’s phone camera on cue.They are the generation that grew up on back-to- school photos, and they know how to hold up the sign that gives their name, their grade, and sometimes a line about their favorite subjects.

After the pose, it’s time to get in the car and go start a new school year. They’ve got a backpack full of notebooks and pencils and crayons and glue sticks. They’ve got lunch money and maybe a note from a parent wishing them a good first day. And then they go in, waving at friends they haven’t seen since last year.

Students get in the proper line, turn around, and wave goodbye to the parent who dropped them off. There may be tears, not only on the faces of the young students but on the faces of the mother or father who is waving back at them.

This kind of scene repeats itself until the kids are in junior high and ask to be dropped off with no ceremony, please, and no emotional displays like hugging, or God forbid, kissing.

And years fly by and that same child drives himself to high school if he’s lucky enough to have a car, or rides with friends who are ready to start their final school years and then whatever comes after.

If whatever comes after is college, there are new things that fill the backpack and the suitcase and the trunk. Not just practical items like laundry detergent and shampoo and towels, but all the wishes and dreams that parents and grandparents bestow on their young person, still willing to pose for a back-to-school picture, but already rushing out of the frame to go on to Life, Part Two.

Life, Part Two is rich with lessons to be learned, and not just the ones in textbooks. Lessons start in the dorm where students, we hope, share space with someone not like them. Maybe that someone speaks a different language and is from a different country. Maybe that student is of a different race or religion. If so, listen and learn.

Lessons learned when living away from home can shock a new student. For example, if you don’t study for a test your professor doesn’t care that you went out with friends for pizza the night before but glanced over the material at least once, maybe twice. It’s not enough. You failed the test. Lesson learned.

Even though a young student planned on being an engineer the way his parents and grandparents were, it turns out he doesn’t like math all that much. Or science. Or most of the subjects he’d have to take. So he signs up for some liberal arts courses, excels, and switches his major. He feels at home with his new friends Shakespeare and Socrates and makes the dean’s list every time. What he thought he’d do doesn’t have to be what he ends up doing. Lesson learned.

And that backpack the student took to college holds the hard work and sacrifice of the people who came before him to make all of this possible. Maybe for the first time, he feels gratitude. Maybe one day, after all those people are gone, he’ll tell his own child to smile on her first day of school, take her picture, and then drive her off to school to start learning lessons of her own.

Contact Beth [email protected]