By Emma G. Harrison, Editor-in-Chief
Have you ever heard the idiom “clean slate?” Well, it comes from the Latin phrase tabula rasa (blank slate). The concept, however, can be traced all the way back to Aristotle, who wrote about his “unscribed tablet” in his essay De Anima. Most recently, we can trace the concept of this idiom to the early schoolhouse practice of wiping the chalkboard slates clean before leaving class in preparation for the next day. Today we commonly use it to describe “a situation from which someone can start again without being influenced by what has happened before.”
I found myself pondering the idea of a clean slate this past week after I finally unpacked three weeks’ worth of luggage from my study abroad trip to the Alps (more on that to come). Just like many others, I procrastinate heavily on unpacking. My suitcases will literally sit there for weeks before I even think about touching them. So after waiting a few weeks, I began unpacking, but this time I couldn’t help but reminisce about my time abroad. Each souvenir or article of clothing I picked up held a memory; a piece of me that has grown over the course of this summer. With each new piece I pulled out, it felt like I was starting over – wiping the slate clean – and when I got to the end and my suitcase was empty, I felt like a new person. Like everything I learned and became over the summer was solidified as a new piece of who I am.
The satisfaction of a clean slate is a very humanistic feeling; think of it like starting a new notebook or planner, having new goals or a clean, organized room, even something as simple as deleting old emails or cleaning your desk. There is just something psychologically satisfying about resetting. Every fall, students are given another opportunity to join something new, make new friends, challenge themselves, or even simply enjoy being a student again. But what is important to remember is that you don’t have to be the same person you were last year. Maybe the spring semester left you feeling like you weren’t yourself, like you didn’t make friends, or even like you didn’t do as well academically as you hoped. This is exactly why having a clean-slate mindset can be super valuable; it gives you the opportunity to say: Let’s try again.
I think that is part of what makes the fall semester so special; we come back to school with all the summer adventures behind us, putting the rush of the spring semester behind us, and leaning into the burgeoning chill of the fall. But we often mistake a clean slate for forgetting the past. Starting fresh doesn’t mean you have to forget the previous version of yourself; in fact, remembering the previous version of yourself is what makes the new beginning meaningful. It means carrying what you’ve learned into a new beginning – a clean slate permits us to begin again, without erasing what happened before.
Think back to my suitcase; I didn’t throw away everything from my trip. I sorted through it. Some things were put away, some were set out, some reminded me of people or places, some even represented experiences I didn’t expect to have. But all of it left an imprint on who I am, shaping me into who I am becoming.
As you begin your semester, ask yourself some important questions: What do I want to carry with me? What do I want to leave behind? What did I learn? What memories do I want to hold onto? You can’t forget everything and start over, but you can decide what comes next; you have to choose to learn from your mistakes so you can grow. As the mornings get colder and the leaves change, as students return and the campus becomes busy again, we notice that the physical world is changing. Even though it seems that nature is coming to the end of its cyclical system, it’s actually just adapting, just like you, because new beginnings don’t require everything to be new (kinda eco-friendly, isn’t it?).
So, my suitcase is empty, but my experiences are full. I’ve simply made room for new opportunities to grow. As a whole, we don’t return to school with a truly blank slate. We return with a clean one, one that has been wiped clear enough to begin again; however, it still carries the lessons, memories, and growth from what came before. We carry the good things, the mistakes, the people we’ve met, the places we’ve been. We carry all the lessons we didn’t realize we were learning. But we also get to decide what we do with all of it. So as students return this fall, perhaps the goal isn’t to become an entirely new person. It’s simply to take everything we’ve accumulated, unpack it, decide what belongs with us, and step into the next chapter a little more prepared than we were before.
Unpack so you can unfold,
Emma G. Harrison
Editor-in-Chief of Imaginary Gardens, a Pellissippi State Student-Powered Journal
