The Invisible Backpack

Author’s Note: This column is written for students heading back to school. After they read it, ask them one question: “What’s in your backpack?”

In just a few weeks, your alarm will go off earlier than it’s gone off all summer. You’ll roll out of bed, put on the outfit you picked out days ago, grab your backpack and head out the door. Maybe you’ll be excited. Maybe you’ll have butterflies in your stomach. Maybe you’ll be wondering if your best friend is in your class or if your favorite teacher is still teaching down the hall.

Then you walk into school. The hallways are louder than you remember. Lockers slam shut. Friends run toward each other after weeks apart. Everywhere you look, backpacks fill the hallways. Some are brand new. Some are decorated with patches, keychains and favorite colors. Some have been carried for years and still have last spring’s pencil marks tucked inside a pocket.

Those are the backpacks everyone can see.

But every classmate you pass is carrying another backpack, too. A backpack that never hangs from their shoulders. One that never gets zipped shut. One that no one else can see.

One classmate is scanning the cafeteria before they even get there, hoping someone waves them over. Another is wondering if anyone remembers the embarrassing moment from last year. Someone is carrying the pressure of believing every grade must be perfect. Someone else practiced smiling before they walked through the front doors because they didn’t want anyone asking if they were OK.

The things that weigh us down the most are usually the things no one else can see.

I know because I carried one.

When I was your age, I loved the first day of school. I loved laying my clothes out the night before, sharpening brand-new pencils, opening fresh boxes of crayons and packing my backpack so everything was in exactly the right place. I could hardly sleep because I was so excited.

Then one first day, everything changed.

The night before school started, my stepfather hit my mom. The next morning, I walked into my classroom carrying a backpack filled with folders, notebooks and pencils. What no one could see was the question I had been carrying since the night before.

Should I tell my teacher? What happens if I do? What happens if I don’t?

I looked at my teacher. I looked back down at my desk.

My classmates never knew. My teacher didn’t know. To everyone else, I looked like every other student on the first day of school.

Sometimes the heaviest backpack in the room is the one nobody can see.

As I got older, I realized something that changed the way I look at people.

Everyone is carrying something. Some burdens are easy to spot. A broken arm wrapped in a cast. A scraped knee after falling off a bike.

The heavier ones are different. They’re the worries that keep someone awake the night before school starts. The friendship that quietly fell apart over the summer. The fear of walking into a classroom where everything feels new. The pressure to make good grades. The sadness of missing someone who isn’t coming home. The questions that don’t have easy answers.

Those things don’t show up on the outside.

The next time a classmate says something that hurts your feelings, seems unusually quiet or reacts in a way you don’t understand, pause before deciding that’s who they are. Ask yourself a different question.

I wonder what they’re carrying today?

That one question has the power to change the way you see people.

The next time you walk through those school doors, remember this: Every classmate you meet has a story you can’t see. Choose kindness before judgment, compassion before assumptions and never forget that the heaviest things people carry are often the things no one else knows about.

Dr. Tamecca Rogers serves as Director of Student Access and Success at Tulsa Technology Center. An award-winning author and filmmaker, she is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in all her endeavors. Photo by Denice Toombs-Dotson with Lasting Impressions Photography.