Back to School: In Praise of the Routine

It begins as a little whisper on the seventh or eighth day. By the 10th day, it is palpable. Regardless of where we are or what we are doing, I have come to anticipate its appearance and its crescendo toward insistence. The family vacation is over. It is time to return home. Our routine awaits.

Don't get me wrong. I love our family vacations. A vacation is time away from the routine—mentally, physically, and psychologically. As a physician, it is time away from the rat-a-tat-tat of appointments scheduled every 15 minutes, email threads for informatics projects or electronic health record complaints, and spending the last 30 minutes of each day in the clinic scribbling my signature on yet another form.

But, the routine beckons. It is familiar. It is reassuring. It is the totality of how we choose to spend our time—at home, work, school, religious services, exercising, eating, and sleeping. And so we must return to it.

I write this not only as families return from vacation, but also as children return to school and college campuses once again bustle with activity. First-day-of-school photos are posted on Facebook to commemorate and share in the great return to routine (or to document the initiation of a new routine: college).

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Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.

Cite this: Back to School: In Praise of the Routine - Medscape - Sep 26, 2018.