A new academic year is starting tomorrow and for some unclear reason I am feeling thrilled. Obviously, what is getting my blood pumping is not the prospect of teaching per se – that can be amazing, obviously, but after a few years it becomes too familiar a feeling to be a source of excitement – but rather the necessary structure and discipline it demands. I figured out, over the years, that summer may not be the most productive time of the year for me, writing-wise. I certainly have much more time in my hands than during teaching terms, but I also realised that open-ended mornings and afternoons make for fantastic reading slots – not so much for writing. Teaching brings with itself a schedule, non-negotiable commitments, and a sense of urgency: if I want to write until my class at 3 pm, I must get to it as soon as possible, which means that I have to deal with emails, administration and other less-than-interesting tasks quickly so that I have that coveted couple of hours to write. The absence of a small blue box in my calendar takes my mind to that state of relaxation that is usually the premise of me taking up that list of unread articles, that book that I started a week before, even my notebook and a pen to jot down ideas and schemes – and that can easily take the whole day (often seasoned with a bit of guilt for those aforementioned less interesting tasks awaiting in my Outlook and ready to jump over me as soon as I open my mailbox, which I try not to check for as long as my millennial brain allows me to). So welcome back, students: let this be a great year for you, and – without an ounce of sarcasm - thanks for making time, once again, a scarce commodity.