August Crowned or Canceled?

"I would send you a bouquet of sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address." - Joe Fox, You've Got Mail

August has always marked a kind of turning point for me—not the weather, of course. Florida in August is still hotter than Hades, all fogged glasses and scalding sidewalks. But there’s something about this time of year that whispers back to school. I can still remember the iced-over grocery store shifts, the oversized duffel bags, the restless energy of internships ending and semesters beginning.

I haven’t been a full-time student in years, but I’ve decided this year is my own Fall Semester. Eight months into 2025, nearly none of my plans look the way I sketched them in January. Which means it’s time to go back to the blackboard. Time to redraw the plan. Time to go back to school—not for grades, but for growth.

And maybe that’s the point. True education doesn’t end when the government stops making you sit in a classroom. The real syllabus begins when you finally choose what you actually want to know. The writers you never had time to read, the subjects dismissed as frivolous, the skills you quietly envied in other people—this is the semester for all of it.

So I bought a new planner. I set a dress code. I built a syllabus of my own design: the things I wish I’d been taught, the lessons no one thought to offer. If the world is dumbing down despite having all the information at its fingertips, then I’ll move in the other direction. I’ll sharpen. Refine. Elevate.

And I want to know—what will you learn this fall?

Bougie “Hot or Not” List – Dark Academia Back to School Edition

✨ Crowned ✨

✨ The Victoria Beckham autobiography Learning to Fly (quiet chic, disciplined, underestimated)

✨ Rachel Zoe’s Living in Style (because being educated in glamour is still an education)

✨ Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (the Dark Academia bible)

✨ Joan Didion essays (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album)

✨ Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (intellectual and chic)

✨ Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (heiress problems, but make it literary)

✨ Film: Dead Poets Society, Mona Lisa Smile, Atonement

✨ Soundtrack: Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die and Florence + The Machine’s Ceremonials—because back-to-school should feel like a gothic fashion show

🚫 Cancelled 🚫

❌ Burnout disguised as “hustle”

❌ Plastic spiral notebooks (you’re an adult, invest in Smythson or Papier)

❌ Fake-deep TikTok philosophy clips

❌ Ivy League cosplay without actually learning anything

❌ Dining Hall coffee when you could be making a perfect French press at home