1. You start having dreams in which you’re not prepared — your syllabus is incomplete, your lesson plans aren’t finished, your copies aren’t made.

2. Back to school displays at the grocery store make you physically ill.

3. You start gauging your level of exhaustion against the teacher-tired-at-the-beginning-of-the-school-year scale and discover that even if you stayed up for 48 hours after having completed a triathlon, you still wouldn’t be that tired.

4. You start noticing wider smiles and brighter eyes on the faces of parents who know their summertime prison sentence is coming to a close.

5. You start asking family and friends to save their shoe boxes, magazines, and other household trash — you know, just in case your students need them for projects.

6. You take advantage of every special your local liquor store advertises because you know your days for celebrating are numbered.

7. You experience one giant Sunday night feeling for a month straight.

8. You check your rosters and start passing them around to your colleagues, asking them to clue you in to any troublemakers, shining stars, and kids with special circumstances you should know about.

9. You start correcting the behavior of strangers’ children at movie theaters, grocery stores, and parks.

10. You start frantically running through all the password possibilities for your school email, website, network, and grade book logins.

11. You fantasize about grand lessons and activities you’ll finally get to this year, 90% of which you’ll never entertain again.

12. You feel a sense of excitement and rejuvenation knowing the politicians and policymakers haven’t completely crushed your spirits (just give it 3 months).

13. You know the class you enjoy most at the beginning of the school year won’t be the one you enjoy most at the end.

14. You start inching your lunch time up little by little each day until you’re perfectly fine with eating a turkey sandwich or microwaveable ravioli at 9:59 a.m., the equivalent of your lunch break time at school.

15. You relish every last moment of being able to do your laundry and wash your floors whenever you darn well please because when school starts again, that’s what Sundays are for.

16. You start holding your own morning Olympics with yourself, trying each day to beat your getting ready time from the day before in an effort to maximize how many times you can hit snooze once school starts.

17. You savor the last few weeks when you can sit down in front of the TV or with a good book without feeling guilty about giving yourself 30 min of “me time” instead of grading papers.

18. You know the exact number of days you have left before you have to start waking up 3 hours before dawn again.

19. You line your kids up and practice repeating instructions to them 74 times before anybody bothers to listen or pretends to care about what you’re saying without raising your voice or screaming obscenities at the next person who asks, “What are we doing again?” (Wait. No. You’ve been doing that all summer anyway.)

20. You stock up on coffee — lots and lots of coffee — because you know you’re gonna need it.