Ah, remember the excitement of starting a new school year? Shopping for new notebooks, picking out the perfect outfit for the first day of school, the smell of pencil sharpenings in the classroom?

Just because you’re a grown-up doesn’t mean you can’t harness that buzzy back-to-school energy. Here are seven activities you probably did in school as a kid — like playing at recess and packing lunches — updated for the adult version of you. We hope these ideas inspire new routines and positive changes as you transition into fall.

Miss packing a school lunch? Try meal-prepping

Kevin Curry, founder of FitMenCook, meal preps two nights a week. On these nights, he’ll spend 45 minutes cooking five dishes to mix and match over the next few days — for example, chickpeas, chicken, jasmine rice, roasted vegetables and a green medley of spinach, chard and kale.

“With those five foods I prepped, I made about ten different meal combinations,” he says. One day you might want chicken, rice and greens, another day you might want chickpeas, greens and chicken. Transform the flavor of each meal with different condiments like tahini dressing or barbecue sauce. Read more tips here.

Miss back-to-school shopping? Spruce up your wardrobe

Even if you aren’t doing any back-to-school shopping this fall, you can prioritize your personal style with a closet purge. Asia Jackson, actor and YouTuber, says to try on every item in your wardrobe and ask yourself a few questions to determine if you should donate or keep that sweater you haven’t worn in years.

“Do you feel good in this item? Do you look good in this item?” says Jackson. “If it doesn’t make you feel good, then you should get rid of it.” Once you’ve identified the pieces you love, use them as the foundation for your revamped style. Read more tips here. 

Miss learning new things? Read more books

If you want to read more books, try getting in a few pages in the morning before you start your day.

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Got a fall reading list you can’t wait to get through? Set yourself up for success by reading in the morning, says NPR culture correspondent Lynn Neary, “particularly on weekend mornings.”

You’re less likely to fall asleep the way you can if you try to read before bed, and it’s a nice way to start your day. Read more tips here. 

Miss writing in your planner? Make a better to-do list

To create clear, short and doable action items, follow the two-minute rule. “If it takes less than two minutes, just do it right then and there,” says Angel Trinidad, founder and CEO of Passion Planner, a company that sells paper and digital planners and journals. “It’s not worth the bandwidth to write it down, remember it and do it.”

For larger tasks, break them down into smaller chunks. People aren’t specific enough when they write down items on their to-do lists, says Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. And what ends up happening, he adds, is that “we don’t get them done because we’re not expressing them in a doable form.” Read more tips here.

Miss recess? Bring more play into your life

Not sure how to incorporate more play into your life? Ask yourself what kind of play you enjoyed as a child.

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If you want to bring more play into your life, you don’t necessarily need to make any significant life changes or rework your entire schedule. Play is as simple as observing tiny moments in nature, says Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play. Any increase in play throughout your day is a win – whether it’s a playful hobby like painting, playing a board game, or just a new, playful outlook.

If you aren’t sure what kind of play you’ll enjoy now as an adult, ask yourself – how did I like to play as a kid? And how can I incorporate that form of play into my life now? Read more tips here.

Miss meeting new people? Change your mindset on friendship

If you want to make more friends, assume that other people also need friends, says Heather Havrilesky, author of the advice columnAsk Polly.

“People assume that everybody already has friends,” she says. The truth is, “nobody already has their friends.”

It may feel uncomfortable to send the first text message to hang out one-on-one for the first time. But accept the awkwardness, she says. It stems from vulnerability — and you can’t have friends without getting vulnerable. Read more tips here.

This digital story was written by Clare Marie Schneider. It was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Rebecca Harlan. We’d love to hear from you. Email us at LifeKit@npr.org. Listen to Life Kit onApple Podcasts andSpotify, or sign up for ournewsletter.

Three years ago, nearly 300 young Afghan musicians, their teachers, and staff from their music school fled Afghanistan in fear for their lives after their country fell again to the Taliban. NPR followed them on their journey from Kabul to a new life.

Since then, they’ve been permanently rebuilding their community as refugees in northern Portugal. NPR visited them as they began to put down roots and recently caught up with them again, just before they tour the U.S. as the Afghan Youth Orchestra.

The Afghanistan National Institute of Music represented an exciting vision of Afghanistan. It brought together kids from all over the country, boys and girls alike, from vastly different socioeconomic circumstances, ethnicities, and language groups, says Ahmad Sarmast, the school’s director. He founded the school in 2010.

“I think one thing that connects us is not just our nationality or language or religion, but playing music,” Sarmast observes. “Making music together also plays a significant role in keeping our identity as a community.”

That shared love of music is what binds them together.

“The group is very diverse, like Afghanistan itself,” he says. “The community of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music is a mosaic, a smaller mosaic of the beautiful, diverse Afghanistan.”

The school quickly gained international prominence; its musicians even toured the U.S. in 2013, including a performance at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. It seemed like a new era was dawning.

But even before the Taliban seized power again in 2021, everyone at the school knew that they were still at serious risk. The danger became very real: A suicide bomber attacked one of their concerts and severely injured Sarmast, who was sitting just a few seats from the attacker.

“Our school was in the high hit list of the Taliban. They attacked one of our performances in 2014, where two people were killed, and I was injured,” he says.

Sarmast was nearly killed in that attack – with 11 pieces of shrapnel lodged in his skull – and his hearing was severely damaged. Over the next few years, there were several more planned attacks on the school and Sarmast himself, all of which were foiled.

Once the Taliban reseized control of Afghanistan in 2021, however, he felt there was no other choice. Once again, schooling for girls past the sixth grade has been banned. So has playing and listening to music — and the Taliban have seized and burned instruments.

“We knew when the Taliban was going to come [back],” Sarmast says, “our school will be the first target, and it will be the beginning of another cultural genocide.”

So in the fall of 2021, with the assistance of the governments of Qatar and Portugal, students, faculty, staff, and some family members – were airlifted out of Kabul and resettled together as a community. They were going to recreate the musical heart of Afghanistan — in northern Portugal, near Braga.

I visited them in Portugal in the fall of 2022, not long after they had been moved from temporary quarters in Lisbon to Braga, a quieter area not far from the border with Spain.

They were still settling in, enrolling in local schools and getting used to the food. I ate lunch with some of the teenage students at a local Catholic charitable organization, where most of them politely pushed plainly cooked fish and overboiled Brussels sprouts around their plates. It was a world away from the spiced meats and pilafs of their homeland.

15-year-old trumpet player Zohra Ahmadi, a member of the Afghan Youth Orchestra.

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But the taste of home came when they pulled out their instruments — such as the sitar, santoor, rubab and harmonium — and began rehearsing traditional Afghan music.

They love playing and are fulfilling their lifetime dreams of being musicians. But also, they understand their responsibilities, says 15-year-old Zohra Ahmadi, who plays trumpet.

“We are the voice of a country that has no music,” she says. “It’s a bit sad to think about it, that we are the only ones playing.”

Sarmast, the school’s director, says the school’s mission has expanded and become even more urgent. He says his students must be the ones to preserve their country’s music from more than 4,000 miles away. He says it’s not just a mission: It’s a duty to the country they had to flee.

“Now, we are responsible for safeguarding Afghan music,” Sarmast says firmly. “Advocating for the music rights and cultural rights of the Afghan people, and for freedom of expression, through music in all its forms and freedom. And also actively advocating for stopping gender apartheid in Afghanistan.”

While they are learning so much material that celebrates rich, ancient and deep musical traditions from across Afghanistan, they are also solidly becoming part of a new country.

17-year-old Elham Asefi plays guitar. He says the Portuguese locals have been very welcoming and friendly, and are patient in helping them master yet another language. “The Portugal people are very kind,” he says fondly. “Like, they help us.”

And at long last, many of the students are looking forward to being reunited with family members in Portugal – hopefully very soon, Sarmast says.

“We are all waiting for the arrival of the families from Afghanistan to Portugal,” he notes. “We have the approval of the government of Portugal – 368 people to reunite with their families.”

In the meantime, these young Afghan musicians are finally back to touring internationally, bringing their music and message to new audiences. Recent appearances have included performances across the U.K. and at the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Conference in Switzerland.

They will perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City on Wednesday evening and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Both trumpeter Zohra Ahmadi and guitarist Elham Asefi are thrilled to be visiting the U.S. — particularly to perform at Carnegie.

“Really excited!” Ahmadi exclaims, giggling.

“We’re really excited,” Asefi chimes in. “It’s a big stage, the stage we play at Carnegie Hall. Every musician has a dream to play there.”

They say that no matter what, they will continue to be a voice for Afghanistan across the world – a voice that refuses to be silenced.