With the mid-August sun beating down on us, it's hard to believe that a new school year is just around the corner. It's hot out now, but before you know it, the nights are gonna start getting longer, and those freewheeling days at the beach or in the woods are gonna start fading into the past (well, until summer 2018, at least). Transitions are hard, especially when they mean transitioning from total freedom to the hard-and-fast structure of another closely-supervised class schedule.

As painful as it is to bid another summer goodbye, though, there's something about the fresh start that autumn brings. New school supplies, new lockers, new crushes: can you believe all these things are just a couple weeks away!? A new school year can mean an opportunity to revisit your friends and passions, or it can mean an opportunity to show your peers a whole new you. 

To help you get in the mood for the death of summer and the birth of a new academic year, we enlisted Adolescent creator Lauren Tepfer to curate an August playlist just for you. Listen on for tunes that'll take you all the way from cruising along the freeway with the top down to scoping out that cute new kid in homeroom.