Back to school again

Students bring the campus to life when they come back after summer.

Transcript

After a summer break of seven weeks, students are coming back for second semester. On Monday all of our freshman and sophomores and most upperclassmen and graduate students will be on campus.

Monday is October 1st, 2007. I began working at this university on October 1st, 1977. There have been many changes in thirty years, of course, but the back-to-school feeling of this season has changed little in three decades.

At the beginning of each summer vacation it seems quiet and peaceful. But after a while the empty hallways feel pretty lonely. Just before the students return I feel ambivalent: Fall Semester brings a lot of hassles that I dread, but, at the same time, I look forward to being around young people again.

Yesterday I could feel a burst of youthful energy as the hallways filled with noisy young women and students greeted me or dropped in to chat. Fall Semester is going to be pretty hard, but it's nice to have the students back and I'm looking forward to going to work on Monday morning.