It’s a cloudy, drizzly, 50-degree day today, the first weekday on campus for almost all of our new students. This weekend was move-in day, and now there are clumps of students getting oriented. There are a lot of lanyards around.

I sort-of remember my first day at college. I got out of the car and was promptly ill. Not a promising start. It was a small college, and I remember how difficult it was for me to go to social event after social event. I’m actually quite introverted, even more so around people I don’t know. Stuff like that is exhausting.

But we also didn’t have the kind of orientation that our students get here. They get walked through each step so there aren’t any surprises. Our students know that there is a genuine wish for them to succeed from faculty, staff, and their fellow students.

I certainly didn’t get that in school. Maybe that’s why I transferred a couple of times.

I do envy them, though, our new students. The adventure they get to start now. I feel like, in my 30s, I would finally be ready to embrace everything I could in the college experience, something I wasn’t prepared to do as a terrified 17-year old.

The rest of our students will make their way back over the course of the next week. Town is filling up again. There’s more happening. Summer hours signs are coming down. Just about time to roll.

Elsewhere:

Kind of the converse of that, I had one of those great-idea-in-the-shower moments for Fill in the Blanks this time. Please check that out down below. I’ll share what my response to it would be next issue.

Up in the slideshow there is a collection of photos from our very own photographer Sarah Bird. It’s the stargazing one that rather blows me away. As if any of us needed another reminder of why we love being here.

But that photo, and ones like them, remind me to remind you about all of our social media outlets. We have a full staff of writers now, and everyone’s hard at work finding new ways to spread the word. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and probably more that I’m not even aware exist. Someone was trying to explain Yik Yak to me yesterday. That didn’t go well.

Sports is definitely off and rolling again, with an open practice for football happening tonight. It’s always nice to have big events like this happening again. We all seem to kind of wander off for the summer, and this is one of those places where it feels like campus reconnects.

From someone who went to another school the other day: “I’m an alumni.” No, no you’re not. You’re either an alumnus or an alumna. I had a classics professor who must twitch every time he hears Latin grammar being misused.

And finally, I’m very grateful that I have two courses to teach on campus this fall. I’ve been handed the keys to two sections of composition. It’s how I’m reminded of just what it is we do here at Tech and why it’s important. It would be easy to bury myself in my underground bunker of an office and just type away. But it’s more important to see it firsthand. Also, I’m hoping I can bribe convince someone to give me a literature class one of these semesters. It’s been a year or two since I’ve had to help someone fight through a Hawthorne novel or something.

Thanks for reading.