Upside Down

The upside of having been a student here before:
1) I know my way around campus. Registration at Bartels Field House? Ah yes, that's where it was last time. Orientation session at Statler Auditorium? Never been there before, but Statler is where the bus stop was...
2) I am familiar with CU grad school culture. E.g.: I ran into Claire, an archaeology student and Pratchett fan whom I met at the March recruitment event. She is freaking out b/c we can't register for classes yet, and classes start on Thursday, and our Field Orientation isn't until Wednesday night... I told her about "shopping", where everyone browses courses for 2 weeks before actually deciding what they're going to take, and how it drives the professors mad. It didn't really calm her down but she noted that it seemed useful to me to have been here before...

The downside of having been a student here before:
1) I found out today that the Graduate School has been mailing a number of things to my 6-year-old Ithaca address... and the Harrisonburg address they had listed for me was Lincolnshire Drive, where I was when writing my thesis. I was relieved to be able to get my stipend check, bus pass, and fitness center membership, but it took a lot of standing in lines and explaining in order to do so.
2) I can't think of any other downside... except that half the grad students look like, well, recent undergrads. I am a good ten years older than a lot of them. Older but wiser, that's for sure. And really, there are probably just as many people my age or older who are registering. And about a gazillion international students, which is always fun!

Really, biggest upside of having been here before is the sense of belonging. It also has to do with being a 3rd or 4th generation Cornellian, walking past the dorm my grandmother lived in when she was here, being in the building next to my dad's. I read something in the local paper, a reference to people who lived in Ithaca once and spend the rest of their lives trying to get back...

Check back and see if I still feel the same once the temps drop below 50 degrees! For now I am in the honeymoon phase.