Going to school & the fall season

I just realized that this is the last time for the foreseeable future that I will get to experience fall semester. It is the last time I will enjoy the leaves on the ground on the way to a campus for class, and the last time I will be a student for the season we most associate with school, autumn.

I've spend a good number of years in school; most of my adult life has been in a school, and I am not as young as I act. I'm going to miss it, however excited I am about the next phase.

I didn't go to a sports-heavy college; The University of Chicago is Division III, which meant we put the biggest nerds in pads and left them on the football to scramble with other nerds in pads from Washington U. and Emory. Nevertheless, fall football reminds me of high school, and college, and grad school. It reminds me of eating steaming hot dogs bought from a pleasantly semi-hygienic stand. I went to my first big football game in high school, Northwestern-Penn State 1995, the same year they first went to the Rose Bowl. I started my adoration of Notre Dame football that same year, watching them trounce Southern Cal 38-10. I started really following the Bears in college, sitting in the TV lounge with football fans from a half dozen teams, all of use with books half-heartedly opened on our laps.

Autumn is my favorite season, and that's in no small part due to reminders it leaves me of schools and people I've left.

Extra Point has a great video of his trip back to Notre Dame for the UNC game this year, and it really does take me back.


Extra Point: Yea! Woo! Nostalgia!