September 01 — True story: I spend a lot of time reading things on the Internet.

August 25 — Trading financial aid war stories is a right of passage for college students. Did you hear about the one where they lost your paperwork, only to find it a week later after your parents drove several hundred miles to sign new forms? Or how about the one where you called the office, only to reach a never-ending automated system, spent an hour on hold, only to get disconnected without speaking to someone?

August 25 — I can’t talk about health care reform anymore, with anyone else.

August 25 — Welcome back! Especially to those of you whose “final” semester — prior to the Grail of graduation — may have been five, six or more years in the making. Yours was not a bumpless ride with classes serving as occasional interruptions from goofing, in various states of sobriety. It’s well-known that many Metro — and UCD and CCD — students work more than one job to pay the freight and may have families to look after. Sans the spiffy cars that cost lots more than those driven by faculty, as do undergrads elsewhere (CU-Boulder maybe?), a lot of you ride RTD and enjoy the mixed blessing of living at home with your folks.

August 25 — I have said, since I was a young girl, I would never leave my home. What would I do without my family and everything I have grown to know? I knew San Antonio like the back of my hand. You could blindfold me, take me to a random point anywhere in the city, drop me off and I could find my way back home. Now 23, here I am in this enormous city feeling completely lost, but I am determined to make Denver my home away from home.