Classes begin tomorrow, but lots of people are back at school today getting ready.
It's been a strange afternoon for me. In some ways everything is familiar. But in many ways I feel like a stranger.
For instance, I can't believe how many people I don't even recognize. There's an entire class of 1Ls and lots of 2Ls I didn't meet last year, but who now all will be in my classes. Meanwhile my mind keeps playing tricks on me, as I keep expecting to see all the people I used to see last semester. "Hey, that's-- oh, of course it's not..."
And then there's the bathrooms, which have been redone. This is a nice change, but also a little concerning because some of them have been reallocated (eg, ladies' rooms may no longer be ladies rooms) and I'm a little concerned about blundering into the wrong one out of old habit.
Today I also finally got my locker assignment. I'd had the same one for the first two years, but 3Ls get their own elsewhere (actually I effectively had my own before, since the person I was sharing with never bothered to use it, but now I got to have my own officially to myself). I'm used to having lockers in the basement (high school, Bucerius, even earlier years at BUSL) but this one is in the deepest bowels of the basement in a semi-darkened room. As I tentatively crawled the corridors looking for it, I suddenly felt like I was in a teen horror flick. Or at least some common adolescent nightmare, as I struggled to find my locker. (I did manage to find it eventually. The question, however, is whether I'll be able to manage to find it again...)
Meanwhile half my classes have already assigned homework, and tonight will be spent reading it. BU is quickly feeling like BU again...
Edit: It's also looking like BU again. While the Bucerius building was much more aesthetically pleasing than the BUSL one, I'd forgotten about the view. I'd written the above during the day but was still at school after the sun set. As I was leaving the view from the window caught my eye: the blinking Boston skyline and the shimmering Charles River, all laid out before me. I definitely don't seem to be in Germany anymore...
Edited subsequently a little more as well.