The real beginning of the year

The university year is starting up soon. Students should start arriving in the next few days to move into the dorms, parents and students will be bottlenecking Walmart and the grocery stores. There will be no parking up on campus as people move in, and forget visiting the university bookstore. For the first time, we actually remembered this, and so I went shopping today, instead of Move-In Day. My 4YO and I took a stroll through the university bookstore, ostensibly to look for a book on hiking trails in the Tetons and eastern Idaho. We didn't find anything--it looks like they are rearranging, and stock is low until they get everything moved. But it was still fun to browse the store. There's a particular smell there, of books, yes--but it's also the smell of adventure, of hikes to hot springs, of oil paint and linen, of explorations into the invisible world of our cells, into space, into why we're here and where we came from and where we're going. I LOVE that smell. It makes me excited all over again, because forget January, September is the true start of the year. It made me remember that shiny, expectant feeling of a new semester, one where I knew I was going to learn a lot, both in the classroom and out. Add to that the faculty and spouse dinner we went to last night--there is much more of a sense of university community here than at most other universities we've been associated with (and let me tell you, we've been at a lot!). The speakers (which included M. Russell Ballard, for anyone interested) talked more about listening and learning from other people, encouraging free expression and freedom of thought, being kind, learning to delegate, and practicing what you preach, than about Being Important. A nice change in faculty message from some places we've been, where the prevailing attitude seems to have been, grapple to the top no matter who you boot off the mountain on the way. I realized this morning that I'm not just remembering what it was like when I was a student--I feel a sense of right-now-ness, as well. That THIS semester will be one with things for me to learn. That God knows where I am, right here and now, and that there are things to learn and things to look forward to just as much as when I was a student. I like that feeling. I hope it's a good year, not just for me, but for all of us.