On my way to SLU

Friday, May 12 was my last day of work. I will be going back to school full-time at the end of this month.

I always thought finding a job and working would be really different, since I spent a lot of time looking for a full-time job after I got my first two degrees in the 1990s, but going the other way, back to school, is equally interesting.

When I look back, it was a different time. The internet was some foreign place that was just starting to issue passports. I remember when I went to an online search workshop at the library and we had to have the librarian actually do the search for us, because we didn't have access.

No one, outside of a couple of strange characters in my class in the business school had cell phones. The phones they did have came in a bag, or had to be put in one, because there was no way you'd get it to attach to your belt without having a big chunk of plastic on your hip. Every cell phone also had an antenna that was about 6-8 inches long.

SLU was different, too. The memory of the tennis courts behind Ritter Hall was still fresh, because the Dolphin pond and fountains were relatively new. The Laclede parking garage was new, too. It didn't have gates on it, until later in the spring semester in 1992. I occasionally parked my car there when my spot was gone on the street. Laclede was still a through street to Compton way back then. I hung out in Busch Memorial Center (or Busch or BMC) just like the rest of the commuters, and lounged on the grass underneath one of the sycamores out in front. We had to cross Grand there, where there were no landscaped medians, and you took your life into your hands trying to cross against the lights or at the very last minute. West Pine at Spring was also another place to dodge traffic on my way to Xavier Hall for metaphysics.

Today, the brick piers and gates are everywhere on campus--at the med school campus and at Frost. Incarnate Word Hospital at Lafayette and Grand is now SLU's Salus Center and Water Tower Inn hotel. The new Research Building is going up on the corner of Grand and Chouteau, right near where a manufacturing plant stood and Peerless Restaurant Supply. The surrounding neighborhoods are much spiffier, too. People actually live in the Continental Building (aka the "Superman" building) and the Coronado was totally renovated.

While the rebel in me would love to flash back to the days when you actually could park on the street for free, I have a nicer car (no primer this time), so I'll probably just conform and buy a parking permit.

It's fourteen years later, but hopefully, it'll be fun to be back!