Just when I think I’ve escaped from school, I’m back. Sorta. I only stopped by to pick up a transcript for my second effort at the bar exam and decided, “Hey, I need to be back in St. Paul for CPR training in three hours—why spend an hour on the road to head home and back?” So I spent the time in William Mitchell and tried to avoid feeling really, really awkward.
Fortunately, I thought about it beforehand and came here in disguise: I wore my William Mitchell College of Law cap. (It didn’t help that I hadn’t had a haircut in almost two months, but I’m gonna give myself some props anyway…) Armed with my street clothes and cap, I walked in the front door and prepared for the worst.
I got to the welcome desk and immediately saw the little glass bowl of Jolly Ranchers, so I grabbed one. Well, first I asked the girl behind the desk which flavor she recommended. She said watermelon. I hate watermelon. We made fun of each other for a moment and things didn’t seem quite as weird as I expected. Sure, the lady I was used to seeing back there was gone, but maybe she’d left for the day…
Then I went down the hall to Career Services, thinking that’d be the place to find out how to get a copy of my transcript. I was wrong, of course, which didn’t help me feel any better about being back here. So I talked to the kid behind the desk to figure out how to get one… it’s funny—now that I’ve graduated (and probably before), I think of the students as “kids” even though some of them are older than me. Anyway, he started off telling me that I could go to the Grades page, then copy and paste the information onto a Word file. When I explained that I was an alum and couldn’t get into the Current Students section of the website to get to the Grades page, he hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. At least that made two of us…
He recommended that I walk a little further down the hall to Student Services, an office that had been moved around a bit a month or two before I graduated. Thus, part of the reason why being back here has been so weird: the school was in the middle of a huge reconstruction project when I left. Certain hallways and classrooms were closed off, there was usually a lot of noise around the back of the building where they were adding an expansion… it could be a real nuisance during class, but it apparently paid off. For the students who didn’t graduate in ’04.
But Student Services had moved back to its original location, so I walked in the door and it looked really empty. When I say “empty,” I mean “bare bones”—if it had been someone’s apartment, that person would have been a few boxes and a bedspring mattress away from being completely moved into the new place. Still, someone walked out from the back just after I came in, so at least it wasn’t abandoned. I talked to the girl for a few minutes and she wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to get the transcript or whether it was supposed to be shipped directly to the bar exam people. Thus, I filled out a request form and added my phone number at the top so that eventually someone would be able to explain just what the hell was going on and what I needed to do.
Upon leaving Student Services, I had no transcript, no plans until CPR training and no food in my tummy. That immediately became my first priority, so I walked further down the hall (again) into an area that had been blocked off back in May. During the course of the next two minutes, I had the chance to glance around at all the stuff that I suffered through and couldn’t appreciate until now. I limited my glances to the new commons area and what used to be Dahlco, the company that used to provide me with food when I didn’t want to bring lunch from home. Initially, I was excited entering the room—it was Taco Tuesday and I was ready to chow down. Such was not the case.
First, I got to be upset by the new company who took over food services since I knew the guys who used to work back there. We’d chat, see what was up, talk about the weekend, have a little fun at each other’s expense… they were pretty cool guys. Now there was one woman standing behind a new counter with a random spread of ingredients (it vaguely reminded me of Subway without any bubbly teenage girls gabbing in the background). Next, I noticed that everything was smaller: tiny napkins, 500 mL bottles of Coke instead of 20 oz., less room on the tables to spread out (but a lot more tables… just not as comfy). Worst of all, there’s no Taco Tuesday anymore. What was once a $3.25 investment for three beef tacos became $5.25 for three with chicken. Very greasy chicken.
And as was inevitable, I met one of my former classmates. I don’t think she recognized me until I gave her a little wave—I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t expect me to be around…
