Yesterday, I audited a class at Haas as part of the b-school application process. I took off from work a little early and BARTed over to Berkeley.

Now it's been a few years since I've graduated from Cal. The first year after graduation, I still had a lot of friends in Berkeley, so I visited pretty often. After that, I still had a few, so here and there. Last year, I pretty much only went for the football games and maybe to visit friends who had graduated, but still lived in the city of Berkeley. So, visiting was more about seeing the people and the city; not really the campus.

So on the walk from BART all the way up to Haas (through the "scenic route"), it was a bit of a surreal feeling. A walk I've done probably a hundred times, yet haven't done in years. And that too during actual class hours, which meant I saw the students walking to and from class, hanging out on the lawn, grabbing coffee at FSM... all the stuff I was doing several years ago.

Because I'm a bit overnostalgic, I threw on some tunes that reminded me of my time at Cal and walked. Past VLSB, the Main Stacks, Memorial Glade, the Campanile... remembering what it was like to be doing this. Went through a class at Haas.

Then walked back to BART, past Wheeler... and automatically started heading back towards my old apartment before I realised what I was doing. The most odd part of all of this is it didn't feel weird; it felt like I was just back in routine again.

So that's my story of visiting Berkeley again as a "student". What's your "Back to Berkeley" story?