In-Betweens: College.

            Fall, in Cambridge, is a bit of a sordid affair.  Miserable long weeks of rain flirt with hours, or even days, of blinding sun and mild temperatures.  Lawn crunches with morning frost one day, and the next you've accidentally left your sweater in the library because it's too warm to wear.  Boat crews battle hefty winds blowing sleet up and down the River Cam one morning, and then gut sunburned in their tank-tops the next.  Fall, in Cambridge, is full of baby-faced "freshers" and exhausted 4th year PhD students.  Fall in Cambridge (which I have now experienced a grand total of twice) is a less a season on it's own, than it is a sort of odd empty space between the long lazy summer, and the sort of cold grey endless thing that is winter.  
            In that sense, Fall is a particularly fitting time for educational journeys to start.  Universities, whether they be Community College, State Schools, Liberal Arts Institutions or Research Centers all share the fact that they serve as an intermediary in life's long journey.  Universities, and all the subsets of them, are a step that we take.  An "in-between" now and wherever we hope to be in 4, 5 or 10 years time.  A semi-traditional stepping stone for middle class kids, first degrees (let alone second or third) are becoming increasingly expensive, and fewer and fewer of us are able to afford the cost of taking a year or three out of our working lives to simply learn.  
            For undergraduates it's a time to explore exactly who they are and will be as people, time to learn how to budget time, money, energy and space.  To foster interests in subjects flung far beyond what every day working life will offer.  Algebra, History, Sociology and Art.  Time to lie on lawns and stare at clouds while discussion the post-modern implications of Foucaultian conceptions of modernity.
For those of us who continue on to do Master's and PhD's, maybe we're inspired to join an MBA--looking for better returns on the hours we'll spend working, or maybe we've caught some bug around cross cultural encounters or feel a deep seated need to understand how the universe ticks at some very particular sub-atomic level.  
No matter who you are, or how many times you've wandered through the halls of a college library, you are all sharing that space.  That space of being in-between.  Whether it's in-between childhood and adulthood, or in-between careers.  Whether you are looking for a fresh start or have come back to study physics at 90 to fulfill a lifelong dream, you are taking a breath.  Pausing.  Not knowing where you will live in four years, or how you will ever manage to pay off those loans.  You are doing an internal reset.  Relearning who you are, what you need to know and how to function in a new environment and a new space.  You are making new friends, and tasting new food.  You are learning to play handball and squash, because for once in your adult life you have time to just do that.
            Most importantly--and maybe this is where the rough weather comes in--you have a chance here, in this in-between, to break old patterns.  To decide that molds from a year ago, five years ago or decades ago, don't need to fit if they don't serve some good purpose.  You have a chance to take some time to become a better you.  Time that isn't swamped with a full time job or whatever demands "home" had for you.  Time where you get to be in-between.  No longer defined, if only for a moment.  So whether you are that 17 year old genius starting college a year or two early, or that 56 year old returning to education for a second professional degree, remember that despite the wind and the cold frosty nights.  Being in a place of transition has some glorious sunny days and a host of opportunities that cannot ever be overstated.