I want you to take a stroll down memory lane with me for a minute. If you are rushing through this column on your way to the class notes section, slow down for just a moment. I want you to relax and enjoy some special memories, times and feelings. Get a cup of coffee, settle into your favorite chair, and let's reminisce.

   Think back with me to the day you first arrived at the University of Georgia as a freshman. Summer's heat was still bearing down when we arrived on campus that mid-September day. Filled with excitement and a little trepidation at being on our own, we crammed all of our worldly belongings into the bathroom-sized dorm room we would share with another person and call home for the next nine months.

   Autumn in Athens brings back memories of Saturdays and Georgia football. The brass section of the Red Coat Band playing those lazy opening strains of "Georgia On My Mind" would make my heart leap, then "Glory, Glory to Old Georgia" and I was ready to take on Tech! Remember how weekdays before the game could be chilly, but come kick-off on Saturday, the sun would be blazing in the student section of Sanford Stadium? If you didn't sport a sunburned nose and forehead on Sunday, it was a dead giveaway that you had either gone home or studied in the Library all weekend.

   Fall colors on campus are among the brightest and most brilliant memories for me at this time of year. There is just something about walking to Dawson Hall on a crisp autumn morning, seeing the trees on fire with the season's colors and feeling that first nip of winter's promise in the air that always takes me back to my first year on campus.

   So much is changing at the University. The year begins in August now that we are on semesters. Physically, we have added East Campus to our map and grown to educate over 30,000 students each year. Dorm rooms have their own telephones, televisions and computers.

   But some things will never change. The memories that have lasted a lifetime for me are many of the same ones freshmen are making today.

   Let me invite you back to campus sometime this fall. Come walk through North Campus and hear the rustle of leaves beneath your shoes as you remember going to classes with books under your arm and a sweater around your shoulders. Be my guest and sit in on a class in Dawson Hall, just for old time's sake. Take a tour around our building, and go down to the Home Management Houses. The outsides are still the same, but what goes on inside is a new and excitingly different story and I'd like to tell you all about it.

   Autumn in Athens … then, as now, a great place to be!