Spent the weekend with my grand daughter at her college. Seven hours of driving, we must have passed a couple dozen colleges much closer to home but as she put it, " I stepped foot on campus and knew it was the place for me."

As it was the place for her mother and aunt decades ago.

As it was the place for her grandmother half a century ago.

Much has changed since I was an undergraduate student. The freshmen no longer have to wear those insipid little beanies during freshmen week. The cafeteria is a buffet of different foods, open most of the day, eat all you care to for one price, which is included in the board. They've moved and improved the tennis courts, built a science building, a fine arts building and painted the bleachers. The post office is new yet in these days of cell phone communication hardly anyone checks the post office twice a day for mail like we did.

Yet somethings have not changed. Humanities is still one of the toughest courses taught, grits are still on the menu (and may in fact be the same batch of grits uneaten from the 60s), the athletic fields still have sink holes that appear by surprise, the hill to the cafeteria is still brutal for the legs and lungs, and college kids, for all their maturity, continue to get homesick (yes, the same home that many of them could not wait to leave).

It was a good time. So good that I'm going back next week, yes driving the seven hours, to see another soccer game. And hug my favorite college freshmen.

And that's what I'm thinking about today.