First day back at George Washington University after a long hot summer was strange; but then GW, fashionably set in Foggy Bottom, is an unusual school. To get Washingtonians accustomed to its new visual identity, the university has plastered the Foggy Bottom metro station with logos and slogans and postmodern images of the first president. UD exited the station mentally draped in her place of business.

But now the business of getting coffee and a scone at the Starbucks in GW Hospital ensued; and as she stood in line singing along to Ella Fitzgerald singing Lullaby of Birdland, GW’s new banners began to fade. Miserable interns brooded at tables; the woman at the counter asked UD her name and UD eyed the cup to see how she’d misspell it; outside the cafe’s big windows, some sort of street work or street cleaning was making a lot of noise. This was the city, and UD’d been in the suburbs for months, a quiet setting.

Instantly, on leaving the hospital, UD was greeted by students and colleagues here and there and over there, which made the loud streets feel less like a city than a village. UD felt both happy and threatened at the thought of how long she’d stomped these grounds.

Approaching her office in Academic Center, she worried: Would she remember, after all this time, her latest password?

In fact she had forgotten it. Panicked scrabbling about revealed a scrap of paper on which she’d written it.

She prepared her courses – The Short Story in the morning and Modernism in the afternoon – and she was happy because UD loves these subjects and because both class lists included several repeat customers. How lurid could UD be if multiple people went out of their way to endure her not once but twice?

Sometimes UD‘s classes are right in Academic Center, steps from her office; sometimes getting to them means a stroll among endless, almost identical, groundscrapers. This semester it’s a stroll, and UD made all the absent-minded professor mistakes available to her here. After glancing at the addresses, she convinced herself the buildings meant were ones in which she’d already taught. How many basements of how many corporate towers does GW rent after all? Can’t be many. So in hellish heat she set out, noting that, on every single block, road or building work was underway, making her zigzaggedly cross to avoid one closed sidewalk after another. Sirens – construction, security – blasted madly. Flag-ridden limousines drove through stop signs.

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Ah shit. Recognizing her mistake in the middle of F Street, UD suddenly turns around and there’s her friend Michael, a dean. “Getting run over, Mawgaret?” he asks in his lovely British accent. “Trying to,” says UD.

Finding the first classroom, once UD rights herself, is a cinch – it’s in the supercool Elliott School building, across from the State Department. Her second classroom is the one in the basement of a rather distant corporate tower, and here, even when she finds the building, she and everyone else run around confused. When UD finally finds her class, a woman looking for an Arabic course follows her into the room. “It says 103 right here,” she tells UD. UD tells her that Arabic is not one of her strengths.