I had a couple of friends from Canada visiting me Wednesday and before we ventured down to Anaheim to watch their beloved Maple Leafs get taken apart by the Ducks, 5-0, I took them to show them around my alma mater, UCLA.

UCLA is not an easy to place to get to and you have to time it just right to avoid some hellacious traffic, but we cruised in around 1 pm and I discovered that there is underground metered parking. Who knew?

We came out of the lot at the base of the Janss Steps leading up to the Dickson Royce Quadrangle, where UCLA's original four buildings are located. But I walked the other way to show them Pauley Pavilion (which was not open to the public) and we made our way up to the main part of campus via the gauntlet of Bruin Walk, where various student organizations try to thrust leaflets in to your hand to get you to do something. But as three guys in their 40s, we were not considered good candidates to join the various fraternities that were looking for members and I think the campus socialists were suspicious of us too.

For those not familiar with UCLA, the four buildings making up the Quad are Royce Hall, Powell Library, Haines Hall, and Kinsey Hall. Except Kinsey Hall has been renamed "The Humanities Building" as the last of the physics department was moved out. And the late Professor Kinsey's name is now attached on the outside of Knudsen Hall and there is a "Kinsey Court."

Eventually, I wandered by the site of my first ever college class. It was in the Mathematical Sciences Building, Room 4000A. The room was open and we all found seats and I looked down at the room where I was introduced to college in the form of Math 31A, Differential Calculus.

Even though I took this class 25 years ago this coming October, the whole experience just rushed back at me. I was in college. There were lots of smart people around I assumed.

Would I be able to keep up? Would I know what was going on? Why am I taking calculus? I'm going to major in history! Why is this place so big? Why are so many people in this class? What do I have to take notes on? Why didn't the professor introduce himself? He just walked and started talking. Why? What? How? Why is this class introductory yet have the number 31?

As it turned out, it all worked out. I graduated in four years, although I stopped after two calculus classes as I realized that I really didn't understand the subject all that well, although I got an A in integral calculus. My tip for people taking the class: memorize the textbook.

Now, I'm sitting at home 25 years later and I'm getting ready to leave for a trip to Europe for 10 days. I've more or less planned it out, but I'm still willing to ad lib parts of the trip as I go along depending upon weather and jet lag. The time it took for me to go from the scared kid writing down everything the professor wrote on the chalkboard (I gave that up after about two weeks) to a man who just figures that he'll figure out what to do in Prague when he gets there doesn't seem like a long time ago. At least not today.