Students are back; remember the days?

Well, summer is over. Know how I can tell?

Traffic is back up to "whoa" levels.

Restaurants are hopping with more customers.

Lines at the Chipotle near the Barnes & Noble are stretching out of the building again.

Parking around downtown is back to "guess we'll have to walk a couple blocks" status. And the bars? Plenty of activity.

Yes, the students are back and summer vacation is over. St. Cloud is back to its full residency.

I think back to my college days (yeah, I'm getting old, but it wasn't THAT long ago). I remember moving into the dorms. I remember moving into a duplex. I remember the hustle and bustle. I remember tracking down my class schedules, making sure I had my books, that all my supplies were stocked.

And I remember the ways I spent the nights the first couple of weeks, before papers and exams and study sessions got serious. I worked a number of jobs during college, so I was never a party animal and I didn't enjoy a lot of the shenanigans that you see in college movies.

But that doesn't mean I didn't have some fun. I'd go down the hall in my dorm and hang out with two guys who had guitars. We'd talk music, about Jim Morrison and the Doors. We'd talk about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. They'd play riffs of Rolling Stones songs, then work in some Stone Temple Pilots. We'd talk about Phish, jam bands, the Grateful Dead. When Weezer returned with their "Green Album" and the "Hash Pipe" video, we talked about that. Those guys introduced me to so much music. Those were great nights.

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On other occasions, I'd go to the rec room and hang out with guys as they played video games on the community television. We'd laugh, try to outdo each other, groan collectively when we were on the cusp of doing something big in a game and then fell just short. And oh, all the smack talk during "Mario Kart."

And I made a lot of online friendships. We'd play some Internet-based game, talk about life and music and news of the day on instant messengers. Your community is where you find it, after all.

If nothing else, college was a great place to find people with similar interests, even if the opinions and backgrounds differed. It was a place to discuss things that mattered to you. It was a place to really take the time to think about things, and determine your feelings. My outlook developed with my conversations. Politics? Religion? Social concerns? It all came organically out of those college-era discussions.

It can be easy to look at the college kids (did I really just call them kids?) and judge the clothes, the hair, the music, the food, the manners. But many of us have been there. That guy with the Beatles haircut and the hipster glasses? I knew him back in 2001, he lived across the hall. That dude with the mullet and the Guns N' Roses T-shirt? He was in my sociology class. That young lady with the Barbie sweatpants and the Hello Kitty backpack? She was in my communication law class, I'm sure of it.

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And they are thinking about classes. Homework. Friends. Family. What are they going to do after they graduate? Will they have jobs? Will they still be best friends with him/her 10 years from now? What will dinner be tonight? Do they have enough money to see Taylor Swift in concert at Xcel Energy Center? These things matter. It is everyday life. Sure, it doesn't solve poverty, but it is the daily struggle, one we all understand.

They are us. We were them. Headphones? We had those. Sure, they have iPhones and all that, but some of us had .mp3 players. Or CD players. Or cassette players. Or boomboxes. Walking to class, walking to restaurants, listening to music. Cruising the town with our friends, car stereos blaring. Talking about favorite bands. Expanding our world views, refining our perspectives while hanging out with people with similar interests. Experiencing life. Becoming adults.

Welcome back, students. I hope you had a good summer. I hope you have good semesters. I hope you got some good professors, that you have fun classes. I hope you learn a lot, make good memories and achieve success in life.

And say, have you heard the new Tame Impala album, "Currents?" What's your favorite song on it? See, they remind me of ...

This is the opinion of music enthusiast and student sympathizer Chris Shields. Contact him at clshields@stcloudtimes.com and follow him on Twitter @clshields1980. Read more of his columns at www.sctimes.com/cshields.