“I still feel like one of them at heart,” she said of her young and carefree classmates.

Her return to campus, where not only every classmate but all of her professors were younger than she, disabused her of the notion.

“I’m not a college student in their eyes,” she said with a smile.

She encountered a world completely altered by technology.

Two of her classes required her to blog and respond to others’ blog posts. Her classmates live with eyes on screens, although she was surprised to learn how strictly professors police in-class gadget abuse.

Her film history professor urged students to plunge immediately into filmmaking, noting that digital tools make it possible for anyone to make a film at a fraction of what it cost when DeMerit started on celluloid in her first stop on campus.

DeMerit said she was surprised by how much students’ reading and writing workload has increased since her first stint, which caused her to set up residence in libraries and a cozy study nook on the second floor of Memorial Union.