On textbooks and time passing

I'm back in my hometown for a week on Jterm break - that little time between Jterm and spring semester when we can regain sanity, overcome jet lag, and drop many hundreds of dollars on spring semester books. (and also have time for the books to ship).  I think the important thing to remember about college textbooks (and also being an English major) is that while you may save a fortune online (almost all my books, with shipping, were less than the used price listed for the campus bookstore), you're still going to be spending a lot of money.  My history class and my literature class, for example: none of the books were over $15 with shipping, but there were 17 books between the two classes. In other words, they're cheap, but they're plentiful. It's an interesting juxtaposition: my science-major friends drop $200 each on a few textbooks, but I pay a little more for the 21 books I have to buy.  Perks of being an English major?

Anyway, to address part two of the title: the passing of time.
As I already stated, I'm back home for a week. I went to my high school's production of Les Miserables (and, I might add, I am extremely jealous that they got to do that production, even if it is the 'school version'), and there were a few things that I noticed.
First was how much some of the people have grown up. The guy who played Javert grew up around the corner from me - I was good friends with his sister when we were kids. He's still short, but now he can sing "Stars" with no strain on his voice and sound absolutely fantastic. All these people that I had no memory of being particularly good singers were suddenly really good (except for Fantine; she's always been fantastic).  Voices have changed, too - when I was in choir with Cosette, she sang alto, but she managed Cosette's ridiculous jumps easily.  Enjolras, unfortunately, has had a little recession in voice quality, but he's still good.
The second thing I noticed was that people have had mixed reactions about my coming back.  I saw this a little in church, too - the reactions were mixed between "OMG YOU'RE BACK YAY!" to "lovely to see you, but aren't you supposed to be in school?" (the last bit of that sentence was only implied, but still). I'm getting to that point in my college career where the freshmen and sophomores are now juniors and seniors; I can address fewer and fewer people by name.  Home is changing, but I am, too.  I can finally drive on my own, which is something I've never actually done before.

I guess the lesson is that time goes on, tuition gets paid, lessons are learned, and people grow and change.  Home changes, people change, and all that sort of thing.  In time, I guess, I'll get to the point where all my high school friends are going to graduate and leave, and hopefully I'll be emotionally prepared for it.