Monday was the first day of school for thousands of University of Colorado students -- with freshmen strategically mapping out their classroom buildings and upperclassmen taking a more relaxed saunter around the campus.

For Dillon Carmichael, Monday mornings are a doozy, stacked with an 8 a.m. physics course and an 11 a.m. calculus class.

In preparation, Carmichael, a freshman from North Carolina majoring in aerospace engineering, brushed up on some of his high school textbooks and then mapped out his classes Sunday evening.

He's sharing a dorm room with his identical brother.

"We're tight," he said. "Well, we have to be; we're sharing a room together."

The two are also in a select Chancellor's Leadership Program, a residential academic program in the Williams Village dorm complex.

Classes don't officially start until Tuesday for Shannon Mitchell, a junior who is juggling working part-time for a real estate company and who is the president of a campus ministry group.

Early Monday morning, she was headed to the campus to set up a cookie and lemonade stand on behalf of the Campus Ambassadors, a nondenominational ministry, to welcome students back to school.

Samantha Gault and Lauren Karpel -- both seniors majoring in psychology -- were headed to their first class of the fall semester: "social constructs of sexuality." The two met their freshman year, living next to each other in the dorms.

Now, they're roommates in an off-campus apartment and remember when they did "practice walks" around the campus before the start of their freshman year.

Senior Robin Le sat back on a bench outside the Williams Village bus stop, watching freshmen scuttle to the bus Monday morning. She lives off-campus in the Moorhead neighborhood but takes the shuttle to the main campus.

Her first class of the semester was a history course titled "Nazi Germany" -- something she had forgotten until consulting with the schedule tucked in her back pocket.

"I'm a lot more calm and relaxed than I was my freshman year," Le said.

She still has a packed schedule her senior year as she prepares for a graduate-level degree track in pharmacy school.
