25th year of Koç University, and my nineteenth year there… Counting this way, I agree to be one of the oldest. When I arrived, the university seemed already established with several members having been there for the past six years. I was welcome with a file of printed information: the phone directory, housing info, job definitions of staff, everything I might need. This was a little before everything became electronic. To my surprise, we moved from the cozy environment of Istinye too quickly, only a year after in 2000. The new campus was new and astonishing. In spite of the hasty move, we were aware of witnessing a historical start. The year 2000 was a re-establishment, full of problems to tackle with and equally exciting. It is vivid in our memories how people made it happen. Due to small numbers, everybody was within a phone reach and the key positions were only a handful. Among them are the Vice President Ayşegül Somersan and the General Secretary Neyyir Kalaycıoğlu, who made the transition with enormous effort and left shortly after. Several others continued, new additions and a huge expansion followed. All in all, the students make it a university. The most touching memory from that academic year is the first stochastics course I taught, and my students’ kind gift of our printed photo: Ferit, Özgür, Soner, Sevilay, Yasemin, me, Harun, Işıl, Defne and Evrim, from left to right below.