(no subject)

[jedusor]

This is going to have to be quick, because it's midnight and we need to be on the road by eight tomorrow.

After I posted Monday night, at two AM, we were awoken by a fire alarm that went off for no apparent reason. It was deafening and very unpleasant, and we had to wait until the firemen had searched the building thoroughly before we could go back to bed.

Tuesday I visited Brown. I was told that I would love it by several people, so I guess I had high hopes, but it still seemed pretty meh. My tour guide was a frat boy, which might have had something to do with my disappointment- he went into enthusiastic detail about how integrated the fraternities and sororities are with college life, and that's really not what I'm looking for. Plus, they made a big deal of this satisfactory/no credit thing, which doesn't sound like my cup of tea either.

Tuesday afternoon, we took the ferry back to Long Island and I spent the evening hanging out with Leah, Blair, and Blair's boyfriend Mike. We made a fire and toasted random things (not, sadly, including non-gelatinous marshmallows), then Mike left, Blair went to sleep, and Leah and I watched the second half of the third season of Scrubs.

Yesterday Blair and I took the train into the city to see Spamalot, which was excellent and hilarious. If you get a chance to see it, try to nab seat B101. We went to the giant Toys R Us and rode on the Ferris wheel, then met up with Aunt Amanda, Ken, Blair's parents, my friend Rose (otherwise_nyc), and Rose's husband Francis for dinner.

Today I visited Columbia with Rose and En (ennienyc). En told us all about how Columbia and Barnard have changed since she was there, as well as several slightly disturbing stories of stalking boys from her dorm room. On the tour, I ran into Sky King's daughter, which was completely unexpected. Sky is one of the juggling people Mom knows, and I met her daughter (Krista, I think is her name?) in Portland at IJA this summer. She couldn't stay to chat, but seeing her at all was kind of surreal.

Rose took me to visit her boyfriend Jon, who is definitely quite a catch. He told me about going to Vassar. Then Rose and I went to Chainsaw's house for a very pleasant evening of games and socializing. Telephone Pictionary was fun, and watching En attempt to clue "leather pants" in an odd version of charades was extremely entertaining.

I got on the wrong train to get home (silly me, thinking that a train arriving at 10:59 might be the 11:03 train) but managed to get back here eventually. Tomorrow I'm visiting Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, and Bard. Turns out I will be here for the Haystack on Saturday, but of course all the teams are filled up by now. I hope I can make the dinner.

Oh, and I don't believe that crap about New Yorkers being cold-hearted and cutthroat. When I got on the wrong train, four people plus the conductor made sure I got to where I needed to be.

Comments

[lunchboy.livejournal.com]

I think the concept of "pants" is just generally very alien to En.

[ennienyc.livejournal.com]

LOL, plus I don't own leather anything so I wasn't sure how one moves about in leather garments.

The dorm room stalking consisted of looking with binoculars out my window of 9 Furnald (best dorm ever!) directly across South Field at a certain someone in Livingston (now Wallach). Ooh, his light went on! Ooh, he's walking across the room! He was in a two-room walk-through suite and later that year moved to a single in John Jay, unfortunately out of view.

Now John Jay is all freshmen and Furnald is only freshmen and sophomores, which seems just plain wrong. And this guy was later revealed to be gay.

Walking past the multi-windowed library at Barnard later, I was reminded of looking out those windows and seeing a different stalkee playing football on the lawn. Our tour guide mentioned Columbia is like a small town where you constantly see everyone you know, and that was true back then, too.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're having a really great trip. Thats wonderful. The east coast can be fun, huh?

My grandmother lives three blocks from Columbia, and i like the area. I've thought that i'd like to go to Columbia for a year or two (if i weren't TOTALLY DONE WITH SCHOOL FOREVER). NY can be sort of scary, but, its also so dynamic. YOu may really like it.

I was up at Simon's Rock (sister college to Bard) last weekend. Great Barrington is in incredible from right now. I was ready to move back. It really is beautiful. Sigh.
Its sort of small town - not sure how you feel about that. (Josh wouldn't like it much - i don't think i'll convince him to move there.) If you were going to go to school in that area, i'd think Hampshire or one of the bazillion colleges in Amherst might be a better fit.

have fun.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

The East Coast is awesome. I think I'd like to live here for a while. Not for the rest of my life, but four years wouldn't be bad at all.

Amherst is definitely among my top choices at the moment. And honestly, I don't mind small towns; it's the conservative small-town mentality I don't like, and I doubt there's much of that among Bard students.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

I think the small town mentality is largely absent from any college town - the students bring in enough fresh air to fight it off. I actually love college towns - they tend to be small and cozy, but still have things like band tours and authors coming through.

i'm glad you liked new england. Sometimes i think its incredibly beautiful, which is something no one out here really gets.

4 years, btw, sounds like a great way to stretch your boundaries without committing for a lifetime.

[lunacow]

If you had a non-frat Brown tour guide, you probably would have gotten a very different perspective, along the lines of: If you're not interested in the Greek system, you can very easily ignore it (save perhaps one weekend a year). If I remember correctly, it's around 15% of the student body that's in a fraternity or sorority. It's a bigger deal than at some colleges, but a lot less than at others.

As for S/NC, I never cared much about it one way or the other. I pretty much always took classes for a later grade if that option was available, and the classes that were mandatory S/NC were usually things like creative writing where a letter grade wouldn't mean much.

If you want to hear any more about Brown, let me know. However, I'm definitely not pushing Brown on you. Every school you visited is an amazing one, and I'm sure you'll be happy no matter where you end up at.