So, I really don't know if this post will able to fit nicely (or awkwardly, even) into a theme, because I figured I should talk a little bit about my "college tour" now that it's over and I am (finally) back home.
My mom, my sisters and I left Ohio on Monday morning (closer to the afternoon, really) to drive to Pennsylvania in order to visit Haverford and Swarthmore, and on Tuesday we went to visit Haverford. Now, before the trip, I hadn't even considered most of the schools we visited, so I wasn't particularly excited to go to Haverford (not that I was unexcited). My mom had wanted to get to Haverford by a certain time, but between getting four people awake, dressed and fed, plus the time it took to drive from the motel we were staying at to the college (plus the time for my mom to get lost) we ended up being late, and missing the tour we had originally planned on taking. But, as it happened, we ended up being early to one of the info session. Haverford's admission's office had two seniors sitting there to talk to people waiting for the info sessions about the college. I really liked this about Haverford, and it was nice to ask questions and get a sense of the school before going to the info session.
What I really liked about Haverford that I learned from those two seniors and the info session, was the colleges' Honor Code. Haverford's Honor Code is built on the principle's of Concern, Respect and Truth/Trust and is reviewed by the student population each semester. Throughout my time at Haverford, I was constantly impressed (upon) about how much these principle's affected the community (a word that got used too many times to count). Students were comfortable leaving their laptops out in the library (I can't even trust that my bike will still be locked to a bike rack most of the time), tests and exams are self-scheduled (I mean, with some parameters, but still), and students aren't nervous to tell their neighbors (dormmates) that their music is too loud.
On Tuesday, the plan had initially been to visit Haverford for a tour and info session, eat, go to Swarthmore where we were planning on doing another tour or info session and me sitting in a class. I actually had been looking forward to the Swarthmore part of the day, but the plan couldn't really go as planned, with us running (well, arriving) late. My mom suggested we leave Haverford after the info session, but I found Haverford so enthralling by that point that I really didn't want to leave. Our tour guide was another (very nice) senior, who managed to give a wonderful and engaging tour, despite the ridiculous number of people on the tour. And in the process I learned more about Haverford and grew to really like it (maybe even love it a bit), and by the end of the tour I was seriously considering applying there and could see myself liking it there.
The class I visited at Swarthmore was a bit lackluster, but I think (hope) that was the case because I had decided upon a class that happened to be showing a movie that day. I left Swarthmore that day hoping that it would similarly (if not completely) engage me the next day when we went on the tour and to the info session as Haverford had. It didn't. Our tour guide didn't seem particularly well trained, the wait for the tour was boring (and included a movie documenting different Swarthmore students' experiences that screamed cheesy testimonial infomercial), and I felt as though Swarthmore was a bit full of itself. But, maybe that's just me.
So, Wednesday we were prepared to leave PA, stopping in Philadelphia to eat and visit the Poe museum there before we were on hour way to Massachusetts. That ride was supposed to be five hours long. It was eight in the end (my mom getting lost was a recurring theme on the trip).
On Thursday we visited the next college on our list: Smith. Smith is an all women college in Northampton, Massachusetts. I was looking forward to visiting Smith, but mostly because I thought it might be a bit of fun, I never really considered it as a school I might want to go to. I never really wanted to go to an all female school, maybe on some strange idea that doing so would mean I didn't see myself as "good enough" to compete with the boys at a coed school, or that only being surrounded by women (or mostly surrounded by women, anyway) would be boring. I kinda want to slap myself for those ideas now. I suppose the first thing I learned by visiting Smith was that it's really a place where strong, intelligent and probably largely independent women come, where they are able to grow without fear of feeling or being silenced and overshadowed by men. I guess this nuance was originally lost on me. Of course, there are going to be men at Smith, since it's a part of a five college consortium, which include three coed schools (as well as another women's college).
Smith was similar to Haverford in many ways, they were both safe campuses (as in, they specified this on their tours, that the students never felt as though they were in danger), they both valued community and really worked to establish that with how they set up their housing situation, and they both had a sort of cozy, welcoming feel to them (to me at least). Smith had a prettier campus in my opinion though, and the town that it is situated in seemed a bit more inclusive and was large enough to have things to do, but small enough that it probably wouldn't seem overwhelming or scary to me if I went their (though I do like big cities, I just don't know how much I want to live in one). There were also fewer touring families at Smith, so I got a tour guide to myself, which was wonderful. My guide, Hope, really just walked next to me, taking me to various buildings, and talking to me about the school. I felt comfortable talking to her, like we were having a conversation rather than feeling like I was on a tour. I think it helped me to get a better sense of the school and atmosphere there (also, everyone [all the people we met, anyway] was super helpful and nice). I left Smith, extremely reluctant to leave Smith, and I was really longing to just enroll then and there. So, somehow, a college that I never considered I would ever be interested in, made it to the top of my list.
Which leads me to Friday, and our last visit, which was to Williams, which had been one of my top choice schools initially. I'm going to keep this one short, because this post is getting long (it's also getting late here). Essentially, I thought Williams was a really good school and it was a nice campus, but I thought that it was a place I wouldn't really fit in, let alone a place where I thought I could grow or have particularly good experiences in. So, while a school that I would have never originally considered jumped to the top, the school that had been close to the top for a long time fell to the bottom.
Sometime in the next couple weeks I will be (hopefully) going on a tour of Oberlin which is the school that I've wanted to go to for the majority of my life, to reevaluate it, and see how it compares to Smith and Haverford.
If you made it to the end of this post: here have a cookie. :)
Recommendation: If you don't read it already, I recommend the blog "Hyperbole and a Half". Because it is hilarious.
P.S. I f you hadn't already noticed, I really like post-scripts (and parenthetical asides [and sometimes, parenthetical asides within parenthetical asides]). have a great week everybody! :)
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