College Visits Day 5

Monday, March 28, 2011

8:00 Woke up, went to the bathroom, discovered that both of my parents were definitely still sleeping, and decided to go back to sleep. Very gladly.

9:00 Woke up again only to see that my mom was already showered and dressed and my dad on his computer. Wow, time flies when you're dreaming!

So I took a shower. Unfortunately, I had to take mine last. And I don't do well being rushed out because I took the last shower. So basically...it was a bad morning. Let's leave it at that.

10:00 We walked over to the main part of campus and caught the campus tour just on time. The tour guides were all very nice, all girls... (Hey, I just realized - all the tour guides we've had at colleges have been girls...hmm.) But they didn't seem to have the same amount of enthusiasm for what they were doing as the students at Oberlin. Our tour guide kept talking about things as if everybody had the classic school-is-boring mindset... Which, I admit, I've never had. In fact, everyone there seemed like that. Like they couldn't wait till they could go and party, and they just weren't that interested in what they were doing. Lots of people are like that, I know, but I barely got that feeling at all at Oberlin. A large part of that was because the students we got to talk to individually were all very passionate about their studies, and that wasn't the case at Kenyon.

11:15 Afterwards, we sat in on an information session. It was a lady involved in the admissions process, and that was pretty much all she talked about! And boy did she talk! She seemed very nice and personable, and she did a good job of making the college admissions process very comfortable...but she barely talked about Kenyon! Seriously, at one point when there was a little lull in her chatter, she said, "Hm, I'm trying to think of what makes Kenyon unique... Well, I guess I just keep going back to the place." Yes. All she could think of was the location! Which, I've got to admit, was very nice, but not at all what I want.

It's isolated, on a hill. In fact, our tour guide said the founders built it there because then it would be above the sinners down below. (I couldn't help but be reminded of the colonists' City Upon a Hill theory.) All the buildings are very nice and grand. A lot of the classes are actually held in houses that the professors used to live in. One of the dining halls is called the Great Hall, and actually looks like a smaller version of the Great Hall in Hogwarts. The campus is beautiful, but it somehow isn't real. The "town" it's in, Gambier, is barely a town. It's really just a collection of a couple shops and restaurants on like...ONE street.

The whole time I was in the information session, I felt really uncomfortable. We were in a room with fancy chairs and a high ceiling and bookshelves lining the walls, along with big painted portraits of the founders or something. It felt too unreal, too fancy, not like a home. And not someplace where people would be passionate about what they were learning, and actually go out in the world and DO something about it.

We went back to our hotel room and checked out, then went to the cafeteria for lunch, because my parents insisted upon eating in there. Let's just say that I was in a very bad mood. I was very affected by the feeling of the place, and I felt very trapped. I hadn't had a chance to talk through it all with my parents yet, since we were always around other people, and I was hoping to do that during lunch. However, when you're in a cafeteria filled with college students, it's a little hard to tell your true feelings about the college they're going to, especially when those are largely negative! That, combined with this trapped feeling and not being able to find A SINGLE THING that I wanted to eat in the cafeteria, made that a very undesirable experience. I was hoping that I'd get some good food and feel better, but not at all.

While my mom walked around campus to take pictures, I stayed with my dad in the cafeteria while he ate his vegan veggie burger (which took so long because they actually had to DEFROST it), and then we walked down to the bookstore. We ended up just walking back up to the end of campus where my mom was.

We talked about all our perceptions of the school on the car ride home, but I was still really hungry, dissatisfied, and then nauseous. Finally, when we were drawing closer to home, we started talking about where we'd eat. After much much much deliberation, we went to Papa John's and got a large cheese pizza with tomatoes on it. My family NEVER orders pizza from chain restaurants...so that was quite a special experience. My mood improved a lot, and when, late in the day, we got home and settled down to an episode of Friends and some pizza, I felt a lot better.

Obviously, I liked Oberlin a LOT more than Kenyon. It was surprising what an extreme reaction I had to Kenyon, especially in comparison to how much I loved Oberlin. I'm sure Kenyon is just right for some people, but I'm just not one of them.