<p>Here's a little summary of the road trip my mom and I just took, for your consideration.</p>
<p>2 Saturdays ago, we flew to Midway airport, and on Sunday drove ourselves on up to see Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Yes, it was Sunday which was OK because I wasn't (and still am not) interested in attending. But it was my first day dealing with the horrible humidity. [I am willing to propose that the following week was about as hot and humid as it gets in many of the places we visited.]</p>
<p>Oh my God! Northwestern is beautiful! No flippin' way! I was shocked, like drop-my-jaw shocked at the beauty of the buildings, the quads, the surrounding (expensive-looking) town, and obviously the lakefront park that ends in a trailing beach, which was packed with happy, tanned sunbathers. It really was paradisiacal. Oh, and the one awesome frat house (and I am girl) that I would have loved to live in: the one with blue trim and, even in August when no self-respecting student would stick around in that weather, there were still chairs on the awning above the entranceway! The only possible way to have gotten them up there would be through a narrow bedroom window or tossing them from the lawn. What fun! But gee, it was almost <em>too</em> nice. Creepily so. And the neighborhood looked so wealthy, and I didn't see many cheap diversions for students. It was almost like an NU bubble, this beachy, gorgeous, trance-like bubble. But I'm not considering it mainly for the size and nature of its student body, and also because I know too many people who have gone there.</p>
<p>So the next morning, Monday, we ended up at UChicago for my first tour of the trip; I hadn't expected nearly the crowd we had! (This also happened to be my first college tour ever.) Now, I came here saying to myself, "I'm applying wether I like it or not, it's Chicago and I will love it." And for whatever reason now when I think back on it the memory is murky and neither positive nor negative. The campus itself, like all we visited, was surprisingly nice. The students were friendly and--wow--so intellectually diverse. The classrooms were sturdy and academic-feeling. The whole place just had an air of extreme smartness. Gee... the word isn't intimidating exactly, but not pretentiousness either. It's hard to say what exactly causes the murkiness in my recollections. But I didn't think that I could see myself there. I didn't feel as if this campus was my campus. And as much as Chicago, the city, is cool, it just seemed chaotic and messy (but not grimy or dirty). For whatever reason, I think I'd like to leave the crazy-big-city scene for a while, as I live in L.A. and will probably only apply to USC as my requisite family-and-school-ties-and-it's-local school. Butttt there were gargoyles at UChicago. I wanted to take them home with me!</p>
<p>So we stopped, on Tuesday after spending 2.5 days in the Second City, at Notre Dame, which despite being the home-away-from-home of many of my older friends, failed to impress. This is a bad judgement of course on my part, as I didn't bother to take a tour or anything. The non-historic part of campus just seemed boxy and average and grassy without being social. Yes, the old campus center was astonishingly pretty, but that was it. 5 buildings out of a bit more than a square mile of bland. Yet as I sat on a bench in the shade on that middle quad walkway, I met some of the most personable squirrels ever. ND squirrels are amazing! They're massive and unafraid, and seemed to understand what I said, which in a vermin was frightening and fun both.</p>
<p>So then, in the course of one day, still Tuesday, we made it all the way from Chicago (via South Bend) to Mt. Vernon, Ohio. That is a very, very long drive. We were in 3 states in one day with time to spare on both ends, and didn't break the speed limit very much at all. [Wow, midwestern states are small.] So the road to Mt. Vernon gets narrower staring in Toledo, and narrower and narrower still until you're on basically a farm road. "What is in Mt. Vernon, Ohio," you may ask. Nothing (besides Mt. Vernon Nazarene University which in this tiny, tiny town I managed not to see) but hotels and an McDonald's. But in the village next door, Gambier, is Kenyon College, which was also extremely not what I expected and infinitely more beautiful. It has this amazing mile-long path that stretches the length of this narrow, almost symmetrical campus, called Middlepath. It is, at least when there are students around, the social center of campus; people walking back and forth, even through the village of Gambier, which is actually 2 blocks on either side of Middlepath that divides the campus into north and south. The buildings on campus are light brown brick, and look as a teeny LAC's should. On the tour feedback form, I made an understatement when I said "idyllic." But sadly it felt too insular. Not isolated, even being hours from a reasonably sized city (Columbus, or in a stretch Cincinnati), because the utter natural beauty of the woods and meadows surrounding the place. But it is, it seemed, separated even from that natural area. It's just Kenyon there to a student, not the woods of Ohio, not anything around it. It's seemed disconnected from the rest of the region and maybe a little more from actual real life. Basically it reminded me of my equally lovely and disconnected high school. And I can't repeat that for another four years. If I could bring myself to do that, then by God, Kenyon is heaven on earth.</p>
<p>So after my tour there my mom and I drove for a very short time to Oberlin, Ohio. We passed a Mennonite man driving his horse plow over his land, in a beard and well-kept straw hat. His land was adjacent to a more modernized farmer's, who had a pickup truck and some kids' toys in the yard. How cool! The town of Oberlin was less of the college than, say, Gambier was to Kenyon, but it does wrap around the college (obviously, Oberlin College) to a high degree and looks as if it depends on the school. In my opinion it looked like the perfect college town. --And I should mention that before visiting I wasn't at all interesting in Oberlin. But after seeing the place in the afternoon light, I realized how comfortable this campus felt. It was open and relaxed. The living looked good. When I took my tour the next morning, I really liked what I saw. Unlike at Kenyon, students took all the initiative and created what they wanted, wrote grants, grew the food, ran the co-ops, and even, and I AM NOT KIDDING, clean the used sewage water for re-use in the restrooms (but not the water fountains, don't worry). They compost and the environmental science building is new and produces more energy than it uses. Now that is good science. My one concern about Oberlin is the "social justice" obsession that students seem to have. I don't disagree with the idea of it, but coming from a school that is very pushy itself about social justice and in ways with which I personally disagree (but I don't want to sound soulless), I don't want to suffer through 4 years of a privileged white kid whining about the situation of the world. But I really will have to look into that deeper, and talk to students, just to see if the do things more than plan things. I hope they do, because I really liked the place.</p>
<p>I should mention that Ohio is on Eastern time. What?!</p>
<p>And then came Pittsburgh. I will start by saying that the entrance from the northwest into the city is very, very cool and I recommend coming in this way if you have an opportunity. Yes, from the airport through the tunnel must be neat and all, but the contrast of the utter forest to this industrial dreamland is pretty nuts. There are bridges everywhere! There are 3 rivers! Wow! And we stayed in a very very deluxe hotel in Shadyside, just north of the school I visited, Carnegie Melon. We walked the two blocks to campus and immediately, though it is by a long shot not the prettiest or the stateliest or the cleanest or anything-est campus, I thought it felt right. There is an openness to the campus, this wide expanse of grass that seems to push the yellow-toned buildings back. The view from campus at (ironically) the UPitt Cathedral of Learning (which I assume is the immense and sculptural tower visible from the whole city) as well as the rest of Pgh. is really memorable. I had no idea that Pgh. was that hilly! It's crazy hilly! It's hilly as it gets! Pictures do it no dimensional justice. CMU is about the only flat place in Pgh., mainly because the major ravines on campus have been filled. It's this flat and grassy platform atop a hill in an exceptionally nice area of the city. Despite certain concerns I have about the flexibility of schedules (as I want to major in Econ, minor in Classics--which the school does not offer but UPitt does, and at the very least be involved in theatre--but the school has an isolated conservatory that doesn't at all seem accessible to non-majors), I felt I could see myself there.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh itself is a very cool city. As in all the midwest (and I count western Pennsylvania as part of the midwest) the people are really, really friendly. They don't have obtrusive accents as I expected them to have (mainly from seeing Philly cheese steak pizza commercials on TV, I guess), and overall seem very chill. And though Pgh. had by far the most miserable summer weather I have ever experienced and ever will experience (save for in the Equator when I'm old and cruise-bound) it was not an uncomfortable city. And as I didn't really care at all for CMU before visiting, I'm having to reevaluate what I'm looking for.</p>
<p>Basically, this trip has overwhelmed me and turned upside-down my expectations and assumptions. The two schools I was most sold on coming in to the trip (Kenyon and Chicago) didn't make me slap my forehead and think, "This is so me." Oberlin went from being a secondary whatever stop to an actual school I should consider, and it also is making me check out more of the larger LACs. And despite its tech focus (although for a while I did want to be an engineer) and everything, CMU really stands out to me as a cool place, as the type of school I could find myself at in 2 years.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, and I'm only going to be a junior.</p>
<p>Craaaaap.</p>