<p>No Ikea? OMG! Oh well, there’ll always be a Target somewhere.</p>
<p>One of my daughter’s close friends went to France for college and isn’t very happy there for various reasons, including that they only have dial-up in the dorms, and the wireless connection in the student union isn’t very reliable. The Ikea comment reminded me of that, but actually, I think that not having a high-speed internet connection increases his sense of isolation there.</p>
<p>Daughter actually liked more of the schools that we visited than she disliked, but the dislikes make funnier stories. Our worst college visit was somewhat inadvertent. She qualified for the state sci fair, and since there were no hotels available (doctor convention) we stayed at the USC dorms. Daughter isn’t much of a SoCal fan for starters, and USC isn’t exactly in the scenic part of LA, but the science museum park where the fair was held, is beautiful. At the end of the first day we crossed the street to USC and went looking for the dorm. You would think that USC would see the sci fair as a great recruiting opportunity, but no, they put us in what we can only hope was the worst dorm on campus. Hallways and rooms smelled like mold and worse (we had to sleep with the window open, so good thing it was late May), and daughter refused to take a shower because the bathroom floors were so gross. One whiff of our room and she immediately hated USC and everything about it. She was able to turn the experience into a terrific photojournalism essay for her English class, however, so it wasn’t a total loss.</p>