<p>You haven't known torture until you've had The Captain and Tennille's "Muskrat Love" stuck in your head for two weeks straight! </p>
<p>"Muskrat Suzie, Muskrat Sam
Do the jitterbug in Muskrat land..."</p>
<p>"Looks like Muskrat Luuuu-uhh-uuuu-uh-uv!"</p>
<p>I struggled with suicidal ideations over that one.</p>
<p>Cur,</p>
<p>When Mudgie makes up her mind, you can teach her "Baby I'm a Want You" . . . and she can include it in her Why Whatever School essay.</p>
<p>Curm,</p>
<p>I think something interesting and generally unnoted is going on at Colgate and the impressions your daughter got there may be on more target than yours (or mine).</p>
<p>I was sure my vegan, tree hugging, birkenstock wearing, anti fraternity D would wind up attending Oberlin, but she really liked the people she met at the Gate and during her overnight stay there.</p>
<p>Almost a month into it now, there are definitely kids quite different from her there but she says they are all friendly and she gets along well with them. And she seems to have met and made good friends with others closer to her interests as well. I was not surprised to hear that she had joined the student chapter of Amnesty Int'l and Habitat for Humanity, but I was shocked to hear that she found all the football players to be "sweet" and that she had joined the womens rugby club.</p>
<p>For my money (and quite a lot of it at that) any school which succeeds in encouraging that sort of interaction and exploration of different experiences is succeeding exactly the way a college should.</p>
<p>
Like I said , D found the kids at Colgate from the SGA President on down to be uniformly interesting and interested. I think D's decision to apply or not will ultimately be based on whether or not she wants to play D3 basketball. At this time she does, but I am seeing some chinks in the "all basketball" armor. (Repeated references to the fact that she would be interested in this school or that school even if she decided not to play etc.. I think it is the 'time commitment' at some D3 schools she's been reading about. )</p>
<p>Hi Curmudgeon:
It will be fun to follow your daugh and her muse this year... May I suggest that she pursue all the schools you visited and mentioned this post As If they are her faves because they are each rather difficult admits...even with her excellent profile and fine prospects. She could have a wonderful life at any of the three. We also felt the facilities at Middlebury were superbly architecturally wonderful and would make for a cozy place to hole up in the snowy winters. The gym and pool were built for a school twice the size in our view! I recently read the book BINGE written by a Hamilton grad and Hamilton trustee who is a semitired Time magazine journalist. He visited and lived in the dorms of many top colleges that my son pursued last year and I was curious about his observations. I think the title really stinks but his experiences with students at UVa, Berkeley, Duke, Dartmouth and others places made for current commentary that was of interest to me as a parent. He wrote quite an interesting chapter on Hamilton. A doc in my town is a Colgate grad and I have to say I think he is one of the most principled and interesting parents I know. We ran into a Middlebury student wearing a better cashmere coat than my husband owns on our plane last fall...very preppy but not to discount his future worth to our nation etc...and Middlebury recruits and supports many interesting kids who are on scholarships that add a lot of diversity to the community of scholars. all good</p>