<p>At the moment Im trying (frantically, because I was a lazy bum when it came to college research) to decide between four places. My current top choice is Chicago. However, given that Ive got the personality of Eyore Im trying to pick by figuring out all the negative things about each place. So please, what in your eyes is a con of attending Chicago?</p>
<p>Second, the main reason I was attracted to Chicago was because of its promise of intellectual vigor. However, Ive noticed that in [high school] life intellectual vigor tends to come with some unfortunate baggage. Examples: All Pervading Addiction to Fabulously Long Words that Mean Very Little, Very Mature People Who Do Not Under Any Circumstances Play With Rubber Chickens Let Alone Laugh, Poets Who Write Tragic Epics that Almost Rhyme, People Who Do Not Ever Read Trash Because it is Intellectually Stunting...
Okay, granted, most college kids dont play with rubber chickens but Im of the opinion that theyre very important when it comes to maintaining a sense of the ridiculous.
What does the promise Chicago makes entail? Do people play while they have these stimulating discussions...? </p>
<p>P.S. My questions were asked in all innocence and in the spirit of acquiring knowledge. Please dont flame me because than I shall stay up till midnight trying to think of witty repartees (and failing) and subsequently bomb my subsections speech tournament tomorrow.</p>
<p>i will guarantee you that if we both end up at chicago, i will play with a rubber chicken and slowly explain to you the physics of a rubber chicken, and what happens to one when it is put in extreme circumstances...</p>
<p>We could probably offer more insight if you give the name of the other four schools you are considering, which will allow us to draw direct parallels...</p>
<p>John Hopkins University, Wash U, and Wesleyan.</p>
<p>tiffan- I will definitely write you an ode commemorating the occasion and we could quite possibly go down in history together for being the first Laureates of the Rubber Chicken Nobel Prize.</p>
<p>I think I'll be one of the people who don't have super intellectual conversations all the time, and that's ok with me. Just today in my lit class we were discussing nicknames and mascots of various universities, among other ridiculous things.</p>
<p>I am the most ridiculous person that I have ever met. That's right........I've met myself. I'm uber-silly. Ask around - these people will tell you how I overuse the word sexy and turn fantastically informative threads in to nothingness with my caustic flare.</p>
<p>haha, i am not a huge fan of wash u, but thats just me. i dont like st. louis... and i.. eh. just dont like wash u.</p>
<p>my friend is really debating beweetn JHU, UCSD, and UPenn... for their biomed programs. JHU is really competitive in that field, i guess, but i dont know for anything else.</p>
<p>Wesleyan.. i dont know much about.</p>
<p>and yes, we will become experts on the rubber chicken, indeed</p>
<p>Well, one thing to consider is that quite a few of the kids on this board will be your future classmates. I, for one, watch plenty of television in high school and couldn't explain the physics of anything to you. I don't read philosophy in my spare time either. Yes, I'm intellectually curious, but I think its in a different realm than pretension. Sure, once I'm at the U of C and I have taken the Core sequences, I'll be able to reference ancient theorists, but not out of pretension. Just as a means of equating something to something else I've learned.</p>
<p>What I'm saying is that I read chick-lit (I forget whose essay was about that, but it was fabulous) when I feel like being comforted, don't consider it stunting...yeah, I think that if Chicago admitted me, there must be plenty of other kids with a similarly unpretensious mindset.</p>
<p>Yeah, I like science (as in biology and chemistry) but for physics this year, I only know things by looking at equations and seeing what numbers I can plug in. Haha, I am totally gonna bomb that AP test.</p>
<p>I'm pretentious. And use big words. And like to use foreign phrases if at all possible to make myself sound superior to others. I also have a great Ben Stein droning voice when reading or presenting things publicly. I also like to do keg stands and drink a bottle of vodka while drinking 10+ red bulls in an attempt to stay conscious. Reading is also a passion of mine. As is debating politics, though I would never be a member of such mainstream parties like the Democrats or Republicans.</p>
<p>See, with all these things, like with the fact that every single day someone posts a new thread on the topic of "where fun goes to die," people get tons of replies of students who have the same apprehension... that leads me to conclude that it really can't be all that bad.</p>
<p>Ah! I understand now. Fun is throwing one last super party complete with vodka before it's death. The Holy Trinity is, of course, a featured guest.</p>
<p>I er, actually do not drink, so when I say fun I mean a pretty broad definition of it...</p>
<p>Kodama- I might develop a new phobia and name it after you. Kodamaphobia. Fear of wikiaddicts.</p>
<p>Enjoying learning doesn't scare me. It's the...uh...rat race of "oh you read that? well that book is crap because Descartes says it is."
"but Descartes was dead three hundred years before the book..."
"Shhh. Using Newton's three laws of motion I can prove Descartes is actually alive and is ELVIS PRESLEY."
"But Elvis Presley is dead too..."
etc.</p>
<p>(Okay. No, I wouldn't mind a conversation like that. But I was reading some of the essays on the thread and quite frankly a couple of them did scare me. I found it difficult to discern the human...if there was one...underneath.)</p>