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Sep. 12th, 2007 01:54 pmRan some errands today on the campus of NearbyU. It feels very... collegiate. I'll try to describe what I mean. My undergrad institution, with its grey concrete buildings, felt very institutional. My graduate institution, full of old historic buildings, felt very venerable and pompous and grandoise in a way that only a university that old can. That big university near and around where I lived as an undergrad felt like it was part of the city because of the way it blended in with the neighborhoods around it.
Here, the campus is very much separated from the outside world. The buildings have that clean, red-brick-and-white-siding look that you might see on the packaging for a "collegiate" item, like a notebook or backpack. The spaces between buildings are spider-webbed with paved walkways, with areas to sit and chat with your friends between classes sprinkled throughout.
And OhMyGod it is swarming with undergraduates. I must be getting old, because boy did I feel like a fish out of water. The freshmen have had a couple of weeks to get oriented, so they didn't have the lost look that I must have been wearing. That, and at the last two institutions I've been at, it was possible to avoid seeing undergraduates for weeks at a time, and when we did see one, it was with more or less an attitude of, "oh, aren't they cute! They haven't had the chance to turn bitter yet!" I felt like they were all staring at me, at this old lady wandering the hallways and sidewalks. Maybe that's the real reason professors send their grad students out to run errands for them.
In the meantime, I am steadily wresting items away from the soulless bureaucracy. The big hurdle was getting IDs (done Friday) and now the way forward is much smoother. I even achieved printing from my computer today!
Here, the campus is very much separated from the outside world. The buildings have that clean, red-brick-and-white-siding look that you might see on the packaging for a "collegiate" item, like a notebook or backpack. The spaces between buildings are spider-webbed with paved walkways, with areas to sit and chat with your friends between classes sprinkled throughout.
And OhMyGod it is swarming with undergraduates. I must be getting old, because boy did I feel like a fish out of water. The freshmen have had a couple of weeks to get oriented, so they didn't have the lost look that I must have been wearing. That, and at the last two institutions I've been at, it was possible to avoid seeing undergraduates for weeks at a time, and when we did see one, it was with more or less an attitude of, "oh, aren't they cute! They haven't had the chance to turn bitter yet!" I felt like they were all staring at me, at this old lady wandering the hallways and sidewalks. Maybe that's the real reason professors send their grad students out to run errands for them.
In the meantime, I am steadily wresting items away from the soulless bureaucracy. The big hurdle was getting IDs (done Friday) and now the way forward is much smoother. I even achieved printing from my computer today!
