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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

new york minute

this morning i found myself sitting next to a young woman on the subway. she was neatly coiffed with a trendy little hat and a significantly older man by her side. being the inquisitive person i am, i noted that the paper in her lap said "college preview." i took a double-take at the girl... my first thought was: i don't look ten years older than that girl, do i? of course not!

then i realized that it had been a good eleven years since i made my own, very brief "college preview" with my own "significantly older man." my dad had a business meeting in new york, so he brought me up with him to see columbia and vassar. i spent the first night with a girl i knew from high school. she had a painted cinder-block room in the crappy, 1960s-era freshman dorm and was friends with dorky, high-achieving types... but from the perspective of my sheltered, prep-school existance this was a cultural mecca of urban sophistication. i was so excited to be there, listening to the street sounds below and imagining myself living such a life, that i wasn't able to sleep at all. (perhaps that was why the calc 2 class my chaperone took me to the next day sounded like gibberish... or maybe it was just that it was calc 2... i couldn't tell ya.) the next night my dad shuttled me up to poughkeepsie. i stayed with two rather pleasant girls in the drama department. the rooms were charmingly rustic with dark wood beams and creaky doors. the metrosexual guys and pretty girls talked at length about train rides into the city and the boredom of campus life. i realized almost immediately that it was not the place for me despite the fact that the campus doubled as an arboretum and the drama department attracted some of the most well-reputed actors of previous generations. not only was there little chance i'd meet the man of my dreams (combine my lack of initiative with a 25/75 guy/girl ratio, and you've got "no dice"), but it was an hour and a half from new york city. who wants to be an hour and a half from new york city when you can be in new york city? anyway, i applied early to cu, and the rest is history...

2 comments:

Cartooniste said...

isn't that funny- i visited vassar and had the exact same reaction too. 'cept i had my early application to cu deferred (boo hoo!) and so applied to vassar anyway. cu stayed my first choice. was so indifferent to vassar and oberlin that i referred to them collectively as "vasserlin."
whew! isn't it great we never have to do that again. until it's time to get our own kids in....

moosk said...

i never felt fate as strongly as i did the day i got into cu. i figure if i made it into my "reach" school (and the only school i really wanted to go to), i must give credit where credit is due: d*mn good luck. clearly, we were both meant to go here (not sure how much fate had to do with my getting stuck here for years on end though...)