An Epic Journey to Middletown CT

This afternoon GA took us on our "first college visit" to Wesleyan in Middletown CT.  I put quotes around "first college visit" because for many of my classmates it was at least their 10th.  I feel a little behind the group having only visited two so far.  For Dartmouth, it was love at first sight.  For Wesleyan, it was most certainly not.  Which is not to say it was a bad school, it's not; it's just definitely not for me.  To me the atmosphere seemed dead.  The buildings either looked like they were rotting or like they were tombs.  We had our information session in the main, formal auditorium, and the thing was a soaring, concrete casket.  It was legitimately unfinished concrete on the inside.  I honestly don't want to live in a decaying seventies inspired housing block, I don't want to learn in a wilting colonial house, and I don't feel creatively inspired in an enormous, concrete coffin.

I did like their study abroad programs (they told one anecdote about a student who successfully petitioned the administration to give them funding to study abroad in Antarctica) but it did seem a bit like they were trying a bit too hard.  They bragged about their interlibrary loan program with Middlebury and another similar school whose name escapes me which I couldn't help comparing to the Ivy League interlibrary loan program which has so many volumes in it that if you tell a professor that you couldn't find a book you're statistically wrong.  Wesleyan is very strong in the sciences and music departments and those are two facts they very much like to talk about.  I found it straight up strange that my tour guide barely mentioned the humanities in depth.  I'm used to having to ask about the Religious Studies Department but I'm not used to having to ask about the Humanities in general.  Maybe it was just my tour guide, but I really thought it was strange.  In all honesty I didn't think my tour guide was that great.  He didn't walk and talk to the group; he really just led us to different talking points and he really stuck to those talking points, barely straying for funny anecdotes to endear us to the school.  The whole experience felt very perfunctory and staged and the school made a less than positive impression on me.

I never thought I would be applying to Wesleyan, and that thought has certainly been solidified for me.  I'm sure it was great for some of my classmates, but it's just not me.  Put it to you this way: it has a Division III athletics department and the Division III spirit leaks out of the athletic complex and permeates the campus.  There's a lot to be said for the Division I spirit.  Even for a non-Athlete like myself.