My spring break college odyssey began with a mad dash from the Charlotte Airport to Davidson College in Davidson, NC. This is the first degree of isolation. It's about 30 minutes from Charlotte, which is a major metropolis, to campus, but you wouldn't know it. Which is awesome. I flat out love Davidson. The tour began with a visit to the Belk Visual Arts Center that emphasized the fine arts requirement. I am not a fine artist, so I won't stress it the same way they did, but Davidson seems to take art seriously. Also, they have an original Rodin in the atrium. Lucky for me, this art requirement can be satisfied in the performing arts (read: with stage tech), otherwise they'd have to prepare themselves for a concentration in stick figures. With regard to the theater, it's gorgeous. The college itself was founded as an all-male agrarian college, and - while it has evolved in nature - it has not much evolved in size. Davidson is tiny. But it seems to make up for it's physical size with history. On the "Historic Quadrangle" are the Eumenean and Philanthropic Halls, home to the literary/debate societies at the college. They stand about 50 feet apart and debates are conducted from their respective balconies. Allegedly, Woodrow Wilson gave his first public address for the Eumenean Society in this format. Did I mention President Wilson went here as an undergrad? Because I think he's awesome. He’s up there among my favorite presidents (don’t think I’m a dork for having favorite presidents). Anyway the next stop on our tour was a quick walk through the sciences building. There is a lab science requirement at Davidson, but the labs are capped at 32. There are no TAs at Davison. Every class is taught by a professor and, because they are pretty much all tiny, the students get to develop a really personal connection with their teachers. If you really do want to get off campus to learn, Davidson has a very active study abroad program. The programs that the college runs itself are somewhat limited, but it seems that if you really want to go somewhere, they will find you a program that runs through another university that will suit your needs. Also awesome at Davidson is the laundry system. In addition to a 24-hour student Laundromat that is free of charge and wifi connected (you can go online to see if machines are available and set things up such that you will receive a text message when your laundry is done), there is a Laundry service center that will wash, dry, press, and fold your laundry for you in a few days. Which is awesome. In terms of application, Davidson accepts all the usual stuff and asks that you fill out a “Why Davidson?” supplemental essay. They also ask for a friend’s letter of recommendation, which is kind of interesting. By friend they don’t mean teacher with whom you’ve bonded. They mean actual friend who’s a peer. As the saying goes: show me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are. To sum up the experience of the “Davidson Family/Mafia”, our guide shared with us a seriously cool story about the last time Davidson made it to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships. In 2008, the Wildcats made it to Detroit and a bunch of alumni agreed to pay for transportation, rooms, and tickets for any Davidson student that wanted to go. They bet on about 100; they got pretty much the entire student body. But they stuck to their word and paid for everyone to go. Which is an amazing display of school spirit, both on the part of the students and on the part of the alumni. That, in a nutshell, is why I loved Davidson.
After Davidson, my dad and I drove another hour or so to
Winston-Salem, one of three municipalities in the US that is legally written
with a hyphen. Winston-Salem is home to
Wake Forrest University, the second stop on my spring break visit
schedule. Unfortunately the student body
was on spring break, so we got an extra-in-depth info session and a pamphlet
that outlined a self guided walking tour.
Thanks to the info session leader, I honestly don’t feel like I missed
out on anything. He did a really good
job of giving us the personal experience side of the walking tour that we would
have missed out on otherwise. I think
some of his enthusiasm came from the fact that Wake served as his first,
first-hand experience of the states (he lived his youth in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo), but he was really excited about Wake. Interestingly, Wake does not mandate that you
send your standardized test scores. If
you feel that your test scores from one Saturday at 8 AM are representative of your
academic abilities, then send them in.
Otherwise, they’re more interested in your career and grades in High
School. Wake is a University - as opposed
to Davidson, which does not have a graduate program - but the classes are still
kept small and are still taught by full professors. TAs sometimes run review sessions for tests,
but the professors keep office hours and keep themselves available. And I can say from personal experience that
they’re a nice bunch. Just because the
students were on break doesn’t mean the teachers were. On our self-guided walking tour, my dad and I
ran into the professor of technical theater in the Wake Forest “black box”. This is the guy that runs the side of theater
I’m interested in. I was just poking my
nose into their secondary theater space, I ran into him, and he took my dad and
I on a tour of the main-stage space and the shop. He was very excited to inform us that they’ll
be getting some LED fixtures for the main-stage space and are looking to
renovate the theater to make it bigger.
I also picked up a copy of the student run newspaper The Old Gold & Black and was quite
impressed. They had a feature on a speaker
that recently came to campus to discuss religious freedom and tolerance. I found this feature particularly interesting
because of my particular interest in religious studies. I think I ought to start picking up more of
these student newspapers…
On a more cultural note, I have learned a few things about
the south:
- 1It is not abnormal to see churches along the highway as often as you would see a Starbucks in NYC.
- Brown Sugar and Mayonnaise go on everything
Shout out to Simplyummy in Winston-Salem for a delicious
grilled cheese sandwich. I had no idea
that Brown Sugar could taste so good on a grilled cheese sandwich…
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