On the Waterfront

Today marked my first day in Chicago, the beginning of the end of my college visit odyssey.  The penultimate school on my list, Northwestern, was today's goal and I'm not entirely sure what to say about it.

Purely objectively, it has pretty much everything I want from a school.  Good fencing, good religious studies, good physics, good theatrical design, an active social scene centered on campus.  It's maybe a little bigger than I would like (one of the guides told a story about a girl who helped him out in a computer programing class that he hasn't seen since), but not so big that it becomes depersonalized.  Hell, a very good friend of mine is going there; the kind of friend that you would trust to recommend stuff to you.  But I can tell you that it probably isn't for me.  I was not viscerally repulsed by it within 10 minutes the way I was with UVA, but I can tell it's not right.  But I could not possibly tell you why.  The campus has great traditions and history, but none of them did anything for me.  Logically speaking, I probably could be happy there; but I cannot imagine myself on this campus.

But setting aside my disappointment with/ambivalence toward Northwestern, I had a really cool day in Chicago. I've connected through O'Hare many times, but I've never properly seen the city before today.  My dad drove me around and pointed out important land marks that he remembers from when he lived here and we got to go to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI).  Incidentally on the same day that the Mythbusters were there.  An exhibit about their science opened up today, and I got to see the ribbon cutting.  Admittedly I could only see the shower of sparks created by the event, not the source of those sparks, but it was still pretty cool to be 50 feet away from Adam and Jamie.  Mythbusters was a huge part of my childhood, and I'm still a fan.  I think the best part of that whole experience was the fact that it was completely unplanned.  I found out about the whole thing as my dad and I were parking via Twitter (I follow Adam: @donttrythis).  I love Twitter.  MSI also has a German U-Boat, which was super cool.  The special exhibits I sought out were one on the future of manned space travel and one on the inner workings of the Internet.  Networld was somewhat underwhelming, but the Space Exhibit was super cool.  I kind of love space, so it was really interesting to see models of real things juxtaposed with clips from sci-fi imaginings of space travel dating back to the nineteen oughts.  I also happened to wander into an exhibit on inventors where I saw a car with a drag of 2.11.  For perspective, a 10-speed bike has a drag of 3.something. To sum up: I love twitter, space, and inventing stuff.

That's it. Later today I'll be heading out for some real Chicago pizza and tomorrow I'll be seeing the University of Chicago.  Get pumped for continued blogging!