Waterville and Medford

In case you're wondering, my dad and I did actually make it from Colby to Tufts in time for tours at both. The answer to your next question is yes, we are completely insane.

Colby was nice.  I really can't say much more than that.  It seems like a perfectly pleasant place to go to school.  Class rooms look nice; buildings look older but not so old that they look like they're falling apart; and housing is apparently good.  Like Bates, Colby provides almost entirely Cross-Sectional housing with the exception being some senior-only apartments.  My concern is really only their obsession with environmental sustainability.  Those of you who read this blog will be familiar with my High School's commitment to empowering women (for those of you who don't, I refer you here, here, and here).  Similarly you will be familiar with the fact that I have gone to the same school since Kindergarten and have been told to be empowered every step of the way (see: 4th grade project on important american women before 1850.  Looking back on it, that project taught me a lot; specifically how to cobble together a research paper with zero resources available).  Colby kind of takes that attitude toward environmentalism.  Don't get me wrong, I like breathing clean air and not dying of heat exhaustion in February, but any topic that is treated the same way my High School treats empowering women will get under my skin.  That's really my only major concern.  Flipping through the course book, I was not disinterested in any of the courses and the people we saw there at 9:00 AM on a Friday during Summer Break seemed happy to be there (they were mostly there because they were tour guides or because they were doing research).  So as I said, Colby was nice.

We did have to leave the tour a little early to get to Tufts, but I really don't think I missed anything and I think it was totally worth it.  Tufts is located in Medford, MA a suburb of Boston and treats the City in exactly the way I like an urban/suburban school to treat a city: it's there if you want it, but there's always plenty to do on campus.  Tufts really was a great experience.  My tour guide happened to be a religion major and he spoke very highly of his experience in that department and of the advising process that brought him to his major.  He also spoke very highly of the performances that the school puts on throughout the year, but - when he found out that I was interested in theatrical design - introduced me to another guy in the tour guide group who works very closely with the theater.  Cole, the other guy, showed me pictures of past shows that he had worked on and ones that he hadn't, which was really nice for me to see.  As he said, if you can design lights for theater in the round, you can design lights anywhere.  Housing at Tufts is different from the ME schools I looked at in that it is only guaranteed for 2 years, but our tour guide said that getting off campus housing isn't too difficult and the university will help it's students out.  He also featured Tufts' theme housing on the tour, which wasn't really mentioned much on the ME tours; if you so desire, you can live in a Spanish Language house, a LGBT house, or a house with basically any other common interest.  Our tour guide had a friend who spent a semester in the Russian Language house to prepare for a trip abroad, which is pretty cool.  All in all, Tufts was really cool.  Everyone there seemed really happy and I could not foresee any problems for me with the school itself.

Boston is another matter.  My dad and I have both have a pretty good sense of direction, but Boston confounded both of us.  Never had I seen an intersection with two "One Way" signs facing each other but I was treated to that sight a number of times in Cambridge. Honestly, the place was designed by a drunken monkey.  Every suburb has it's own Harvard Street and none of them intersect.  Our plan was to drive by Harvard and MIT just to look at the buildings, and we managed to drive by Lesley, Harvard,  and Boston University.  MIT was hidden within the terrifying maze that is Boston urban planning.  My dad and I did get to take a picture in front of the sign that says Harvard Law School, which was awesome.  For those of you who don't know why this is funny, watch this.  Now.  Anyway, I cannot emphasize enough how stressful it is to drive in Boston.  If I end up going to school there, I know I won't have a car, but I feel like walking or biking would be stressful in that city.

So that's the trip.  I have three schools left on my list that I'm seriously interested in, so look forward to three more of these "first visit" posts, but I'm getting closer and closer to revisits, overnights, and class auditing at the schools I liked.  Look forward to that I guess.