Spring Break
Finally I Can Graduate In Peace
Alex Schaefer
Issue date: 10/30/07 Section: Commentary
This column is essentially self-serving and egotistical. I'm not writing about an important political issue or a valid campus concern. I'm writing because I was able to rush the field Saturday at the football game and now my college experience is complete. Until now, the approaching completion of my 120 credits hung like a court date circled on the calendar. I felt I had not "done it all." Now I am content and can move onto whatever comes next.
During my college search, I narrowed my options down to the University of w and UConn. My aversion toward attending my state school, being from New Haven, mirrored the reasoning used by anyone who had attended a marginally-big high school: because 'everybody' goes there and I wanted something different - that, and I didn't like the notion of my parents popping in weekly if I was so close to home. It's also the reason I didn't go to Yale. I've come to realize parents are fired up to get rid of their graduating high school senior far too readily. Their mock anguish exists only to saddle with the obligation to buy them nice things when they become successful.
I went on my college visit to Vermont with the latent intention of making it my final choice. Anything I found attractive about the school, I would have overrated. Any deficiencies, I would have depreciated. "Oh, it's overrun by smelly hippies? I heard they were easy-going people."
Upon arriving at the school, I gave the town a cursory glance and started in search of the football stadium - a staple of every college tour assessment. Upon being notified by a confused undergraduate that the football stadium we were trying to find didn't exist, my college decision was made. It was one of those deal-breakers that wasn't dismissible: like a girl telling you she's really into "Saw III" or a guy canceling a first date an hour before he's supposed to cook for a girl because he "just doesn't feel like it."
So Storrs it was and it proved to be a good time to jump on the Huskies' bandwagon. The team moved up to Division I-A in 2000 and has had one of the swiftest rises to prominence in football history. They attracted the interest of a major conference - the Big East - by 2002, had joined that conference by 2004 and were awarded a bowl invitation in their first year in the conference - an impressively fast growth spurt on anyone's chart. Still, while they hovered on the edge of college football's upper echelon, they still hadn't made that prized kill; they weren't yet "made men."
During my college search, I narrowed my options down to the University of w and UConn. My aversion toward attending my state school, being from New Haven, mirrored the reasoning used by anyone who had attended a marginally-big high school: because 'everybody' goes there and I wanted something different - that, and I didn't like the notion of my parents popping in weekly if I was so close to home. It's also the reason I didn't go to Yale. I've come to realize parents are fired up to get rid of their graduating high school senior far too readily. Their mock anguish exists only to saddle with the obligation to buy them nice things when they become successful.
I went on my college visit to Vermont with the latent intention of making it my final choice. Anything I found attractive about the school, I would have overrated. Any deficiencies, I would have depreciated. "Oh, it's overrun by smelly hippies? I heard they were easy-going people."
Upon arriving at the school, I gave the town a cursory glance and started in search of the football stadium - a staple of every college tour assessment. Upon being notified by a confused undergraduate that the football stadium we were trying to find didn't exist, my college decision was made. It was one of those deal-breakers that wasn't dismissible: like a girl telling you she's really into "Saw III" or a guy canceling a first date an hour before he's supposed to cook for a girl because he "just doesn't feel like it."
So Storrs it was and it proved to be a good time to jump on the Huskies' bandwagon. The team moved up to Division I-A in 2000 and has had one of the swiftest rises to prominence in football history. They attracted the interest of a major conference - the Big East - by 2002, had joined that conference by 2004 and were awarded a bowl invitation in their first year in the conference - an impressively fast growth spurt on anyone's chart. Still, while they hovered on the edge of college football's upper echelon, they still hadn't made that prized kill; they weren't yet "made men."
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