{"id":1469,"date":"2008-11-18T22:57:34","date_gmt":"2008-11-19T02:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2008-11-18T22:57:34","modified_gmt":"2008-11-19T02:57:34","slug":"brief-notes-on-a-college-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1469","title":{"rendered":"Brief notes on a college visit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My daughter and I took advantage of Veterans Day this year to make another college-visit trip, to a different region of the country from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shermandorn.com\/mt\/archives\/001169.html\">February&#8217;s trip<\/a>, this time to two Colleges of Potential Choice. I was wrong last time when I said I kept having facultyish thoughts in February as well as parent thoughts. I have at least three lenses through which I&#8217;m seeing colleges we visit: parent, faculty member, and person who studies education. Thoughts during the visits Monday and Tuesday:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The campus tour is a genre of performance art with its own conventions and rituals (including the tourguide&#8217;s walking-backwards-and-tripping bit).&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>All of the institutions we&#8217;ve visited together try to make students feel special\/entitled, and their values are embodied in <i>how<\/i> they do so.<\/li>\n<li>She&#8217;s enjoying cooler weather (again). We&#8217;ve definitely lost her as far as staying close to home is concerned.<\/li>\n<li>As a parent, I waver between wanting a tourguide to pour forth the information and hoping that the tourguide is just a little rough around the edges so we get a better sense of the institution. Same with the admissions officer who conducts the information session.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, dear. I spaced out precisely at the time when the tourguide said something surprising (and alarming) to my daughter. Time to conduct some quick research online while she&#8217;s in class!<\/li>\n<li>That is both an odd and perfect place for the science fiction collection.<\/li>\n<li>It is a surprising phenomenon that slight changes in the architecture can make a difference between a campus that feels intimate and a campus that feels monumental.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Stone, wood, plaster, brick, concrete. Someone&#8217;s got to write a song about campus building materials.<\/li>\n<li>That must be awfully slippery in the rain. The other flooring isn&#8217;t, but it&#8217;s awfully ugly. Isn&#8217;t there any flooring that is both safe <i>and<\/i> pleasing?<\/li>\n<li>I think the charm of both places is almost guaranteed in contrast to my daughter&#8217;s bureaucratic high school. <\/li>\n<li>Oh, they don&#8217;t have that here? I made an assumption; thank goodness I didn&#8217;t voice it with my daughter.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, my, that&#8217;s an amazing&#8230; indulgence is not quite the word. Neither is entitlement, since it&#8217;s valuable for its educational purpose. Serious flabbergastery, and I&#8217;m someone who&#8217;s been around for a good while.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These random notes are brought to you by a day that started at 5:15 and is going past 11 pm, with a few breaks for chauffeuring, music, and light napping. I am <i>still<\/i> far behind on stuff I need to do in almost any realm of life. It&#8217;s everything I&#8217;ve taken on, plus the time of the semester, but I think I&#8217;m going to declare temporal bankruptcy. Warning: if you&#8217;re not a family member, I&#8217;m afraid you&#8217;re not a secured creditor on my time. Maybe my problem is prioritization and sequencing. I was trying to finish up a project today with an acquaintance, when she snapped back, &#8220;Sherman, you are just too little, too late. I <i>already voted!<\/i>&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>I think I will stop now before I commit worse jokes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My daughter and I took advantage of Veterans Day this year to make another college-visit trip, to a different region of the country from February&#8217;s trip, this time to two Colleges of Potential Choice. I was wrong last time when I said I kept having facultyish thoughts in February as well as parent thoughts. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-nH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}