(no subject)
I got back from Brown quite late on Sunday night. I had a delightful time, although the experience was exhausting. Indeed, I’m still exhausted, but I’m leaving for Michigan early tomorrow morning, and I’ve been desperately trying to pull myself together. Sitting in on classes and meeting with professors was not especially tiring - after all, I’ve been doing that for several years now - but going out to dinner with students and faculty, chatting with strangers at receptions, and even dealing with the other prospective students took a lot out of me simply because of the constant attentiveness those activities required. It may be the case that I’m too self-conscious or too highly strung, but it isn’t as though I can do anything about that, at least not any time soon.
Brown isn’t my first choice, or even my second choice, but I left with a favorable impression. The department is pretty small, and the graduate students and professors were very personable. I got along well with most of the graduate students I hung out with, and particularly with the student hosting me, and that was largely because on Friday night, on which we all went to a bar, and on Saturday night, on which we went to a party sponsored by the Archeology Department in the archeology building, all of the other prospectives quickly became tired and had their hosts take them home, but I stayed on until the bar closed and the party wound down and got drunk with the students remaining.
Apparently, archeologists are well known for drinking hard and partying hard, and they set up a game of beer pong on the second floor of the building. My host roped me into being his partner in a game of doubles against a couple of archeologists (we lost, but it was close), and now I can say that I played my first, and likely last, game of beer pong ever in the archeology building at Brown over their prospective graduate student weekend.
I’m probably not going to Brown. They have some good faculty, but none of them particularly works on what I’m interested in, although everybody tells me that my research interests are bound to change, and that shouldn’t necessarily be my primary criterion. It is gratifying, though, that over the course of the two nights I was there, three different graduate students drunkenly pumped my hand and insisted that I was the prospective they most wanted to attend.
I can only hope that my visit to Ann Arbor goes equally well. I suspect that it won’t, but then again I always have a feeling of doom and foreboding when I’m about to visit a new place and spend time with strangers. Perhaps during the flight I’ll be able to convince my brain to go into classicist mode, and perhaps that will take my mind off of some of my concerns about the social awkwardness (and, for that matter, my ever-present concerns about being judged poorly by the students and faculty).
I keep telling myself that things can’t possibly go too wrong. Even if I have a bad time in Michigan, I have other options. I’ve gotten into most of the schools I applied to and have been guaranteed full funding to most of them (indeed, at one school, I was recently informed that the department nominated me for a university fellowship and my paltry credentials were sufficient for me to win it). Nonetheless - it’s so easy to brood on the prospect of failure.
Brown isn’t my first choice, or even my second choice, but I left with a favorable impression. The department is pretty small, and the graduate students and professors were very personable. I got along well with most of the graduate students I hung out with, and particularly with the student hosting me, and that was largely because on Friday night, on which we all went to a bar, and on Saturday night, on which we went to a party sponsored by the Archeology Department in the archeology building, all of the other prospectives quickly became tired and had their hosts take them home, but I stayed on until the bar closed and the party wound down and got drunk with the students remaining.
Apparently, archeologists are well known for drinking hard and partying hard, and they set up a game of beer pong on the second floor of the building. My host roped me into being his partner in a game of doubles against a couple of archeologists (we lost, but it was close), and now I can say that I played my first, and likely last, game of beer pong ever in the archeology building at Brown over their prospective graduate student weekend.
I’m probably not going to Brown. They have some good faculty, but none of them particularly works on what I’m interested in, although everybody tells me that my research interests are bound to change, and that shouldn’t necessarily be my primary criterion. It is gratifying, though, that over the course of the two nights I was there, three different graduate students drunkenly pumped my hand and insisted that I was the prospective they most wanted to attend.
I can only hope that my visit to Ann Arbor goes equally well. I suspect that it won’t, but then again I always have a feeling of doom and foreboding when I’m about to visit a new place and spend time with strangers. Perhaps during the flight I’ll be able to convince my brain to go into classicist mode, and perhaps that will take my mind off of some of my concerns about the social awkwardness (and, for that matter, my ever-present concerns about being judged poorly by the students and faculty).
I keep telling myself that things can’t possibly go too wrong. Even if I have a bad time in Michigan, I have other options. I’ve gotten into most of the schools I applied to and have been guaranteed full funding to most of them (indeed, at one school, I was recently informed that the department nominated me for a university fellowship and my paltry credentials were sufficient for me to win it). Nonetheless - it’s so easy to brood on the prospect of failure.