Adventures in College-Visit-Land

Spring Break 2010. Senior year. Which of course means.... MEXICO! VEGAS! FLORIDA! KINGS ISLAND, AT THE VERY LEAST!

Or of course you could always squeeze in a few more college visits, if you're a dork, like myself.

You may have guessed, but I am not posting from anywhere sunny, warm, or remotely amusing. I'm at the Marriott in Cincinnati visiting Xavier tomorrow (which, btw also happens to be my 18th BIRTHDAY) for a preview day thing. The reception for us cool scholarship winners tonight was nice, very well done. They rented out the Great American Ballpark, home of the Cincinnati Reds, for a few hours and we got the "Champions Club" suite. Sweet! XD Wow that was cheesy. Anyhoo, we had a great view of the stadium (duh) and the river, including the bridge to Newport, which is apparently a place of interest. A few speeches, some EXCELLENT brownies, but what really stood out was a quote from one of the speakers, Jaime Guererro. "We are friends with people because we need them at that exact moment." He went on to describe how that was the case with colleges also. Certain aspects of a college will be just what you need at that time, and that should be taken for what it's worth: God putting it there. Ok, that last bit was my take on it, but really, when God sends you a lifeboat GET IN for heaven's sake. Don't make it harder than necessary!
And my favorite (possibly most ironic?) part of hearing his speech was agreeing with everything that he said... and thinking, "THAT is why I belong at Norwich."

Rewind and freeze. Norwich University is a military and civilian college in Vermont. Literally, "the middle of nowhere." (Our tour guide gave us permission to say so!) But for some reason, it fits. I fit. I can't really explain it. It's much like choosing a high school when I walked into Guerin for the first time and just knew that's where I would spend the next four years. Same thing here. It's beautiful, but smack-dab in the middle of NOWHERE. It's cold, rainy, snowy (that's a plus for me!), in a small town, and cadet life for the first year SUCKS. No music/iPod, no Facebook, no talking at meals... The list goes on. Of course there are ways to get around some of those restrictions, but not all of them. And no matter how much you get away with during the day, you're exhausted every night. Sometimes earlier. I know this from experience, and I didn't even go an entire day there. The chapel on campus, as well as a spiritual center, serves as a literal place of refuge for the cadets. A sign is posted on the door "Cadets are allowed to sleep here." If I didn't know any better, I would think this was some sort of joke or lax rules. But after PT, shower, formation, and chow that morning, I curled up for a half hour (or so) nap myself. I could hear one of Grace's rook brothers say "Aw, is that the prospect? She's out cold!" I wanted to correct him, and explain that I was in reality quite warm under my fleece, but I was too tired to form the words.
So what you've heard up til now has been just terrible. What sort of crazy person would want to do any of that?!? Me, clearly. But there were so many great things about it, I'll need more posts to fully explain. All I can say to summarize, because it's late, is that it was fulfilling. All of it. I was satisfied.
I can honestly say that I can't ever remember feeling so content, ever. And recently especially I've been feeling restless. I just feel like there's more that I need to do, to be doing, and the everyday "Have you seen Lady Gaga's newest music vid?" just isn't cutting it. In fact, it's making me more and more eager to get out of high school, where we've grown and matured, but now have reverted to a childish state of entitlement and laziness, ignoring everything that we learned over the last years. Norwich filled the need for reality. I could even talk about the usual, inane things, because I knew that the "reality" part of life was already being fulfilled. I was serving, I was helping, I could stop searching, because my path already pointed to a meaningful future. If one day, one overnight there, gave me that much peace, why wouldn't I spend the next four years there?