So This Is College

I spent four years at Rice. I have a diploma to prove it. Officially, I went to college. But that's not really true. You see, I went to Rice, and Rice is...well...Rice. It belongs to its own special world which can only really be understood from the inside. Superficially it might appear like college. We studied. We partied. We fought with roommates. We complained about classes and professors. We cheered on our sports teams (okay about 25 of us did, but still). We stayed up all night talking, writing papers, wasting time, and doing nothing that can really be accounted for. We went to college. Or at least we thought we did.

But no, Rice isn't really college. This weekend I took Matthew back up to Dayton for his senior year of college, and I stayed around for a few days to check out UD life. UD is college, for real. It's college the way you imagine it is before you've ever been. All the upperclassmen live in houses owned by the university which border the campus and are in an area affectionately known as "The Ghetto". All of the houses have big porches where everyone resides weather-permitting and where you are always welcome even if you aren't sure of the names of the people living in that house. And when night falls on the weekend, everyone wanders house to house. Partying isn't confined to a house or a street. It's a neighborhood event. You can swim in the inflatable pool in the frontyard of one house, get free freezer pops from the people at the next house, grab a beer a few houses down, play a game of Cornhole at the house on the corner, mudwrestle in the backyard of someone you don't really know, throw away some money playing poker in the basement of a friend of a friend of a friend, and then waste away the rest of the night on your own front porch with the couple of hundred people who stop by for a minute or a few hours. It's a whole different world. And it's fun.

I had a lot of good times at Rice. I'm not really interested in playing "If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd..." There's always things we'd change. And there's always things we wouldn't give up no matter what. I'm glad I went to Rice. And I'm glad I can now say that I've also been to college. Thanks for a good time, Matthew. Have a great senior year.