Thursday, July 12, 2007

Some updated things

It's official that Miami University is my first choice, unless I realize the cost is too much. If someone asked me "Why Miami?" this is what I would say (as I told Laurel yesterday):

It's a beautiful campus, i can tell by the virtual tours I've seen and obviously by visiting the college. The atmosphere is absolutely amazing and comfortable. The kids that walk on this campus are real, they aren't hard-studying geeks with their faces in a book all the time. They ahve fun. I read a book at Barnes and Noble that graded every aspect of a college, and the only two things rated below a C were Parking (C-) and Diversity (D-). I don't care about parking 'cause i'm not gonna be driving at college, and i think diversity is stupid because colleges should base their students on sucess, not race. Everything is there in the little town, and it's only an hour away from some bigger cities, the town people are friendly but distant, so you're really close to the people in the college. The Greek life is big, and even though I don't want to be Greek, it's nice to know that so many people want to be active in their community and college. The libraries are big and impressive, i hear the food is great (again from the book at Barnes and Noble), the dorms are comfortable, the honors program sounds great. The education teachers sound remarkable and sound like people actually learn from them. From the facebook groups I've browsed, you can tell everyone on this campus is close and friendly, wild crazy and funny. It seems like everyone finds their place at Miami. The legends and traditions are amusing and I love how things like that can carry year to year. The only thing I don't like about Miami is that it'll cost me a lot to go there because I'm an out of state student applying to a very Ohio-focused school.

That's copied from exactly what I typed to Laurel, by the way, so it isn't super detailed as I would tell like Miami or something. I'm like, really in love with this school. They've got so much to offer for me. I'm excited.

I still have to do research for the other schools, Allegheny, IUP, Penn State and Swarthmore, that is as extensive as the research I've done for Miami, but I'm not really looking forward to it as much as I was the Miami research.

I've already started applying to IUP, Allegheny, and Penn State, and I'm well on my way to finishing the Common Application (needed for Swarthmore, Allegheny, and Miami). I'm going to work on the essays during the Mission Trip, as well as throughout the rest of the summer. I'm going to wait to schedule college visits until the school year when I can visit the schools when classes are in session. So I'm gonna be missing a lot of Mondays (because marching band takes up the rest of the week). I'm hoping it'll be okay? I'm taking some tough classes, so I don't know. But that's only 5 schools, so I think it'll be okay. (How is okay not a word?! Bleh stupid spell check).

Mission Trip is coming up next week. I'm really excited. Laurel and I are doing so many fun things for it, it makes me happy. I sorted out my pink/black/white clothes out of all my clothes, and I'm gonna go buy some more tomorrow with Laurel. I'm hoping to get a lot accomplished on the Mission Trip. We've got 2 hours of free time everyday, without computers, cellphones, iPods or anything like that, so I'm bringing a notebook and doing some serious writing. I'm also reading my school books, especially Inferno and The Stranger. Atlas Shrugged can wait until I come back. I still need to do the poets :-\ I'll get around to them.

Well, that's all I've got for now.