Tag: college (Page 2 of 2)

Decision Time Coming

February 21, 2023 / DB

Our trip to Cincinnati was good.

We drove down with one of M’s long-time friends, A, who was planning on confirming her enrollment at UC on our visit. At check-in we ran into one of their CHS classmates and her mom. When the parents were comparing notes on the college search process, I mentioned that M was waiting to hear from Michigan. She butted in and said, ‘Yeah, that’s not happening, we don’t need to factor that in anymore.”

Probably the smart move and the timeline just got a lot easier.

We began with a large general session for all the kids that were there – there were hundreds – then broke into smaller groups to meet with academic counselors. M was admitted as an exploratory student simply because she isn’t 100% sure what she wants to study and wanted the freedom to be able to adjust if needed.

Between the two sessions we got a solid overview of the enrollment process, housing, advising, and what to expect from freshman year.

Although it was a school holiday for M, it was a normal academic day at UC. It was nice to be on campus while there were some things going on, there were students eating in the food court, etc. A much better view of campus life than we got last summer.

The girls had two lunches. First the four of us wolfed down some Chick-Fil-A in the food court. Then M and A met a couple girls that M had been messaging about possibly living together. They went to a little restaurant for about an hour while A’s dad and I sat in Starbucks. Apparently their meeting went well and M is excited about the possibility of living with these two new friends and another girl.[1]

After that we toured a few of the dorms. They have some weird combos at UC. There is one eight-person option which was very odd. It’s two three-person room-lets and a double that share bathrooms. Very strange and seems rife for things to go sideways easily. At least when I lived with eight guys we all had our own rooms and were spread across the levels of a four-story house. A’s dad is a couple years older than me and went to both Purdue and IU, so we kept boring the girls with stories from our old-school dorms. A couple of the buildings at UC are not much better than my rooms in McCollum Hall.

It was also really strange to be touring rooms with kids actually in them. The RA guides would lead us into a room and there’d be students sitting there, staring at their laptops or reading at their desks. We wondered what these kids get for there to be constant streams of visitors on admitted student session days.

We tried to stop at the Study Abroad office to ask a few questions, but despite the website saying there were drop-in hours on Mondays no one was available to answer questions. M very much wants to do Semester at Sea and wanted to clarify if/how UC accepts those credits.

Finally, we made the obligatory stop at the bookstore. M got another sweatshirt. I eyed some shirts that I might be interested in if she decides to enroll at UC. We ran into one of their good friends from middle school who is also thinking about going to UC. And while we were on campus they saw another kid from their CHS class and two kids who graduated from CHS last year. Weird that on a campus of 45,000+ students they would have so many brushes with Indy people.

Checkout was in the enclosed dining area behind the suites at the football stadium. While A and her dad knocked out their paperwork and put down her deposit, M and I stepped outside and sat in the good seats, watching the football team go through their spring practice workouts below. It was a beautiful day and perfect for watching some football for about 10 minutes.

At one point M told me she didn’t think we needed to revisit IU. I told her that was fine, but not to rule it out unless she was sure it wasn’t going to be worth her time. CHS gives students five days spread over their junior and senior years to miss school for visiting colleges and she hasn’t taken advantage of any. Might as well use it, although I guess if she’s not as interested in IU it’s kind of a waste.

She’s obviously a strong UC lean at the moment. I think she was excited about the prospect of living with those girls she met.[2] We asked about requesting roommates and were told you can only request one with no guarantee of joining with other groups. That could be a snag, as the two M met with are probably tied together and M would have to gamble by living with the fourth girl who she hasn’t met face-to-face. Housing at UC is kind of a mess at the moment, as with apparently most schools. I think she has some concerns about not being able to live with these girls, or close to either them or A and her future roommate(s) if her lottery draw goes poorly. One of those girls she met with Monday is going to call and get a clearer answer on requests. If they found out today those four girls are guaranteed to live together, I think we’d be signing M up tonight so we can get her on the housing list.

But we shall see.

It was a long-ass day – 12 hours door-to-door – but I think it was productive. No hat ceremony yet, but we’re getting close.

M and A are really good friends, but would prefer to not live together. Which made the lunch a little awkward, although A has been talking to another girl who wasn’t in town Monday about rooming together. ↩
One is from Cincy, one from Cleveland. The fourth girl who was not visiting Monday is also from the Cincy area. ↩

Insomnia/Sick Day Notes

January 31, 2023 / DB

Ugh. I had battled a cold for a week or two, with this weird congestion passing back-and-forth between my head and chest. I never had a sore throat, never felt bad. Just constant plug of yuck in part of my body.

In the midst of that, I took NyQuil for several nights so I could breath and sleep peacefully. I slept like a baby all of those nights. Since I got off the meds, though, my periodic insomnia has returned. Last night I went to bed 11:30ish, drifted off for a bit then jolted wide awake. I came downstairs around 1:30 to read and have a drink to try to reset my body, then tossed and turned for several hours before maybe getting two solid hours.

I hate when this happens. I know my body will eventually get back on track and in a few nights I’ll be sleeping great again. And it’s not like my days are busy, so I can sneak in a nap if needed. Just doesn’t give me much energy or motivation to do things.

Didn’t help that C threw up this morning, so the errands I had planned got wiped out. I tried to nap but my one cup of half-caff coffee was enough to keep me from getting any rest. At least there’s nothing big going on tonight, so I will be relaxed and ready to hit the sack early.

Thus, a few more notes that I planned on holding for a couple days but I’ll share now since I’m kind of a zombie.

Kid Hoops

L’s team got a 12-point win last night. It should have been more than that; they led by 15 at half and then played sloppy and let it get down to four before we put them away. L had 10, including six in that late run.

I forget if I shared this already, but we have new coaches for the winter session. Now the CHS varsity coach and her top assistant/freshman coach are in charge. Our two wins this week were against pretty bad teams, but at least our girls seem to have a much better idea of what’s going on compared to when the previous coach was running things. A good change, and a chance for L to spend time with the people who will hopefully be coaching her next fall.

College Process

I haven’t shared the latest on M’s college search.

You know that she was accepted to IU quickly in November, including admission to the honors program. Then we waited to hear on her next four applications. We got word on each of them over the last three weeks.

First was an acceptance from Purdue. She doesn’t want to go there, but it was serving as her in-state, backup school. It was nice that she got in, though, because she heard of several kids she thinks have similar grades to hers who got deferred admission.

Next came Cincinnati, two weeks ago, another yes. Which was expected. UC is a solid school but not as selective as IU or Purdue.

Then last Friday she got word from Michigan: deferred. Which at first she was thrilled about, thinking that meant she has a shot to get in in April when they open up the enrollment spigot again. However, she read that all out-of-state applications are automatically deferred, so they may not have even looked at her file yet.

I heard from the parent of another kid who was deferred by UM that is not true; he knows of a couple out-of-state kids that got in last week. So we don’t know if M has gotten any attention or not.

Michigan is kind of fucking this whole process up. She’s never visited there, hasn’t done deep research about any specific programs, housing, etc. She just knows it is arguably the best public school in the country. If she gets accepted I think she’s really going to want to go there.

I’m torn. It would be awesome if she got accepted and had a chance to spend four years in Ann Arbor. But basically doubling the tuition we had planned to pay the next four years changes the parenting math quite a bit. And I’m not sure I could deal with her ego if she gets a Michigan degree!

Still, I didn’t want to crap on her excitement Friday, so I told her it was awesome that she’s at least still in the game. I would be surprised if she gets in, simply because it is so competitive and her non-academic resumé is lacking. But you never know.

Now she is stressing about not hearing from UM until April, while both IU and UC need a decision by May 1. I told her not to sweat it, spend the next two months making a choice between IU and UC and then we’ll have a plan in place when she gets her final decision from Michigan.

We booked a spot in UC’s admitted student program in February and will take a similar trip to IU in March. I gave her the task of coming up with some specific questions to ask when we are on each campus so we’re not just repeating what we did over the summer.

I can’t get a good feel for where she’s leaning. For awhile I thought she was higher on IU. But over the weekend she told us one of her best friends since grade school may go to UC, and they’ve talked about rooming together if they both head that way. The good thing is the tuition at the schools is basically the same so she can make a decision purely on where she thinks she fits best.

I honestly never realized how stressful this process is. I applied to two schools and knew where I was going. I only applied to UMKC because my stepdad was going through his first battle with cancer at the time and wanted a local option in case I needed to stay in town.

Health updates

The beginning of the year has been busy on the health tip for our family. Or at least for two us.

I mentioned awhile back that C was diagnosed with a bulging disk. She’s been doing PT twice a week to try to build some core strength and take the pressure off her spine to avoid more invasive treatment. It seems to be going well. I think she’s been consistent with her home exercises, and most days when we go in for PT she says she feels better. She’s been cleared to do anything that doesn’t cause new pain, so she has the ability to be active. She’s not really taking advantage of that, although it is January. I just hope she can be consistent with continuing her therapy at home once she’s released from PT so she can feel better and avoid either injections or surgery.

A couple weeks back I went to a dermatologist for the first time in my life. Being light skinned and having spent too much time in the sun in my life, it seemed like a good time to have a doc who is trained in such matters to take a look at my skin.[1]

Good news is I got a clean bill of health. I did have a spot he was a little worried about. Years ago my primary doc told me it wasn’t anything to worry about, and S had assured me that she also thought it wasn’t problematic. But my dermatologist said while he thought they were both probably right, he wanted to go ahead and do a biopsy just to make sure.

I got the results late last week and it came back benign. I wasn’t super concerned but was still nice to hear. I figure most people are going to end up with sun-related skin issues at some point, so it’s nice to be able to kick that can a little farther down the road. Use sunscreen, my peeps!

I often ask S to look at moles, skin tags, etc that look odd. She’ll poke it, wrinkle her nose, and say, “Yeah, that’s weird. You should get that looked at.” Those two months of derm she did really come in handy! ↩

Weekend in KC

August 8, 2022 / DB

A very good weekend trip to Kansas City. Other than the heat, of course.

Travel

It was probably our easiest drive between Indy and KC we’ve ever had without driving at night. A few slowdowns, a few standard trucks passing each other or slow people in the fast lane issues. But otherwise it was kind of smooth sailing.

One side effect of me switching to a smaller car without a third row is that trips like this can be problematic. Our girls bitch when they have to ride 10 minutes to dinner three-across in the back seat. Eight-ish hours was going to be a shitshow. We decided that the expense of renting a van was worth the reduction in bitching and increase in comfort for all. That was a good call. Plenty of room for our bags, the girls weren’t on top of each other, and we got pretty solid fuel mileage.

Speaking of fuel, it saddened us that the father we got from Indy, the more the price of gas fell. I mean, it was good for this trip. But sucks that it reinforced the reality that Indiana typically has some of the highest gas prices outside of California.[1] Anyway, when I bought gas in Lawrence on Friday, I was paying a full dollar less per gallon than in Indy. Joy.

OK, onto the trip itself. Some of you know many of these details but I’ll go ahead and act like no one knows nothing.

Thursday

We mixed things up and stayed at the Hampton Inn near the Power & Light District rather than on the Plaza. We haven’t ever checked out downtown on any of our trips other than driving through, so it was cool to see the many changes that have taken place down there in the 19 years since we moved to Indy. The streetcar stop was directly below our room. More on that later.

Thursday night we met my aunt and uncle for dinner at Parlor. The food we sampled from the various vendors ranged from ok to very good. When I walked to the bar to order our first drinks, I scanned the QR code to pull up the drink menu. The bartender said that if I was a quick chooser I had two minutes to still get happy hour prices. I asked her if she had anything local. She began to rattle off the list and when she said “Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat” I said, “Two please!”

As she poured them she commented how Boulevard really isn’t local anymore since they got bought out awhile back. This very nice looking young woman sitting at the bar next to me shook her head and said, “They’re sellouts.”

Oh my!

I asked that they not hold it against me and took my beers and fled.

Friday – KU

Friday was our KU campus visit. This was my first trip back to Lawrence in 12 years, and only my second in 19+ years. Which seems crazy. It’s just hard to carve out a day in Lawrence when we have generally taken these quick trips to KC and are trying to see as many people as possible in a compressed time frame.

I honestly don’t remember the last time I took I–70 to Lawrence. It’s been well over 20 years, for sure. The girls were totally confused by the concept of toll roads.

We arrived on campus a little early, so I drove by a couple of my old apartments and then we hit the bookstore to scout out possible purchases for after the tour. M quickly piped up, “KU has way better shirts than anywhere we’ve been so far.” Score one for the Jayhawks! She was right. I think the KU bookstore had more shirts than the IU and Purdue bookstores combined.

The KU admissions presentation was outstanding. M agreed with me that it was the best of the six we’ve been to, so it wasn’t just a biased KU alum’s opinion. Most of that was because of the guy who was leading the presentation. He was great, funny and full of personality. He was a stark contrast to the lady who presented at IU last Monday, who basically read from a script and overused the word “beautiful.” KU really hits hard on being an AAU accredited school, and that got M’s attention. I told her IU and Purdue are also AAU schools, so that means KU has many of the academic benefits of those schools without the sheer size. In many ways it is the perfect blend of a Big 10 school and Miami, Ohio.

Between the shirts, our peeks at campus, the presentation, and the fat chunk of scholarship money M’s grades qualify her for, she was professing some interest. I’ll admit while I thought it was a long shot, I was getting excited about her at least applying.

Then we took the tour.

Listen, it was nasty hot and humid. It was a Friday late in the tour cycle. Our entire group seemed a little low energy. But the tour kind of sucked. Our guide wasn’t very good, he skipped some of the best parts of campus, we didn’t go inside a single building, and he did more telling than showing about the things that make KU an interesting option.

The tour walked out to a stopping point where families could grab a bus that would take them to stops at professional schools if they had appointments, dorm tours if scheduled, and eventually back to the Union where we started. We waited around for about five minutes and decided to hoof it back rather than wait, as everyone was getting hungry. I think the walk up the Hill in the heat extinguished any interest M had in KU. We were all dripping when we got back up to Wescoe beach.

On the way to the Union I walked us through the main part of campus the tour had missed. M said, “Why didn’t he take us here? This is awesome.”

Unbelievable.

I also corrected a few “facts” our guide had wrong. He was a nice enough kid and I’m hoping he was just off his game Friday.

In M’s welcome bag was a 20% off the entire purchase at the KU Bookstore, so we did some shopping. I was in heaven, but only walked out with a couple stickers. They had some amazing gear but I have purchased like eight KU shirts already this year. The girls all got nice sweatshirts, though.

So I don’t think M will be a Jayhawk. But L is interested so maybe we’ll try again in four years!

My brain was literally cramping last week trying to come up with a place to eat lunch while in Lawrence. Which of my old favorites should I hit? I reached the point of mental paralysis and consulted with brother in Jayhawkdom E$, who suggested the Ladybird Diner. This was a brilliant rec: the food and environment were fantastic. If you’re ever in LFK, you should stop by.

After lunch we did some more driving around and then made the pilgrimage to Allen Fieldhouse. This was my only misstep of the day. I didn’t research how to partake in all the new exhibits at the Fieldhouse. I figured you just walk into the building and you’ll see everything. They do have the little museum display in the main entrance. But the main part of AFH was closed off, so the girls couldn’t see the court. I assumed this meant the area with the original rules of basketball was also off limits for the day. It wasn’t until that evening that I read those are in a whole other building that may well have been open. L was bummed she didn’t see the court, but we did get to see the latest national championship trophy.

On our way out of town we swung by the house I lived in for two years, aka The Big Yellow House. Which is now brown. If you know, you know. Naturally there was an accident at 23rd and Mass when we were there. We used to call 911 at least once a week because of accidents there. Some things never change.

Friday night the Murray family graciously hosted many of you. It was great to see all of you who were able to make it.

Saturday – Raytown and More

Saturday morning we took the streetcar up to the River Market. I ate many lunches and dinners in the River Market in my adult KC years. But I don’t think I had been to the farmers market since I was a little kid. It was fabulous! I remarked at how when I was a kid it was pretty much all local Italian vendors. I did hear one old lady speaking some Italian Saturday. I was amazed by how many world cultures were represented in the area now. A Vietnamese place. A Thai place. The spice store with all kinds of exotic, wonderful smelling spices on display. Vendors selling all kinds of Asian and Latin foods. Good for KC.

We took the streetcar back down to Union Station and walked around there a bit. I showed the girls the bullet holes that remain from the Kansas City Massacre. I found that more interesting than they did.

A few weeks back M said it would be funny if we went to the Taco Bell I worked at in Raytown on our visit. That jogged my memory that I had read about a really good barbecue place that was right around the corner. We met the Nesbitt family and Stacey B at Harp Barbecue for lunch. Sure enough, the old TB building was still there, although now it is a Chinese takeout place. M asked if that was the actual building I worked in. Hell yes, it was! All it had was a new coat of paint.

Harp’s was terrific. I had the burnt ends which were top notch. The sides were solid. The rest of the family had pulled pork which they all approved of. The beer from Crane Brewery was good, too. A little oasis of culture in a town not always known for that.

After lunch I drove the girls by the three houses we lived in, my old high and elementary schools, and numerous car washes I used. We popped into a CVS and the girls were disappointed I didn’t buy any of the RHS swag they were selling.

After our Raytown sojourn, we headed to the Plaza for the obligatory shopping trip. It was sales tax free weekend in Missouri, which made the stores extra packed. Not the most fun on a day when the heat index was something like 107.

While on the Plaza I got stopped by a guy who was with Amnesty International trying to hit me up for a donation. I interrupted him and thanked him but said we were late to meet someone. That shut him down. I turned and there was a red light greeting me. So we just stood there awkwardly until it changed to green. The girls were trying to sustain their giggles the entire time.[2]

For dinner Saturday we met the Vogel family. Our first choice was going to have trouble seating us so we bopped down the street and went to Carmen’s. It was a great meal with great friends. As much as I miss the Plaza, I think Brookside is the part of Kansas City I miss most. We just don’t have an area like that in Indy. Everything that is similar is either just a couple notches bigger or smaller and lacks that special Brookside feel.

That was our weekend in Kansas City. Other than the heat and not getting into see Allen Fieldhouse, I have zero complaints. I think the girls all enjoyed it as well.

This is mostly due to our gas coming from refineries to the north, which increases the transportation cost to get that gas to us. Plus those refineries are old and both constantly shutting down for repairs and under some more significant environmental restrictions. ↩
That’s only my second-best effort at avoiding solicitors on the Plaza. Years ago I was stopped by a very nice young lady. She asked how my day was going. I grabbed my stomach and said I had just eaten too much barbecue (truth), my stomach was a little upset (not true), and I needed to find a restroom. She encouraged me to find one. I walked in mock distress until I was out of her sight. Then I laughed and laughed. ↩

Life and Times of a Rising Senior

August 2, 2022 / DB

A busy week for M. Two college visits and senior pictures have all been checked off her To Do list.

We went to Purdue last Wednesday and then IU on Monday. Both trips went well.

She liked Purdue more than she expected, and when we left she felt like it had pulled even with Cincinnati as her co-favorite. Or at least a school that would definitely be on her list for a second visit and more research.

We’ve heard tons of great things about Purdue, especially how they have really updated their campus from the rather boring, typically engineering collection of buildings it used to be. Perhaps that set the bar too high for me, because while I thought everything was just fine, I wasn’t awed by anything I saw. Lots of new buildings, to be sure. But it still felt rather utilitarian to me.

We both liked how they broke up the visit. We started with a 45 minute tour of part of campus, landed at the welcome center for the hour-long admissions presentation, then went out for another hour or so of touring campus. That was a good way to break up Purdue’s rather sprawling campus. Our tour guides were great, talking almost the entire time. And our admissions presenter was one of the best we’ve encountered so far.

Purdue has a lot going for it. Maybe too much, in fact. Last year it had way more freshman enroll that their algorithm expected, and the school had to scramble to find housing for everyone. Perhaps it was because of that you have to make a separate appointment to tour the housing options. We could have squeezed that in, but it was hot and humid and we decided to save that for a second visit, possibly popping in on people M knows who will be students at Purdue in the fall.

Purdue is the closet school M will consider, maybe 15–20 minutes closer than IU. Despite its engineering school rep, it can offer a great education even in the more liberal arts affiliated programs. And they’ve kept tuition frozen for over a decade now. It made sense why M liked it so much.

Then we hit IU on Monday afternoon.

We lucked out and avoided big storms that had cancelled the morning tours and even got about an hour of pleasant weather before the heat and humidity came crashing down again. We parked right by S’s sorority house and found the brick with her name on it, which is always fun.

The new IU welcome center is located in the remodeled building where I took my three graduate courses on the Bloomington campus. It was fun for me to have a personal connection. “I took classes in this building!” They went with the more traditional sit through an hour presentation and then get out and walk for 75 minutes format.

Our tour guide was great. Let’s see if I can remember everything she told us about herself. She’s in the Kelley School of Business, one of the top business schools in the country. She’s on a pre-law track with two minors, one in computer science the other having to do with data analysis or something. She’s in the honors college. She gives tours. She tutors both for the football team and the honors college. She’s in Panhellenic government. She’s in the campus Catholic org. And she sings in the campus choir. I might have left something out. Girl is busy, and seemingly going places! I thought about asking if she had time for a boyfriend but realized that would both come out wrong and sound super creepy coming from a 51-year-old man.

I’ve always loved IU’s campus. It reminds me a lot of the KU campus, just without the big hill in the middle. Acres of gorgeous, tree-lined paths. Big, beautiful limestone buildings. Downtown right across the street from the main campus entrance. It’s very much a proper college environment. You shouldn’t pick a school because of what it looks like, but it sure makes a great impression.

There was less talking and more general walking and looking around on this tour compared to Purdue’s. Even M has picked up on how the whole spiel is pretty much the same thing at every school, with some tweaks to highlight each one’s particular strengths. She has realized that her next step is to make a list of her favorite schools and begin doing research to compare how the meals plans work on each campus, what the academic advising programs are like, etc. to cut through the marketing and get closer to figuring out what school meets her needs the best.

When we completed the tour and began walking back to the car, she said, without being prompted, “I like this more than Purdue.” Which I expected.

One hangup I believe I’ve mentioned before is that she doesn’t want to go to the same school as a lot of her high school friends. Although we’ve told her many times that on a campus of 45,000 students she will not see the 5–10 people she went to high school with very often either at IU or Purdue, that remains a sticking point, and a big reason she likes Cincinnati so much. It seems like her friend group will send more people to IU than Purdue. So that’s going to be an entry in her spreadsheet. We’ll see if it matters when it comes time to make a decision.

After five campus visits I believe M’s power rankings look something like this:

1A – Cincinnati
1B – Indiana
2 – Purdue
3 – Miami (OH)
4 – Xavier

A bigger gap between two and three than between the top three schools.

Of course, she has one more visit remaining. It just happens to be to a school that A) I attended and B) that won the NCAA division one men’s basketball national championship four months ago.

She squeezed in her senior pictures on Sunday. I didn’t realize what a big deal these were until this time last year, when her friends a year older than her were going through the process. At Cathedral you have to go to the “right” photographer, a woman who took family pics for us about 10 years ago. I went with M to the planning session with the photographer last week. She could not have been more organized, helpful, and fun. M was pretty well prepared already but left with a clear plan for what to do in the five days before her pics.

I stayed the hell out of the way Sunday. There was enough stress in our house before she left that I wanted nothing to do with the actual photo shoot. Luckily my presence was not requested, although C did go along with S to help and watch.

I guess it went very well. She lucked out and got decent weather. It was in the mid–80s but the humidity was tolerable, it was a little breezy, and they were late afternoon/early evening so it was getting cooler through their session. She was happy when she got home. I guess we’ll see in a few days whether it was worth all the time, effort, and money.

I miss the 1980s when you just went to a photo studio with one outfit, sat for 20 minutes, and then ordered one or two shots a couple weeks later.

Weekend Notes: School Visits and Tennis

July 11, 2022 / DB

A pretty boring weekend around our house. I wrapped up Stranger Things. M went to a concert. But other than that the weekend proper was pretty low key for our family. We had great weather so we spent a lot of time just hanging out around the pool or on the back porch.

College Visits

Thursday M and I took our second trip to Ohio to visit a college, this time going to Oxford, home of Miami University. We went with one of her best friends and her dad, who is a Miami alum.

He had warned me ahead of time that Oxford is in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t lying! Maybe there’s a main highway that connects the city to Cincinnati or Dayton, but coming from the west you pretty much have to take these little, two-lane county roads to get there. On one of them you even go through some Amish/Mennonite country. It feels very isolated.

We headed over early so our driver could give us his tour before the official one. Miami has a beautiful, traditional campus, lots of red brick buildings and green space. Despite being roughly half the size of the University of Cincinnati – MU has about 20,000 students total – it feels like the bigger school just because the campus is more spread out.

The main drag of town is right next to campus. You literally go from the president’s home to a fraternity house to a red light to several blocks of bars and restaurants. We cruised around this area a bit, popped into some shops, had some lunch, and headed back for the school tour.

Our tour guide was great. She was smart (Biomedical engineering major with two science-based minors), funny, and did a fine job showing us what we needed to see. There was a lot more walking than on our first two visits, though. Where at UC they played up football and Xavier basketball, Miami presents itself as a hockey school, complete with a tour of their hockey arena. I was not expecting that! The arena was filled with kids who were attending camp.

I’m already a little numb to the tour presentations even after just three. You just get a different version of the same pitch tailored to highlight each school’s strengths. I kind of wish M had specific academic interests so we could do an engineering or business school focused tour rather than these general ones.

M might be numb to them, too. Or maybe it was just the presence of her friend, because it seemed like they were talking to each other more than listening/observing. Although I should give her the benefit of the doubt and figure she was able to take it all in while having a constant conversation.

I saw two big bummers about Miami. First, the sheer difficulty of getting there. While it is right at two hours from Indy, same as the Cincinnati schools, because the final 30 minutes are on county roads, I have some worries about travel if we needed to get there in the winter. Second, while they provide some tuition relief to all students, they aren’t nearly as generous as either UC or Xavier. It isn’t Notre Dame expensive, and we told M if that’s where she really wants to go we can make it work. But it is the most expensive school, after various forms of tuition relief, she plans to visit. Since the school didn’t wow her, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.

What could be an issue for M is how the sororities don’t have their own houses. You still live in the dorms or off-campus housing. Each house has a “suite” where they hold meetings, but they don’t have a true house to call theirs. I guess it all goes back to the old zoning rules that stated any house that had more than X unrelated woman was considered a brothel. You’d think they would update those rules. Also I had to explain to all of my girls what a brothel is.

Oxford is a cool little town, one truly built around the university. I’m not sure it would be much more than a couple traffic lights if the school wasn’t there to anchor it. It is a nice combination of elements: neither tiny nor large; excellent academic reputation; large, beautiful campus; not too far from home but still away.

I think M enjoyed the visit and will probably apply to Miami, but it seems like UC remains her favorite of the three schools she’s visited.

If you follow sports you know the school is always referred to as “Miami of Ohio” to avoid confusing it with the University of Miami in Florida. My favorite shirt I saw – that I totally forgot to take a picture of – was one that said “We were a college before Florida was a state.” That checks out! Miami University was founded in 1809 while Florida gained admittance to the Union in 1845. Crazy!

Wimbledon

Wimbledon used to be a huge part of my late June/early July sports routine. But that faded long ago. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and watched more than a few minutes of a match, even on championship weekend.

Sunday I caught most of the men’s final, between Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios. That was mostly because of how entertaining Kyrgios is. I’m reluctant to use certain terms to describe his behavior because I genuinely do not know if he has mental issues or if he is just one of those super hardcore competitors that loses his mind a little on the court and is basically normal off the court.

Regardless of the cause of his conduct, watching him is a wild ride. Moments of absolutely sublime tennis. But when things go sideways, they go SIDEWAYS. He argues with the umpires. Screams at himself. Berates the people sitting in his box. Complains about people in the stands. Famously, in his round of 32 match, he pushed right up against getting into a physical altercation with his opponent.

You never know what you’re going to get and it makes for thrilling, if sometimes uncomfortable, viewing.

The final had it all. Punishingly powerful tennis from Kyrgios to win the first set. Shots that showed astonishing athleticism, skill, and courage. And then him losing it mentally when he blew two games he was a point away from winning, one a break opportunity at 0–40, another a service game when he was up 40–0. He got a warning from the chair umpire, and engaged him in long diatribes during changeovers. He treated the people in his box like they were responsible for his errors. He described a woman in the stands he believed was heckling him as looking like she had had “about 700 drinks.” It was amazing.

Naturally Djokovic, who isn’t quite as steady as Roger Federer but seems eternally composed in a championship match’s biggest moments, let Kyrgios work himself into a tizzy and then pounced. His 7–3 win in the fourth set tiebreaker was deceptively easy, as Kyrgios seemed mentally checked out by that point.

It was a fine way to spend a Sunday morning.

Miles on the Odometer: College Visits and Weekend Hoops

June 20, 2022 / DB

A long post about a long few days.

Thirteen months into my Audi lease I was in great shape, milage-wise, about 1000 miles lower than where I should be. I pretty much wiped out that deficit over the past few days.

Thursday M and I drove to Cincinnati to take her first college campus visits. We toured the University of Cincinnati and Xavier.

UC is a popular spot for Indy-area students as it offers nearly in-state tuition to most Indiana grads. Xavier always looks to bring in kids from Indianapolis Catholic schools, and is known for being very generous with scholarships. Seemed like a good way to knock out a couple schools on her list in one day.

M really isn’t sure what she wants to study yet, so we didn’t meet with any academic folks. And as her first visits, she had nothing to compare them to. But she loved UC.

It is a much bigger school than I realized, well over 45,000 total students with an undergrad population around 33,000. The main campus is a very tight, two square mile property near downtown. It has some older, traditional college campus buildings, but much of the campus is either brand new or recently renovated, giving it a very modern feel. The football stadium is smack in the middle of campus. You can literally look into it as you’re walking to class.

I think she liked that combination of opportunities that come with having such a large student body without the large physical size of the typical Big Ten campus. She has some friends with siblings at both UC and Xavier, so has heard the area around the UC campus has lots of cool restaurants and shops. It can also get sketchy pretty quick. I thought it was interesting how our tour guide played up the fact that UC has its own police force, the Cincinnati police patrols campus, and there are emergency phones all around if you do ever run into trouble. I guess that’s good info to have, but it also does as much to reinforce the narrative that it isn’t the safest campus as reassure parents that their kids will be safe.

When we were done with the official tour we walked into the Fifth Third Arena where the basketball team plays. There was a boys camp going on and, I swear to God, as we walked through the kids were all chanting, “Let’s go Kansas!” The best we could figure was the camp was divided into groups with names of different college teams, and the Kansas squad was going through drills while the other kids encouraged them. Or they knew I was in the building!

Outside the main doors is a statue of Oscar Robertson. There we found a recruit taking a picture in front it. He was a 6–5 white kid so probably not a high level recruit, but it was kind of cool to see the coaches walking him around. I got a pic with Oscar when the kid was done.

Our tour guide kept making a big deal about how UC is a football school now, which did make me chuckle to myself since that was not the case until a couple years ago. And there were signs and shirts everywhere celebrating UC’s admission to the Big 12. KU playing two hours away from my house isn’t the best reason to send my kid there, but it’s not the worst, either.

Again, this was M’s first college tour. I think she was a little too impressed with some things that were new to her. She thought the dorms were amazing, and we didn’t even see the high level ones. She thought the Bearcat Card, the debit card that works all over campus and at a few off-campus businesses, was the coolest thing ever. I didn’t tell her that I’m sure every school has their own version of that. She’ll probably think other schools are copying off UC when she hears about their payment systems.

After lunch we drove the six miles to Xavier. As I said, there’s a strong connection between Indianapolis Catholic schools and XU. We know a lot of people who went to Xavier or are there now.

While we parked in a big garage at UC and had to walk a few blocks to our meeting point, at XU we just pulled into a small lot in front of the admissions building, like parking at Walgreen’s. I think that immediately turned M off a little, as it didn’t seem very big or special.

The tour was fine, but I could tell she wasn’t into it as much as UC. Afterward when I asked her thoughts, she told me XU felt like a bigger version of Cathedral, and she didn’t want to repeat that experience for the next four years. (Xavier in in the 7000 student range.) I certainly understood that.

Everything about our visit reflected that size. We were in a group of 10 or so kids plus parents at UC. At Xavier we shared a guide with one other girl and her dad. It was a pretty quick walk around campus, and the buildings all seemed a lot older and smaller. The dorms were both far less impressive than UC’s and reminded me of the dorms I lived in at KU. I bet these were built in the 1960s like those old Daisy Hill dorms (RIP McCollum Hall).

I really liked the Jesuit educational concepts that Xavier is built upon, especially their embrace of social justice and a requirement that students do things outside the classroom to make the world a better place.[1] But M can do that at any school, with or without the Jesuits.

Where UC really pushed how they are a football school (now), Xavier plays up how they are a basketball school and the excitement about Sean Miller taking over the program. Our guide took us into the Cintas Center, where a girls camp was in session, and asked if either of the girls liked basketball and M shook her head and pointed at me, “I’m not but he is.” This day wasn’t about me so I just smiled. The guide took the bait, though.

“So what team do you follow?” she asked, I’m sure expecting me to say IU, Purdue, or Butler.

When I told her I went to KU she got excited. “I picked them to win my bracket this year!” I liked her a lot!

Xavier likes to throw money around. If M hits certain deadlines in the admissions process and goes to a local event, the day she is admitted to Xavier her tuition will be basically chopped in half through a series of scholarships.[2] I’m not sure she’s interested enough to pursue any of that seriously, though.

We bought t-shirts at both schools, as Cathedral seniors are allowed to wear college shirts all year instead of uniform shirts. Even though she’s lukewarm on Xavier, she was excited that they also gave her a shirt, so she ended the day with three she can wear to school.

It was a hot day for touring campuses, but I think it was useful. I joked that she was ready to commit to UC right away, like a football recruit overly excited about his first visit, but cautioned her to take some more visits and start learning more about the academics of all the schools she is interested in.

When we got home we nailed down four more visits for the summer. We will go to Miami (OH) and Purdue in July, IU and KU in August. She’s doing KU as a favor to me on our Kansas City trip, but claims she has an open mind about it. We are visiting Miami with one of her best friends, whose dad went there and will serve as our unofficial guide. Marquette has been on her list, but I think if she’s not serious about Xavier there’s no need to waste time on Marquette (although it is 50% bigger than XU). She’s kicked around a few other Big 10 schools, but hasn’t formally moved them onto her list or asked me to look into visits.

It’s pretty crazy to realize how fast this is happening. She just took her first visits, she’ll be sending out applications in a few months, and likely have an acceptance letter or two by Christmas.

Thursday was a long day. I got up at 5:30 in order to be at UC before our 9:00 tour. Friday morning I almost had to get up even earlier for my next trip.

L’s team played in a tournament in Knoxville, TN over the weekend. Originally we were scheduled to play at 11:00 Friday morning. As we had already booked our hotel for Friday and Saturday nights before the schedule came out, we were going to have to get up at 4:30 AM to make it down in time. Luckily the tournament took pity on us and moved things around. We left home at about 8:30 and drove back to Cincinnati, then south through Lexington to Knoxville. Along the way we dodged severe storms. We had to drive through one heavy storm and then through some exceptionally gusty winds. Friends who were 30 minutes behind us had to pull off the road for about 45 minutes because the rain they were in was so heavy.

We made it to the convention center just in time for our first ass-kicking of the weekend. The first three teams we played were all very long, athletic, and just way faster than us. We actually hung with the first opponent for about 10 minutes. Then a girl hit a 30-foot bomb and it kind of destroyed our girls. We were down 10 at halftime but lost by 34. That same girl hit three other 3’s, two of them from NBA range. You just can’t guard that when you’re also struggling to contain girls who are bigger, stronger, faster in the other four spots. L didn’t score in that game.

In game two L hit a 3 to put us up 17–14 just before halftime. The rest of the game was a 30–8 run. Unfortunately we scored the eight points. We just got out-physical-ed and hustled again, and the girls seemed to give up at a certain point. L had seven points, all in the first half. She had a sweet move where she faked a girl, blew by her, scored, and got fouled. Then she missed the free throw. And she got busted by the same move two times on the other end.

Saturday we lost our final pool game by eight. We trailed pretty much the entire contest but put a run on them late to make it interesting. L grabbed a rebound and went full-court to lay it in and cut it to four with just over 3:00 left. A possession later she faked a girl, took two dribbles, and pulled up for a wide-open 15-footer that rimmed out. We never had another chance to cut it to less than four again.

We went to lunch and worried about whether we were going to lose our afternoon bracket game, which would mean we played a late game Sunday. Our girls seemed kind of down and lacking confidence. We hoped we were just in a hellacious pool and that even though we were the #4 in a 3–4 matchup, we would get a weaker team than the ones we played.

We were definitely better than our first tournament opponent. But we seemed rattled by the pressure we faced in the first three games. This team was throwing light pressure at us and we kept getting called for traveling, throwing the ball to the wrong girl, or dribbling into traffic. Just dumb errors made because of indecision. Fortunately they couldn’t score, either. We were up five at half and then something finally clicked. We went on a 30–5 run in the second half to win easily. L had a weird line. She was 0–4 from the field but had four rebounds, four assists, and three steals with no turnovers. She was bummed she didn’t score but I pointed out her other stats and told her she still made an impact on the win.

We had a fun team dinner afterward. The girls were in high spirits and the parents were relieved.

Sunday morning it was back to the convention center for our semifinal. We were playing a team from the south side of Indy, which was kind of funny. On a court next to us two of our program’s fifth grade teams were playing each other.

We started great and had an early 7–2 lead. Then we hit a cold spell and were down six at halftime. That deficit stretched out to 10 midway through the second half. But our girls, for the first time all weekend, fought through the adversity and started clawing back into it. We hit a long 3 with about 3:00 left to tie it. With 14 seconds left we hit two free throws to tie it again. But the other team smartly spread our defense, put the ball in the hands of their best driver, and she hit a layup with four seconds left to give them the win.

We were bummed and happy. Bummed that we lost, but happy that our girls fought hard to come back. And also happy we wouldn’t have to stick around for another three hours for the championship game.

L had a decent weekend. Other than that one game, she didn’t score much. She was a combined 3–7 from the free throw line and hit just the one three. But her shot looked good. I took some pictures at various times and showed them to her after we got home. I wanted her to realize her form is good, she just needs more reps to add consistency. Her knees were barking a little but she looked quick all weekend. Most importantly, she was generally on the court when the team played its best.

Our drive home was long. There was a lot more traffic than Friday, but at least no storms. The approach to Cincinnati is a mess of construction, and it took us a good 45 minutes to go about 15 miles. There was an accident 30 minutes outside Indy that had I–74 crawling. But we made it home safely just in time for a Father’s Day dinner at home with S’s dad and stepmom.

Next week is the final tournament of the official AAU season. I think L is looking forward to some time off.

The lady who did the admissions presentation called the Jesuits “Catholic hippies.” ↩
They explained the process like this: apply by October 1 and get $500, which repeats for four years. Go to a Xavier event in Indy, get $1000, which also repeats for four years. Then your acceptance letter will include a scholarship that will range between $15,000 and $26,000, also good for four years. College tuition is a weird racket. ↩

Big Steps Ahead

February 4, 2021 / DB

We have reached the point in our home where college is not some far-off thing in our kids’ lives that we are casually planning for. It is approaching rapidly, and we are beginning to think much more seriously about the concept.

M took the PSAT in the fall and ever since has received daily multiple brochures and letters from colleges. At first she was thrilled. The modern touch of the school creating a custom URL that included her name was an especially flattering. But she’s grown bored with them – “They all say the same thing” – and barely looks at them anymore.

Yesterday she met with her school counselor to plan out her last two years of high school and start putting some thoughts on paper about college. In addition to the PSAT, which she did really well on, she took a personality/preferences test recently that spit out some areas of employment she might want to explore. Her results suggested kindergarten teacher, therapist/counselor, and CEO. That’s quite a range! I like to think it demonstrates that she is both empathetic and can get shit done.

When we ask, she never really expresses an interest in a particular direction. I’ve said for years she should go to law school since she loves to talk and argue. She’s always rejected that, “I don’t want to be an attorney.” I pointed out our many friends with law degrees who don’t practice law, and how law school can be a tool to open up pretty much any career track.

But we have to figure out undergrad before we can think about post-graduate work or career path.

The sheet we got back from the counselor also had some early ideas for what colleges to research. M’s been saying for a couple years she wants to live in a true college town and go to a bigger school. Yet the first schools on the list were Marquette, St. Joseph’s, and DePaul. None of them are big schools and none of them are in small college towns. There must be some bias in the test toward Catholic schools.

After those was listed a group of Big 10 schools – IU, Purdue, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State – and Ohio University.

To this point she’s only mentioned two schools that intrigue her: Alabama and Wisconsin. There is a surprisingly large swath of kids from Indy who end up in Tuscaloosa. I wouldn’t be thrilled about out-of-state tuition in the south, but it would be fun to go to a football game down there. One of her best friends has family in Wisconsin, and her older sister just decided to go to school in Madison, thus the attraction there.

When I was her age I pretty much knew I was going to KU, so I didn’t invest much time or effort into the process. That got upended when we moved to California during my sophomore year. UCLA was my dream school, but locals told me A) unless I had a perfect GPA (I did not) there was no way I would get in and B) living in LA was crazy expensive, so I should be prepared to have no money if I went there.

I adjusted and ordered some materials from a few other UC schools. When I saw the pictures of dorms a few yards from the beach at UC Santa Barbara I knew that’s where I wanted to go. Had we stayed in California, I’m guessing that’s where I would have ended up, although I wonder if I would have explored public schools in neighboring states to combat the cost of living price of Cali.

Fortunately we moved back to Kansas City after a year and going to KU became plan A, UMKC plan B.

M has rocked her first year-and-a-half of high school. She has a >4.0 GPA, she’s in student government, and has a couple extracurriculars that she enjoys. She has a weekend job and does most of her service hours at a food bank. It seems like she knows just about everything that’s going on around campus, too.

She already has a better resume than I ever had. While I would prefer she end up at IU or Purdue for financial reasons, I’m proud she has a lot more options than I did.

I Trust This Won’t Affect My Grade

August 11, 2010 / DB

I have a longer Required Reading post in the works, but this link deserves its own entry.

Professors: Hot at Their Own Risk examines the challenges that attractive academics face.

The idea of appealing educators being harassed by their students seems a little gross as I approach 40. When I was in college, though, there was always that hope at the beginning of each semester that one of my classes would be taught by a hottie. As best as I can remember, it only happened once.

The graduate student who taught one of my Spanish classes was a looker. She was smart, funny, spoke four languages, had a cool sounding name, and her looks were right up my alley. Since I had trouble talking to random girls at bars or parties, there was no way I could pull off making a move on Senorita Dias. But over the semester, we established a nice rapport so there was always that tiny chance that perhaps we would run into each other out on the town and one thing could lead to another.

I know, this from the guy who walked right by the hot TV anchor he was in love with when she was staring at him a few years later.

Anyway, as I tended to do back then, I skipped a number of classes over the semester and missed some assignments. Since she was a student herself, and super cool, she opened her office at the end of the semester for everyone to come in and complete all their missed assignments after our final oral exam. When I arrived for my presentation, one of my friends from class was in the corner knocking out all of his missed assignments. This both put me at ease and gave me a shot of confidence: he struggled in class so I was going to seem fluent in comparison.

The exam was basically a conversation. The instructor would ask a question to start and our job was to carry on a conversation, completely in Spanish, for 5-10 minutes. I was in the zone! I was conjugating verbs correctly, remembering obscure words, and so on. It was going great.

I finished up and swapped places with my buddy. I worked through all my missed assignments as he struggled to put more than three words together correctly. From time-to-time our teacher gave him permission to ask me for help. I was both being generous and padding my grade!

His exam ended, he left, and I wrapped up my make-up work. The teacher said something about having missed her bus. I had driven to campus that day and offered her a ride. She seemed a bit nervous but accepted. We walked to my car and talked about our plans for the holidays. At one point she tripped over a coat hanger that was lying on the sidewalk, getting her feet caught inside. She was either very clumsy or very nervous. Was she nervous because she was hanging out with a student, or because she was interested in me, too?

We got to my car, I drove her home, we said our goodbyes, and I never saw her again. Naturally. I know a normal guy would have made some kind of move, either seeing what she was doing before she left for home or giving her a call when the new semester started. Not me, the champion of failing to pursue romantic opportunities.

“I never thought something like this could happen to a guy like me, but…”

There’s no doubting I would have blown it, but who doesn’t at least smile and say hello? Me, that’s who.

❖