The leaves stand up in the ground like sparrows, the smell of almost-damp grass rises up to my nostrils. I lay belly-down on Sage Lawn, my heart thudding in time to the rustle of the campus notices a few yards away. I have just trekked up more stairs in half an hour than I have in the previous nineteen years of my life.
Rensselaer has a sort of sterile loneliness to it, that sterility that seems to always accompany science. But then again, this comes from the point of view of an international studies major from northwest Ohio. It’s been years since I climbed a real hill, and any scientific concept goes as far over my head as the copper roofs dotting RPI’s campus.
Sitting in a biology class, instructed by an overly-enthusiastic professor, I continue to draw an opinion of this university.
The room is frightful. Orange carpet, off-white walls, and goldenrod seats; I have somehow been coerced into a late 1970’s bowling alley. I keep expecting the disco-ball-like speakers that hang from the ceiling to begin rotating and glinting. The professor raises his arm in an unconscious imitation of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. It’s really quite charming.
Suddenly, this excitable professor goes from ovaries to mosquitoes. He polls the class, asking how many of us would like to die from the West Nile virus. We’re not in Ohio anymore, Toto.
An aura of intellect permeates the crisp, autumn air at RPI. The sound of constant typing echoes like the click of red hawk talons. I am introduced to “The Approach” with its proud Ionic columns. (That’s not Ionic as in ions for all you chemistry freaks.) I am taken on a search for an albino squirrel. I learn about the founder of Texas Instruments. Absolutely thrilling.
Diagrams, charts, species’ names in Latin; I develop a healthy respect for the RPI student, from whom I feel so far removed. I am used to debating the origin of the Sphinx, and philosophical discussions about foreign relations. The average student here stays up late studying polymorphism, and wondering if his equation is balanced.
I say pop, you say soda. You go to Intro. to Biology, I attend Spanish Civilization. I begin to realize that it is not so much a different college I attend, but a different world entirely.
RPI has its own unique culture, which I perhaps don’t comprehend. I am willing to keep an open mind, though. I don’t feel completely comfortable here, but I respect the beauty of your campus, and the impact your studies will have on the world. If RPI were a person, I would not hug him good-bye, but I’d certainly give him a hearty handshake. I don’t believe that he’d have it any other way.
