I’ve never been to Albany before. Truthfully, I consider it a small miracle that I knew it was the capital of New York before venturing up. Regardless of my professed ignorance about the physical location of your school, I did have a plethora of preconceived notions about what RPI was, what it stood for, and what kind of people went there.

What perturbed me before I came up was the fact that it seemed like the Princeton Review was kinder to the student body than, well ... the student body. Student reviewers not only emphasized but dramatized the culture on campus as all work and no play, and, try as I might, I couldn’t sense any school pride.

But arriving on campus was a completely different story. The people I met were nothing but welcoming, and while they did come across as intelligent and driven, there was none of the ostentatious elitism I was expecting from a top-rated engineering school. Rather, the dominating mentality had more camaraderie than cutthroat competition. Maybe I should be scared that the first thing out of a couple people’s mouths when I met them was “I’ve had the hardest week of my life,” but I’m pretty sure it was all in good fun, and everyone seems to be in the same boat. From what I saw, you’re never at a loss for people to help pick you up and face another day.

Sure, there were some awkward interactions that made me painfully aware that I was, after all, on a predominantly engineering campus, but heck— there are awkward kids everywhere, and they’re not all engineers. I may never understand the allure of indoor infrared-guided helicopters, and though I’m not particularily enraptured with plastic injection molding, people are passionate, and why bother going through life without doing something you love? I can appreciate their passion, even if it is, in a conventional sense, “geeky.”

While on your campus, I was lucky enough to go to an ice hockey game. Granted, y’all got your egos handed to you by a bunch of 17-year-olds, but I would dare anyone to go to one of those games and say there isn’t school pride. I was there on a holiday and there was still a pretty formidable turn out. Plus, the cheering and shouting from the stands whenever a goal was made (I think I saw a mini-mosh pit forming), or the goalie making a sick save, was anything but halfhearted.

I hope I get a chance to come back and see what happens with RPI’s initiative to expand from a purely engineering institution to a multidisciplinary university. I go to a school that has pretty decent engineering, science, and humanities programs, and I love having friends whose specialties are far removed from my own. But that being said, I also got to see how at RPI, opportunities for aspiring engineers are far more readily available than at my campus. I think everyone I talked to had had some kind of baller internship, and for those students looking to get into the job force, the people who went to your career fairs had way more success than some people I know. I guess, at the end of the day, what I’m saying is that although change is good, I’m personally a little jealous because you have a great thing going.

So, true story: I’m not scared of engineers/engineering schools anymore.

Roxi Radi