College Series - Belgorod State University

Lately it's been a "Paucity of Postcards" rather than a "Plethora of Postcards".  It's been a crazy summer with lots of house guests and a new job!  But back to the college series....

Here's a university I  had never heard of (or the town either):  Belgorod State University (BSU?).  It is located in Belgorod Oblast, which is in the southern part of Russia, on the border with Ukraine. [Note:  "oblast" is an administrative division in slavic countries.  This is not the same as "state", but rather more like "zone", "province", "area" or "region".]

Belgorod State University is quite large, with 89 departments.  It is known for its program dedicated to teaching Russian, both on campus and around the world.  Looks beautiful!

College Series - Loyola Marymount

Haven't posted any colleges for a while, and in this month of college graduations, perhaps I should.

My niece just graduated from Loyola Marymount (LMU), located in Los Angeles.  She was (and still is) a deejay for the campus radio station, KXLU, which she tells me is known as one of the best campus radio stations in the country.  I take her word for it!  One thing the station is known for is a program "Demolistens", in which only demo tapes are played.  The station claims it was the first to air the music of more than a few of today's top bands.  (Here's a link to my niece's  play lists.)

For spring vacation, each year for four years, my niece would bring a friend or two and come stay with us in San Francisco.  On the last visit, with two of her radio station pals, Ali and Pascal, they left me a KXLU snuggie.  It's black with a tasteful, if too small, KXLU logo on it.   One of the best house guest presents of all time!

College Series - Georgetown

Regular readers and friends know that one of my sons attends Georgetown University.   He fell in love with the school within minutes of visiting the campus.

The postcard above shows one of the reasons why:  it's an absolutely beautiful campus with old brick and stone buildings (described by Wiki as collegiate Gothic and Georgian brick architecture) sitting on a hilltop above the Potomac River In Washington, DC and overlooking the Washington Monument.  It's small enough that you can get to know every corner of the campus.  One of the most famous corners is the "Exorcist Steps".  Several scenes in the movie "The Exorcist" were shot on campus, including the one in which the priest falls down the stairs. 

Georgetown is the oldest Catholic university (Jesuit) in the United States, and was also the first to bring on a full-time rabbi (1968) and full-time imam (1999).   At the time of its founding, Catholics were not admitted to most American universities, and the founder, John Carroll, had a vision for a university that was "to be open to 'every class of citizens'and students of 'every religious profession.'"

Part of the attraction of Georgetown is its location in Washington, DC.  My son attended the inauguration of Barack Obama, the concert on the mall a couple of days before the inauguration, and has a goal of visiting every free museum in Washington before  he graduates.  There are 17 Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, DC, including the American Indian Museum, the Portrait Gallery, the Air & Space Museum, the Postal Museum, and the Natural History Museum.  ALL offer free admission.

Side note:  My son is a football player at Georgetown and the football team's record is 2-1 after coming off two miserables seasons.  Yesterday, they lost to Yale in the last play of the game.  Considering Yale is in the higher level Ivy League (D-1) and Georgetown is in the Patriot League (D-1AAA), this is actually reason for celebration!

College Series - Dartmouth

What a beautiful campus Dartmouth is.  I've only been there once, really just driving through, but it was fall, and the big open "green" was surrounded by trees losing their yellow, orange and red leaves and filled with students scurrying to and fro in colder weather clothes, providing a glimpse of the quintessential New England college experience, at least per the stereotype of my west coast perspective.

Established in 1769, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. 

It is perhaps most famous for the movie "Animal House", which although filmed at the University of Oregon in Eugene, was actually based on the experiences of one of the coauthors from his days in a fraternity at Dartmouth.   Just visiting the Wiki and reading the list of cast members is enough to get me giggling, all over again.  It's hard for me to pick a favorite scene from this movie, but Belushi (Bluto) sneaking into one of the buildings on campus, when he jumps from side to side looking to see who is watching, is probably my favorite.

College Series - California Institute of Technology

My first job out of college was as a technical typist at Caltech, formally known as California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California.  I was working there and living at my parent's house to save money to go traveling in Latin America. The campus is beautiful - a mix of modern and less modern, often Spanish style, buildings, and a wide variety of vegetation. In the courtyards of more than one of the Spanish buildings are orange trees, and when they bloom in the early spring, the sweet fragrance wafts over the entire campus. Baxter Hall, which is the building in the postcard above, is the building where I worked.

Caltech is the west coast MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), with super smart, math and science oriented students, who are proud of their nerd orientation.  One of the great traditions of the school is senior ditch day, described by the Wiki as follows:

On Ditch Day, the seniors ditch school, leaving behind elaborately designed tasks and traps at the doors of their rooms to prevent underclassmen from entering. Over the years this has evolved to the point where many seniors spend months designing mechanical, electrical, and software obstacles to confound the underclassmen. Each group of seniors designs a "stack" to be solved by a handful of underclassmen. The faculty have been drawn into the event as well, and cancel all classes on Ditch Day.

Caltech is famous not only for their brilliant scientists, multiple Nobel prize winning professors,  and Einstein's time on campus, but also for their pranks.  Many of the pranks are directed toward MIT, but their two most famous pranks involved the Rose Bowl, which is also located in Pasadena.  Per the Wiki:

The two most famous in recent history are the changing of the Hollywood Sign to read "Caltech", by judiciously covering up certain parts of the letters, and the changing of the Rose Bowl scoreboard to an imaginary game where Caltech beat MIT 99-0. But the most famous of all occurred during the 1961 Rose Bowl Game, where Caltech students altered the flip-cards that were raised by the stadium attendees to display "Caltech", and several other "unintended" messages. This event is now referred to as the Great Rose Bowl Hoax.

My job was working for several professors in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.  All this was pre word processing and computers, and as most of the professors were engaged in some form of econometric modeling (the economists) or voter choice behavior (the political scientists), all the papers I typed involved complicated equations, complete with a variety of numbers and symbols.   I was really good at this, both because I have always been a speedy typist and also because I took a fair amount of calculus in college and actually knew the symbols involved.

As first jobs out of college go, it was a great one.  The departmental politics were astounding.  The dalliances that went on were surprising.  I was lucky enough to get invited most Fridays to the faculty/grad student lounge, and sit at tables with brilliant scientists and grad students, drinking beer, listening to fascinating discussions, observing heated debates, and watching the huge variety of shenanigans that went on.  It was a blast.

Perhaps the most surprising time was when what I had thought was yet another Caltech "urban legend" turned out to be real.  I had heard rumors of a radio scientist who dressed like Robin Hood, a brilliant man who was perhaps a bit off, at least relative to your average man on the street.  I didn't believe this until one day, leaving work, a man walked right by me, complete with tunic, tights, pointed shoes and a felt Robin Hood hat.   Just one of many "only at Caltech" types of moments.

P.S.  It's Postcard Friendship Friday.  Check it out.

College Series - Harvard University

Harvard University is the oldest "institute of higher learning" in the U.S., and, interestingly, the first chartered corporation.  Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is considered one of the top universities in the both the country and the world.  This year, the university admitted less than 7% of the applicants for the 2014 graduating class.

Here's a couple random tidbits about Harvard you might not be aware of:

1. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any university in the world:  25.6 BILLION US dollars.

2. Harvard was not officially co-ed until 1977, although before 1977 women at Radcliffe were allowed to take classes at Harvard.  From the Wiki:

"During World War II, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement which allowed women to attend classes at Harvard for the first time, officially beginning joint instruction in 1943. From 1963, Radcliffe students received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard, and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally, and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The schools' departments of athletics merged shortly thereafter."

3.  Harvard is considered a liberal institution.  Over the years, there have been some memorable references by conservative pundits and presidents.  From the Wiki:

"Conservative author William F. Buckley, Jr. quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty,  Richard Nixon famously referred to Harvard as the "Kremlin on the Charles" around 1970, and Vice President George H.W. Bush disparaged what he saw to be Harvard's liberalism during the 1988 presidential election."

4.  It wasn't until 2002 that the little known "Secret Court of 1920" was "outed".  The Secret Court refers to a committee which was formed to investigate charges of homosexual activity among the student population in May and June of 1920.  More than 30 interviews were conducted  behind closed doors and eight students, a recent graduate, and an assistant professor were expelled or had their association with the university severed.

Let's face it - if your kid gets into Harvard, it would be difficult not to be tempted to slip this information into a conversation, any chance you get.  

P.S.  A shout out to my friend Sasha, a sophomore at Harvard, for sending me this card!

College Series - Trinity College at University of Oxford

It's September, back to school month, and it seems appropriate to feature a few colleges.   NOTE:  Would love college/university postcards from anybody, not just students.

First up, Trinity College at University of Oxford.  My son attended a Georgetown University summer program here.  The back of the postcard states "This is where I stayed".  Wow. 

Founded in 1555, the formal name of Trinity College is "The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope (Knight)" and it is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England.  Unlike most Oxford constituent colleges, it is surrounded by an iron fence rather than a wall, and features four major quadrangles, and a large lawn and gardens.  Given its size, the college is relatively small in terms of student numbers, with about 400 students.

I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but the colors of Trinity College (each constituent college has their own colors, or academic scarves) are the same as the school colors of Georgetown University, blue and grey.

Walla Walla Onions

We passed through Walla Walla, Washington during July's whirlwind road trip to Missoula and back in six days. According to the locals, it is the new "Bend, Oregon" - a town that is relatively far removed from anything else, but that is kind of hip and cool. We only stopped for lunch there, but the downtown was way more than just okay.

I've long been aware of Walla Walla for two reasons:

1. My college roommate's boyfriend (now husband of many years) attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, and in those days we often referred to him as Walla Walla. (Side note: The official mascot of Whitman College is the "Fighting Missionaries" which, although controversial due to its implied imperialistic bent, did inspire one of the all time great college cheers: "Missionaries, Missionaries, We're on Top".  Oh, how I wish I had looked harder for a Whitman College postcard!.)

2. The sweet onions. There are three well-known brands of sweet onions: Walla Walla Sweet Onions from Washington state, Vidalia Onions from southern Georgia, and Maui Onions from Hawaii. I imagine in onion circles there is much debate over which is sweeter, better, easier to cook with, etc. as well as the potental for significant trademark infringement and branding issues.

Anybody have an opinion one way or the other? Does an onion debate even exist?

College Series - North Georgia College

 

Now here's a college I hadn't heard of before one of my fellow postcard bloggers sent me this card: North Georgia College. Turns out North Georgia College (here's its official website) is "renowned for its ROTC and is designated as The Military College of Georgia and The Leadership Institution of Georgia. It is one of six senior military colleges in the United States."

Learn something new every day!

College Series - University of Washington

Haven't posted any colleges or universities lately, so here's one from The University of Washington, home of the Huskies. This card has to be from 1950 or earlier, given that the current stadium has two roofs (see here) and the second roof was added in 1950. 

It's been a very busy month, and I confess to feeling liberated from my commitment to post every day. I haven't posted since Monday of this week and miss it, and don't want to get out of the habit. I think the Mystery Sender is feeling the same way, as the back of this card (sent by the Mystery Sender) says "More often lately I see it's the end of the day and time to rush off a card.  Been out of the loop for a few days and don't want to miss another.  Peace."  I may not have mentioned before that the Mystery Sender always signs the cards with "Peace."

Today is Postcard Friendship Friday, and you can see a variety of postcard blogs by clicking here.  A couple weeks ago on a Friday, I posted a series of cards from a young man who was trying to get a job at my company.  If you missed it or missed the comments, this post got quite a lot of response.  In fact, there is a comment from the sender of the series of cards himself.    Check it out here.

The College Series

Haven't posted anything to the college series for a while.  This one comes from our friend, Tara, who is spending the semester in Copenhagen.

You hear most often of students abroad in Italy or Spain or England or Australia.  I don't blame them - I'd love to spend a semester in any (or all!) of those places.

But I think Tara's experience will be more different than most.  And I think she is brave for going for that difference.

New Orleans

Regular readers know that I send postcards to many of my sons' friends, freshmen and sophomores in college and most away from home for the first time. I do this for three reasons: 1) so they have something in their mail boxes - who doesn't like to get mail? 2) to remind them where they are from - in hopes they will want to come home sometime, and 3) to ask them to send me a postcard from their college, so I can include it in my "colleges/universities" sub-collection.

This postcard is an example of another reason I keep doing this. It is from our friend who goes to college at Tulane University. He loves it there, but it is a long way from San Francisco. It's the p.s. that makes it all worthwhile: "Whenever I get homesick, it's been nice seeing your cards. Thanks!" Made my day.

Colleges & Universities

I was gone for six days, and during that time received five postcards from colleges and universities: University of Montana, University of North Carolina, Lehigh University, New York University and University of San Francisco.

Three of the five show the campus bell tower, a prominent fixture on many college campuses. In fact, there is a website showing many of the most prominent. Check it out here.

Colleges & Universities - Lehigh University

My friend Carla, with the qmuse blog, went to see her son's lacrosse game at Lehigh University. I relate to what she said - "oh, to go back to college". It would be nice to go back to college, but it would be even better to go back knowing what we know now, but somehow being age 18. That requires about 15 exclamation points. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Colleges & Universities - New York University

If I were applying to college as a high school senior right now, NYU might be one of my choices. How incredibly exciting to live in New York City, in a college embedded in its streets. My friend, Griffin, moved from Carmel, California, a place of fog and beaches, surfers and artists, and small coastal community charm, to New York City, with its oft-described noise and energy and dirt and action. Wow.

Colleges & Universities - University of Montana

It's not just younger people who are going off to college: my friend, Claire, is applying to graduate school in social work (hospice care) at the University of Montana. In the meantime, she and Steve are enjoying attending the always sold out Grizzly football games, especially since I gave her the fox hat I bought in Russia.

Colleges & Universities - University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Our neighbor, Maria, transferred from SF State to University of North Carolina this Fall. What a brave and exciting move! She appears to be taking advantage of every moment and every aspect of UNC.

Colleges & Universities - University of San Francisco

My niece is a freshman at USF - University of San Francisco. I'm pretty sure she likes it a lot so far. How could somebody from LA not love living in San Francisco for the first time?

Sending the Youngest Son Off to College

Big day today. Leaving soon to drive my youngest son, Clinton, to the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon to begin his freshman year at college.

The postcard on the left shows the Lillis Business Complex. If I remember correctly, it is a completely green building. On the right is Hayward Field, one of, if the not the best, track stadiums in the country. Clinton's dorm is right across the street from this stadium (the one you can see from the overhead shot of the stadium).

Poignant, sad, exciting, proud, scared - all these emotions and more are ones I'm feeling. I imagine his feelings are similar, at least the excitement part. U of O is on the quarter system and begins so much later than almost all other colleges and universities - it's made for what's felt like a very l-o-n-g September, particularly for him. He can't wait to get there, and start his new life!

My friend, Carla, wrote about the experience of dropping her son off to college, and articulated the whole process much better than I could. Read "It Feels Like Fall Today -- It's Time".

Colleges and Universities

I send postcards to my son and his friends, many of whom are in college outside of California. One of the benefits of sending postcards is sometimes people send you one back. Here are a couple I received from two college freshmen to whom I send cards, one at Boston College, one at Cornell. I love the comment on the Cornell postcard (on the right) that says "without the snow". Written like a true Californian, getting his first taste of a New York state winter.

These postcards have inspired me to add an additional section to my postcard collection: colleges and universities. Don't have many yet, but someday....