casual college tours {my alma mater}

 I thought life came at me fast when I had three kids three and under.  Little did I know that time hits something that would put the Milenum Falcon doing the Kessel Run look slow when you have six kids in the tween/teen stage.  

And so we find ourselves adding "casual self tours of college campuses" to our list of "Covid outings" during this season of life.  

west, my freshman dorm. it seemed old then...it seems really old now; especially to my kids.
the girls were horrified to learn there were just two bathrooms on the entire hall

Thus far we've walked ASU, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke and now Elon.  The first two were random wanderings, at Duke we did the Let's Roam Scavenger Hunt and of course at my Alma Mater I was able to serve as a tour guide and give historical antidotes from the early 90s.

sophomore dorm, this time a suite consisting of two rooms that shared a jack and jill bathroom.
great except when your suite mates frequently went home for the weekend and would forget to unlock the door...

Overall it was a great afternoon.  While they didn't have loads of questions, the kids were rather attentive as I reminisced about my time on campus, pointing out "my windows" in my dorms and giving memories of certain lessons or professors as we passed by academic buildings or even recounting all the times the fountain got "sudsed."  

Of course part of the reason everyone stayed all smiles could have been the size of campus.  When we finished walked the entire "up campus" the kids...even my most reluctant walkers...were like, "wait, that's all?  It's so small."  We had to laugh as we compared some aspects of our two college experiences...my largest lecture class was in my major and had 42 students.  Ian's at VT was his chemistry lecture and it had just over 400.  Of course VT has more students in the freshman class than Elon has in all, so... (and Elon has more than doubled since I was there in the 90s)

(as a sidenote, i still wonder why anyone ever did put suds in it.  it's not like we ever celebrated a national championship or anything...heck, we didn't even have a football stadium on campus back in those days

The moment that caught me off guard though was the quick glance at my big girl as I realized just how easily she could be mistaken for an underclassman as she sat assuredly in the gazebo near the dorms I lived in.  It's not going to be that much longer until we're moving her in somewhere and I'm going to have to find the strength to walk away.  

To shake that thought it was time to end my walk down memory lane (I'd only been back once since graduation) and head off to Smitty's for some ice cream.  

Who knows if any of the crew will decide to become a Phoenix ~  or a Hokie for that matter, a trip to Blacksburg is in the works for later this year.  But at least they're all starting to get the feel for what type of campus appeals to them; large/small, urban/rural, hilly/flat.  

And I had to smile when one of the crew said, "Now I see what you meant when you said that when you saw Elon it was what college was supposed to look like."   I'd love for any of them to be legacy, but let's work on getting a scholarship kiddo...