2005-05-14 - 5:53 p.m.
My first year back in school here, I used to tell myself out loud almost every day �it�s gonna be alright�. I can�t even begin to describe the doubt and the fear I had. What the hell am I doing here? I�m 31 (well, 28 when I started). I have MS. I already proved myself an academic train wreck the first time I was in college.
Although I still have to reassure myself sometimes, I�ve come to understand that it really is alright. Older resumed undergraduates are really accepted here (we�re about 1% of the student body). We�re not quite rock stars to regular-age undergrads, but they do seem to think we�re pretty cool. Faculty too, who generally think it�s kind of neat to teach students who aren�t just 18-22.
People sometimes ask me why I didn�t go back to Harvard. Do I feel I�m �stepping down�? Well, first of all, there are several reasons I didn�t go back to Harvard. They don�t really have older students (few traditional colleges do) and I didn�t want to be the only guy in class losing his hair. While Harvard does have a Graduate School of Design, they don�t have an urban planning or studies concentration at the undergraduate level and I knew that this was what I wanted to go back to school to learn about.
Perhaps most importantly, Harvard can eat a dick. They were not very nice to me when I was 18. I saw no reason to come crawling back at 28. It�s funny how Harvard has such a peculiar resonance with a lot of people. You just invoke the name and they hear choral music and envision pearly gates and ivory towers, which doesn�t happen with equivalent schools. Part of this is because Harvard spends a lot of energy just, well, being Harvard. Promoting their reputation. Actually running a college is almost secondary at this point. They could just sell T-shirts and collect grants.
Brown is just another top college, another Ivy League school without as many billions. Oh sure, it�s a joke on The Simpsons. Otto the stoner bus driver went to Brown. Lisa has a nightmare that Harvard rejects her application and passes it along to Brown. Ha ha. (It might be noted that many Simpsons writers are Harvard alums and don�t bother to pick on Cornell or Dartmouth.) And Brown is the lowest ranked Ivy in U.S. News and World Report, whose rankings are of course God�s own objective truth.
When I first started here and the annual college ranking issue came out, I was accosted by another resumed undergraduate. Raised abroad (Persian, although I think she grew up in like Uzbekistan, not Iran), she was quite irate and demanded to know why Brown was only fourteenth (or whatever we were that year). I asked if she had any idea how many colleges there were in America. I said I didn�t either, but it�s in the thousands and she really shouldn�t stress about feeling scientifically placed below someplace else.
What is the best college? The one that�s right for you. This is something that an awful lot of high schoolers haven�t quite figured out. They get dazzled by �prestige� and �reputation� and yes, the goddamn U.S. News rankings. My little cousin is starting at Washington University in St. Louis next fall. I don�t really know how she feels about it, but I think it will suit her well, if only because it�s far away from her family in Jersey that I think she needs to get away from.
Reading this over, I�m annoyed that I even vaguely seem like I�m justifying my school or mounting some sort of defense. I love this place, I really do. Last summer, I met a beefy Puerto Rican guy at the Xxodus Caf� bar. He was a Brown alum and had gotten the school seal tattooed on his arm. I was unexpectedly touched. I know what he means.
Brown has been exceptional for me. I�ve loved being here. I am six figures in debt now from school loans and it�s been worth every penny. Sometimes I wonder why I didn�t go here at 18. (I actually know the reason for this. I didn�t even apply because you had to write your admission essay by hand. I was creeped out that they�d do some sort of graphological analysis, rejecting me because I loop my I�s too broadly or something.) But as I�ve said, college is wasted on the young, or at least it was wasted on me when I was young, and I appreciate being in school so much more now than I ever did then.
I�m graduating in a few weeks. I think I�m going to make it. This final lap is painful, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And after commencement? Well, I�ve learned life just goes on and this is a beautiful thing. It�s going to be all right.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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