North by Northwestern

I decided to make a brief flashback to my college visit to Northwestern for my last blog post of the semester. I visited over Spring Break this year (2012) and was overly impressed with what I saw. We arrived there (Evanston, IL) around 6P.M. in the evening on a delightful Saturday afternoon. It was somewhat dark, so we decided to postpone actually walking around campus until our scheduled tour the next day. Instead, we parked a few blocks from the heart of campus in what reminded me of an upscale botique version of UIUC's notorious Green St. In this area, we found what look to be a lively Asian restaurant with a modern look. The place was packed. We waited for a short while before being seated. What followed was perhaps the best Thai/Korean/Chinese meal of my life. The food was excellent. The restaurant was called Joy Yee Noodle, and it pretty well set the tone for the rest of my tour of campus: a combination of expected and unexpected.

Our campus tour began the next day with a hasty trip from our hotel 25 minutes away to the parking garage on Hinman Avenue in the beautiful Chicago neighbor of Evanston. The neighborhood surrounding Northwestern was anything but the covertly concealed squalor around UChicago.

Our tour guide was an engineering major, who had also at one point been a pre-med major. She was doing a unique 5-year, extremely rigorous program that allows students to choose to work in an actual engineering firm during their fifth year, as part of an agreement between the company and the university, and if the company likes you, chances are you'll be asked to stay on after you graduate.

I was impressed by a number of other things at Northwestern besides the campus and academic climate. On my list of notable features were the numerous recreation centers, beautiful lab facilities, class-act performing arts center/art museum, and steep traditions. I always love when a school has traditions, because that's something that spans the oft-growing generational gap. Our Northwestern tour guide introduced us to the ritual of 'painting the rock,' which is exactly what is says. Basically, there's a large rock close to the old Main Hall of the university. It's lit up at night, and different organizations post guards around the rock, while other members of the organization paint it to celebrate some event, day, or other activity on campus.

Another thing I've come to look at on college campuses is the union. I'm not really sure where I'll end up doing the majority of my studying, but I definitely want to have places scoped out before I come to the school to do so. Conveniently enough, Northwestern's student union overlooks Lake Michigan and sprawls behind a large expanse of green space and running trails which separate it from the lake.

Finally, the one other thing that I think of, reflecting on my trip to Northwestern (and perhaps its just because winter is approaching) is that it gets some major snow. Yes, that lovely snow, which has for a year and a half now been eluding Champaign-Urbana. It's been a dismal month of November and December, thus far, without snow.

To the left is University Hall (old Main), which serves somewhat as the center of campus.
Overall, I loved Northwestern. One of my best friends siblings went there and really enjoyed her four years in a 'healthy living' dormitory. And I could definitely see myself passing my undergraduate years researching at the medical school or running along the lake or painting the rock.