So I’m in The Pub and it’s packed with prospective students drinking for free. I recognize the excited/confused faces, the plastic cups, and the pitchers of the cheapest beers on tap that are everywhere.
I was just one of these people.
I mean, it was like ten minutes ago that I was visiting this campus and swearing I’d never attend this school, that I was going to S.U.N.Y. to study Turkey instead. Now I’m here, I live here, I know where everything is, I’ve been to The Pub dozens of times, I’ve got the world’s coolest girlfriend and the world’s most ex-marine student advisor and a littered-up and acceptably decked out room at International House, where I was once sure that there was no way to erase the blandness of the place.
Now I’m sitting here with a laptop, a book and a beer, not the lonely visitor but with a dozen friends I could call to join me for a beer but won’t because that’s how bored I am with them all already. Now the visitors look at me and think: “So there’s a University of Chicago student. Jesus, he’s in a bar and he’s got a book and a laptop. What a weird place. I wonder what he studies.”