Now that I have read other spring break blog posts, I felt slightly inspired to write a little about my own. I actually spent this year’s trip going with a friend to Southern California. In past years I have always been at various ski races, waking up at the crack of dawn to put on layers of jackets to then spend the break not getting a tan. I couldn’t get all the way away from this though, since I still spent the last four days here in MN racing, but I was able to get away for most of it (and ended up with a burn not a tan).
In SoCal I went to visit a few friends that weren’t on spring break. I stayed at Azusa Pacific University and Chapman University for a couple of nights each, which was very fun (and cheap for me!). Overall I really enjoyed each of their schools but they had a much different feel than what we have here at St. Olaf. It took a bit to understand, but it was a part of that same feeling that ultimately caused me to choose St. Olaf. The causation for these vibes ended up being the campuses.
At Azusa Pacific University there are two main campuses in which the students are bused between. The two seemed very isolated from one another, one containing most of the Freshman Dorm life, while the other consisted of the academic buildings. That caused a feeling of separation of school from the rest of life. The two areas just created different vibes. At Chapman the campus was much smaller and condensed due to California land space. There weren’t as many open quads or nature filled areas. People did not tend to “hang out” in localized areas like I find at St. Olaf. Instead a focus of campus was the dorm buildings or academic buildings themselves or apartment complexes for upperclassmen.
Basically what I gathered from these visits was that landscape plays a much bigger role in overall vibes such as the community aspect than I ever could believe. I know we spent a lot of time covering landscape as a topic last semester but this was the clearest way I have ever seen this concept. Each school’s campus was different. None were necessarily better than the other, as there were both positive points and negative points to each style, but it was clear they all created different atmospheres.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteYou too demonstrate that there is no getting away from AmCon! And you also show us that sometimes comparison offers a clear view of something we've struggled to see. The difference between St. Olaf and these other two campuses certainly seems to have consolidated something you (and we) paid attention to in the fall.
LDL
DeAne,
ReplyDeleteThe idea of place really did effect that trip. When I went to these campuses, at first it was hard to point to causes for the different "feelings" they gave of "college". Most were minor, but the location was a crucial part, as well as the layouts and building styles (even where dorm hallways were located or student union centers).
I even found myself talking to my parents and a close friend from home about this. I even found myself explaining what I have learned through first semester landscape discussions.