twoplustwoequalsblog

or, “I am so glad I am going to school in a small town that just happens to be located near a city.”

Today, my mom, Chris and I went into New York for the day. It also happened to be my birthday, so that gave me some exciting things to do on it. We took Metro North from New Haven, and it was pretty much extremely similar to when I went with World History. New York is always kind of cool just because of the transporation involved. Public transportation is something we completely lack in Connecticut, so it’s always novel when I go somewhere with a nice system.

The amount of infrastructure that is built up around New York is amazing. Just consider a single building. The amount of raw material that has to be brought in an assembled, and then hooked up to all of the power and water and telecom running under the city is just mindboggling. And then consider that there isn’t just the one building in New York, there’s thousands and thousands and thousands. It’s amazing.

We went to visit NYU, since Chris is considering applying there. We jumped into a tour, and listened to the tour guide explain all of the wonderful benefits of going to a school in the middle of a city with 17,000 undergraduates. One of the advantages of your $40,000/yr education is you can get discount tickets to events. Oh wonderful, save $20. Come on, there are more exciting things to be talking about. Like the fact you are next door to Broadway shows at all!

I asked the tour guide my favorite question to ask colleges, because it forces introspection: “If you could change one thing about the school, what would it be?” Usually I get a pretty lame answer. The CMU girl that called me said she would get rid of Intro to Programming. When I asked her if seriously, the only problem with the entire school was a course she didn’t like, she responded, “Well, the food isn’t that great, but what college has good food?”

At NYU, the girl responded in a more confusing way. She said the main problem with the school was “Bureacracy”. However, when she elaborated, she didn’t talk about bureacracy at all. She talked about how having such a large school forces you to go out and take initiative instead of having things handed to you on a silver platter. You always have to watch out for the people who give you tours. The girl is going to NYU next year for graduate school too, so obviously she likes the place.

Two of the stores I went in in New York were the Toys R’ Us in Times Square and the Nintendo World store. It amazes me that these companies can sell enough stuff to set up such elaborate retail outlets. Toys R’ Us had a ferris wheel inside, and the Nintendo Center was actually kind of plain. I can’t believe that they can sell enough merchandise to keep these things open. How the heck does the economy work in cities?

Still, after all the hustle of running through New York for a day, it was really nice to get back on the train to Connecticut. I wouldn’t be able to handle living in a city. Maybe it would be different if I had my own place I could go back to and just relax. But going to school in a smallish town means I won’t have to deal with all that commotion every day.

So I passed a couple thousand people today. Divide by 365.25. That many people also had their birthday today! Yay us!