Semi-epic Road Trip Day 6

 

Day 6: Sick Day and Oberlin Visit

Memories:

Therese: Learning that Oberlin allows students to keep Picassos in their dorm room for a $5/semester rental.

Grace: Oberlin

Danny: I was sick

Gordon: No ice cream because everyone was sick

Day 6 was a slow news day. I'm also realizing that I have completely forgotten to take pictures at any of the college visits. 

Perhaps because Grace gets a shirt with the college logo when she likes it enough to be a possibility, I've equated that with a photograph.

We had a quick breakfast and headed to Oberlin. It turned out that there were about 5 other families there for the visit.

The initial presentation was really great. An alum who now works in the admissions office gave a rapid fire description of the campus, the liberal arts philosophy and some fun facts. 

Oberlin has one of the largest college art museums in the U.S. it was founded quite a while ago. They keep building their collection but not expanding the size of the library. As a result, they have a lot of extra art that's not continuously on display. Students can rent up to two pieces per person for $5/semester. This includes works by Picasso and Van Gogh. I guess kids camp out the night before to get a good spot in line for the rentals. The presenter said that his senior year he lived in campus housing with four other room mates so they ended up with 10 museum quality artworks on their walls.

Oberlin requires all students to live on campus, or in campus adjacent housing owned by the university for all four years.

The school is a leader in environmentally sound practices. Much of the progressive agenda of the school is led by students.

I thought it was a really great school and felt like it would be a really good match for Grace. She really liked it as well but didn't get a good vibe from the campus or town. She thinks this is because when school isn't in session, these small college towns and campuses are pretty quiet. We talked about maybe revisiting some of the schools she really likes during the school year to get a better feel for the campus vibe.

After the visit, we grabbed a bite to eat and stopped in the campus book store for a shirt. Grace also found some books she had been looking for so we left happy.

Before settling in for the night Grace and I went down to the beach and did some beach combing. The sand is imported, but there were many, many delicate white shells washed up on the beach. We collected many of the best ones. I always bring back rocks or sand from places we visit so I made a pouch with my shirt and collected some of the white sand made from crushed shells. We continued reaching down to pick up treasures as we headed for home. I looked down only to see that the entire shirt-pouch was empty and I lost all my sand!

Back in sick bay things were looking pretty dire. Danny was down for the count. We made dinner and Grace and I played a game she brought for the trip. Midway through she started making urgent trips to the bathroom. She still won the game but was not feeling great at all. We went to be wondering if we would taking COVID tests in the morning and calling the rest of our vacation off.

SPOILER ALERT: everyone was fine in the morning.

I had hoped to make one more trip down to the beach to catch the sunset and get my sand, but we were all tired - too tired even for ice cream so we all headed to bed hoping for a better tomorrow.