On Sunday, I was finally able to visit the school that has captured my attention since February when they granted me with a nice full tuition scholarship and $4,000 dollars a summer... Temple University!
The school is located in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Their mascot is the Owl. And yeah... There's so much to say and then again, not so much to say.
I'll just begin by recalling my first thoughts when I got to the city...
Man, I'm still shocked by how ugly everything was once we crossed the bridge and got to Philadelphia. Fom a distance, it looked nice. You could tell you were approaching the city from the tall blue buildings standing at a distance. In DC, buildings do not get that tall. I thought it was quite beautiful. But once we crossed the bridge and entered the city, I thought I had entered the ghettos. I probably did.
Everything was extremely run down. The area looked deserted. Some of the tall buildings had graffiti from head to toe and the air conditioners jutted out of the windows like you see on TV. The houses were so small and sad looking. Like, I said. We entered the ghettos.
In D.C., we do have the obviously lower income neighborhoods but they've always looked charming to me. Even the graffiti was kind of artistic and added a nice character to the area. The shops and townhouses were old looking but not completely hideous looking. I love how D.C. is set up and I guess I expected Philadelphia to look the same but it didn't. It was scary.
But as we got deeper into the city, we began to see red "flags" denoting that we were on the campus of Temple University. And soon, the buildings began to look nice and we began to see crowds of people who didn't look so sketchy walking the streets. I admitted to my dad that I felt nervous and he said the same thing too. It was all too real now.
If I go into all the details, this post would get hella long. But basically, I went with my brother to go check in. We got a pass that we wore around our necks and I was given a goodie bag with a cherry red and white striped scarf and some information about the school.
There was a moment when I was in the line when I was standing behind a cute looking white guy who was wearing a Temple University hat backwards on his hat and I swear, we glanced at each other at least 3 times during the whole ordeal. Our paths diverged when we had to go get seats and all the seats in one section were getting taken up really fast.
But he wasn't the last of the cuties I saw during my Temple visit which brings me to the conclusion that if I do decide to go this school, there will be loads of white guy eye candy for me to enjoy.
In fact, there were a lot of white kids in general that were at the Accepted Students Day. To be honest, I wasn't really looking out for certain ethnic groups. My dad and my brother were the ones that pointed it out. But it was very obvious anyway. My brother said he only saw like specks of black people and now that I think about it, I probably only noticed about three black families. Then again, I wasn't really making note of stuff like that.
Anyway, I should be describing Temple itself.
There were so many people that everyone was split up into two buildings: Mitten Hall and the Temple Performing Arts Center. We were in Mitten Hall and it was absolutely gorgeous. I didn't really get to get a good look at everything but there were a lot of columns and the way things are arranged, it looks like a theater. It might be. I don't know, to be honest.
What ruined things was the fact that my brother had gotten some kind of food poisoning and his stomach was hurting throughout the entire visit. It was so bad that my dad and him had to stay in the car while I had to do things on my own.
I went off with a mom and hr daughter to Beury Hall to be with the kids who were admitted into the College of Science and Technology. The girl introduced herself as Lucy and I'll probably never see her again but I know she's majoring in Chemistry and I'm doing no such thing.
I got some information about Pre-Pharmacy and a little on Information Technology and Systems. Then, I went to a session on Pre-Professional Studies and it made me really reconsider whether I want to do pharmacy at all. The people emphasized that we had to build a good portfolio and maintain a high GPA. I mean, the pressure is on but that's not the problem. I don't know if I want to continue on for more years of college to learn either medicine or pharmacy. Actually no. I would love to learn medicine. I love health. I love learning about physiology and anatomy. But I don't want to be a medical doctor. I wouldn't mind being a pharmacist, but I don't wanna learn organic chemistry and I don't wanna learn stuff like that for an extra four years.
Do you see my dilemma? I wish I could just learn medicine in conjunction with computers. That would be the perfect major for me. But that's a rant for another post.
Beury Hall was okay. I could definitely see myself sitting in the lecture hall and learning stuff. I had no qualms with it. After Beury Hall, I drank a half decaf, half undecaf coffee with half-and-half, a packet of generic Splenda, and some Irish creme and it tasted good but it didn't stop be from being unbearably tired when I finally got into the car to leave.
But I'm missing some parts.
After, I went on a campus tour. It started at the Welcome Center.
That place is absolutely gorgeous. It has a Starbucks and a big and beautiful computer lab. What I thought was really innovative was this program they have that allows you to know how many seats are available at the computer lab so that you don't waste your time heading over there if there's no seats available. I think you can get it as an app on your phone and there's a screen with system on it at the Welcome Center. The computer lab is divided depending on what you wanna do. Everything is color coded as well. There's a lab for people who are doing music (equipped with pianos). There's a lab for people doing video editing so the computers are all double screened. There is a lab for quick browsing (so the chairs have no backs).
Ugh. I love it.
Then, we were taken to several other buildings: the library, the school of business, and the Student Center. I guess the Student Center is the equivalent of Stamp Union at UMD. There's a postal area, a bookstore, and movie theater, and food courts. I didn't see the food court but our guide made it seem as if it wasn't as big as Maryland's. It's not a big deal to me but the building's architecture was really modern and beautiful.
After the campus tour, I was dropped off at some random area with a bunch of food areas and my dad and I had agreed that our central area would be the Welcome Center since both of our phones were dying and we didn't know what could happen. I thought we were gonna be lead back to the Welcome Center but that was not the case so I had to find myself back.
I didn't get completely lost, thankfully. I'm sure I looked like a lost little barely freshman with the big unfolded map in my hands and my furrowed eyebrows. But I eventually located where I was and as I was walking back, it hit me that my little lost moment was a precursor to what I would experience when I finally start going to school. I'll have to be independent and fend for myself. I'll have to get myself back to where I need to by myself and it felt nice knowing that I could possibly do it on my own.
Once I got back, I told my dad that the last place I wanted to visit was 1300: the honors residential building. My tour guide had mentioned that Morgan Hall was already full. Morgan Hall was absolutely beautiful and it sucks that I won't get to live there but I had already made up my mind to live in 1300 so that I would be with kids who would also be in the honors program. I want to make friends who will be most like me but now that I think about it, since when have I ever made close friends with people in honors classes?
Meh.
Anyway, I visited 1300 and got into a tour that had already left. It was a really quick tour, perhaps because I came late. I saw what a dorm room looked like and it was... small. But the girls who lived there decorated their area very beautifully with lights and everything. It was better than the dorm room tours I had seen on YouTube but it looked realistic, not like the ones I often see on Pinterest and Tumblr.
The way it was set up was that you open one door to get into the dorm room but it's separated into two bedroom areas. Two beds per room. So technically, there are four people to a dorm room. But there are also two separate bathrooms. And I wouldn't mind living in that type of setting though my dad quickly expressed problems with it once I had gotten into the car. It was like he had just realized that I was actually going to live in a dorm in those 10 minutes that I had gone into 1300 and came back.
He really wishes that I could be in a dorm room with two separate bedrooms that I only have to share with one other person. As amazing as that would be, it's improbable that I would get a space like that. He's also concerned with who I would get paired up with as a roommate. All I knew was that you choose your own room online so I figured that the roommate I get was gonna be totally random.
I just found out otherwise like an hour ago when I decided to look through the bag of "information goodies" and found a booklet on Housing. Basically, you do manually pick a room but you fill out a questionnaire so that you're matched with someone with the same interests as you.
But that's that. Anyway, 1300 was nice. It looked better than it did in the pictures but their student study lounge was smaller than in the pictures. That's all I saw of the place because I felt awkward. Oh and there was one sexy guy in my tour group but that doesn't matter, does it?
So my Temple visit ended there and we immediately went home after that.
It's funny. For once, I actually went on a campus visit with a parent but I was still basically by myself as I had been with my other campus visits because my dad was too busy taking care of my brother. As we were driving home, I kind of reflected on that and figured it was like a sign from God. I was by myself throughout this entire college application: from the campus visits to choosing the colleges I wanted to apply to and creating my applications... All of it. My parents questioned me to make sure I was getting things done but they weren't on my back about anything.
I've been living the college freshman life anyway. I get almost everywhere by myself through public transit and shuttles. I work on a university campus. I eat sh** everyday: barely breakfast, a PB&J lunch, and cookies and crackers and oatmeal for dinner.
But if I decide to go Temple, I'll be living two hours away from my family in a strange city all by myself. It only hit me how much of a reality that was after leaving Temple and it made me and still makes me wanna cry. Ugh. I admit it. I'm scared. There's no way I could have gone to school any farther than that.
I'll definitely get homesick. I felt homesick just being in the city. But hopefully, things will go well. My body aches from the stress of deciding what major I want to do and what college I want to go to and I just wanna go to sleep even though I just woke up like three hours ago.
So overall, how do I feel about Temple University?
I like it. I really do like it and I can see myself going there. I found myself comparing the school to the University of Maryland a lot. I know I wanted to go to a school on a traditional campus and I still kind of want to but with the financial aid package that Temple is giving me, I can overlook all the negative thoughts I had about going to a urban campus school. The buildings are definitely the selling point of Temple. All of them are completely gorgeous and well-designed, even the older buildings.
What discerns me about Temple is just the immediate surrounding area. It's so scary looking and ugly that I would pay someone to just knock it all down and build something nice for me to look at just for my peace of mind.
But if I decide to go there, I'll just have to overlook it. But it definitely seems like I'm going to go there. Especially from the way my dad would talk about the school: We need to know how you're going to pick your roommate. You need to see what classes you're going to take. It's as if I've already enrolled into the school.
So I have four more decisions that I'm waiting for: UMD, JHU, UPenn, and Duke. UMD and UPenn are the only two schools that I would consider. After that, it'll all be over. Really, it's either Temple or UPenn. I don't wanna go to UMD. And if the world stops and spins in the other direction meaning, if I get into UPenn, I think my family are going to immediately head over there to check out the campus and then, I'll have to finally make my decision.
It's all so stressful. I need all the prayers and luck I can get.
UGGHHH.
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