The College Tours Continue

We're in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, this morning, getting ready to stop in at Cabrini College to collect Christina. She's just finished two weeks at The Rock School, an intensive ballet program in downtown Philadelphia which houses its students on main-line college campuses like Cabrini.

We took yesterday for a pair of college campus tours with Colleen. We started the day at Villanova, just down the way from Cabrini, and finished up at Lehigh, about an hour north of there, in Bethlehem.

They are both very nice schools. Both are largely gothic, architecturally, so I was in Dad-with-camera-heaven. It made one of the young tour guides nervous. She felt she was going to have to wait for me each time I became fascinated with a steeple or a hilltop view. I assured her I could catch up and that the tour was for my daughter -- not me.

The photo above right is from one of the libraries at Lehigh. It is, I believe, a "quiet room" there. I loved that room; three stories of open shelves with spiral stairs and an amazing sky-light, stained-glass, dome.

Time will tell if either school appealed to Colleen enough to want to apply. I liked them both. These campus tours are bittersweet for me; I realize what a great opportunity college can be and how much more is offered these days. And I realize how much more I might have gotten from my college experience had I been a bit more mature.

At Villanova, our guide pointed out an archway where it is said that you can hear a whisper in one side of the arch around on the other; sound is carried along a carved-out channel. Two kids in the group decided to try it out, but it didn't work -- both were listening neither was whispering.

At Lehigh, we came upon the university's wrestling team. They were manhandling their wrestling mats into a rented truck parked facing up a steep grade. The mats didn't quite fit. I have my doubts that that exercise ended well.

Lehigh is built on the side of a small mountain. There are many steps and inclines. But also great views. If nothing else, students there have no trouble staying in shape.