Stories from Ann Arbor

So right now I'm in Ann Arbor, MI checking out the grad school here. It's a great school (seriously, great) and I'm pretty impressed with the program and the town overall. However, I'm currently hyperventilating about the money situation, especially because I'm pretty sure that Indiana is not just a little bit less expensive. (If my calculations are correct, it may be close to HALF as much. That's HUGE. How did that not sink in before?)

Anyway, it's been a great weekend, regardless. I got here on Thursday night, and Katherine picked me up from the airport close to midnight. I was lucky to make my connection - I had about 15 minutes between flights because the first one was delayed the the second was on time, but it all worked out very well. I even made some friends in the airport, and they let me read their comics from the newspaper. (The girl said she saves them for times when she has downtime, which I feel is brilliant.)

On Friday morning, Katherine, Kjestin and I got up early and drove to Toronto, which is about a 4-hour drive from Ann Arbor. Our main purpose was to see a Tom Stoppard play, Travesties, that night, but we wanted some time in the city too. 

Our first adventure was crossing the border. Katherine had some yogurt, and while we were waiting for the next available booth, she ate a couple of spoonfuls, and then she put it back down before driving up to the border control man. When we got up to the booth, the guy just sat there staring at us for almost a minute. He finally opened the window and said, "Are you through eating?" Katherine was confused, because she hadn't actually been eating. "Um . . .  yes . .  ." Then he said, "What about the girl in the back? Is she through eating?" Kjestin had just reached for a pita chip and some hummus, and since we couldn't tell whether or not  this guy was serious, she cheerfully said, "Nope! Not through eating!" He started interrogating us, and then when Kjestin reached for another chip (she was in the back, after all) he said, "Okay, I was being sarcastic the first time. STOP FREAKIN' EATING." And then he gave us a lecture on manners that seemed a little unnecessary, since the person had been talking to had not, in fact, been eating at any time while she'd been talking to him, but we drove away feeling a little unsure about Canada.

Despite this greeting, I loved Toronto. I'll be posting some pictures later (when I get back to Utah and my camera cord) but it reminded me a little but of Europe. We ate some kind of Central American food for lunch (tamales and papusas)  and we had some great shawarma and falafel for dinner (along with a gyro pita and some baklava). We wandered all around the city - stopping when something was interesting, snapping pictures of war memorials and beautiful buildings, etc. We especially loved the old Municipal building and the University of Toronto. 

We finally went back to our hotel to change our clothes and head to the Stoppard play. We were staying about half a mile away from the theater, so we walked over there and picked up our tickets, then sat admiring our fantastic view of the stage - front and center in the upper level, which was absolutely perfect.

The play itself was brilliant. It was about a guy who had met James Joyce in Zurich during WWI, but it also seems that he may or may not have known Tzara of the Dada movement, and Lenin. (You know. That Lenin.) The whole play was very ambiguous, which was kind of the point - failure of memory was part of a play that also talked about the value of art, revolution, war, social change, and much of it was worked through the script of The Importance of Being Earnest, because the man telling the story had starred in that play under Joyce during the same time, and the play got all mixed up in the story. (My favorite example of this was when Lenin was talking to the Russians just before the 1917 revolution. "To lose one revolution is a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness." Hahahaha. Oh, Aunt Augusta.) 

We drove back the next morning, and Katherine and Kjerstin dropped me off on campus for the campus tour and some orientation talks. I went to a couple of breakout sessions and learned about some different specializations (the School of Information is impressively diverse), and about various aspects of student life. It was pretty entertaining from a BYU perspective to have every coffee shop and brewery pointed out along the way. My favorite moment was when I told the girl I'd been chatting with that I was from Utah. The conversation went something like this.

Her: "Oh, so this must be a bit of a change for you."

Me: "Yeah, but I really like the city. It seems like a cool place."

Pause

Her: "I really love coffee, so I was excited about all of the coffee shops."

Me: "Haha. Good times."

Pause

Her: "Do you drink coffee?

Me: No, I don't, actually.

Her: Oh. I didn't used to but my roommate had me try it one time and the first time I thought it tasted bad, but I just kept drinking it and now I really like it. Never keep drinking something that tastes bad . . ." (etc.)

Me: "Haha. Good times." 

I love the very pointed questioning here - she got exactly what she wanted to know without actually asking the question. 

Anyway, that night, instead of going on the night excursions (which were all to bars and coffee shops) I went with Katherine to a ward activity to get a feel for that. (All kinds of stuff was going on today, so I knew I wasn't going to get to check out the ward in church.) They were doing a photo scavenger hunt, which made me laugh, but was oddly comforting. The institute, by the way, was converted from what probably used to be a sorority or fraternity, which I thought was kind of funny.

We came back that night and looked up some things we'd been talking about all day - about Stoppard's play and signs we'd seen on the road and other questions that just came up - and then went to bed.

This morning I went to the bulk of the orientation - talks about the different areas of SI, lunch with faculty members, seminars about financial aid, career placement, and student life. It was all really great - except for the financial aid seminar, which mostly just freaked me out. Honestly, unless I can get funding, I can't see any way to justify going into debt that much to be a librarian, and I think this place is more than some. 

As a final note, I got a letter from UT the other day, and apparently something about my application wasn't complete. I have no idea what, because I thought I checked it pretty thoroughly. Whatever it was, though, they didn't say anything and I didn't check, so they sent me a letter that said they'd cancelled my application. 

Awesome. 

I wasn't completely set on anywhere, but it's really frustrating to not even have that option anymore, to not even be considered for it. I don't know what happened, but it's icky, and I felt a little sick about the whole thing. I keep wondering how many things I'm missing because I'm just not being very on top of things, you know? It's one of the main fears with this whole financial aid issue too. What am I missing that could fund all of this? I don't even know. 

I'm here through tomorrow, where there will be a networking fair and a display of student projects, after which I'm going to spend some time in the used bookstores and the very High Fideity-esque record store that I passed. (I'm half expecting John Cusack to be behind the counter when I go in. It's that cool-looking.) I'll post pictures and anything else after I get back.