Visiting Vanderbilt

Today, for the first time in around 17 years, I set foot on Tennessee soil again. Then again, it wasn't really soil; more like pavement, I guess. If you didn't know, I was actually born in Tennessee, and moved to the Bay Area when I was very young. Anyways, we arrived in Nashville at 10 in the morning (Central Time) after a very nice, hour-long nap on the plane.

Some of the brick buildings.
The one in the center is actually the Hank Ingram Commons,
which will be our home soon.

We didn't do as much today, which was just fine with me; the heat was terrible. The one big activity of today was the information session and tour for Vanderbilt University. The first thing I noticed about Vanderbilt was the predominantly brick-constructed buildings. During the tour it seemed like you could walk in a straight line and walk past the same building three times, all the buildings just looked that similar.

The information session was quite entertaining. The speaker, Mr. Zeb Ashton, did his best to keep us all awake with occasional jokes and sharp humor. Zeb actually gave some useful advice on applying to Vanderbilt that I thought really applied to applications in general: just tell the officers who you are, not what you think they want to hear. I often lose track of what I'm writing about just because I worry too much about what others will think, and lose my genuineness, so it was nice to get some guidance on the subject today.

As usual, I paid special attention to the unique aspects of the university's academics. Apparently Vanderbilt foregoes the "traditional" co-op engineering program, where engineering students take an extra year as undergraduates to work as interns for non-university groups. Instead, senior engineering students at Vandy do a senior design project, where they tackle problems set forth by companies and various organizations. 

After a tour of the campus, where we visited the dorms we'll be moving into on Sunday, we shopped for Vanderbilt gear at the student store, which took forever. We carefully deliberated on our choices for around an hour before finally heading to dinner. Opting for cheaper food, the cohort decided to have Papa John's. I ended up being way too full; I can still feel the meat and tomato sauce clogging my veins. Ew.

We only have one more day left, and then we'll have to move into our dorms for the rest of the trip! I'm really looking forward to meeting my roommate, even though I'm not sure if we'll get along or not. Oh well, no use in worrying about it now...