I'm a certifiable dork. There's really no question about it. If you follow my columns at all, you've probably figured that out. I'm thinking about a math major and I wrote an entire column in defense of Latin. Need I say more? It's really a wonder that I have any friends at all.
But surprisingly, I do. And over Winter Break, a few of my friends from home and I talked about meeting up for a weekend at Virginia Tech where one of them is currently a sophomore. We all returned to school earlier this month, looked at our schedules and syllabi and decided this past weekend would work best.
Last Friday afternoon I found myself on my way to VT, clad in Dukie clothing in celebration of last Thursday's basketball victory.
What first struck me about VT's campus when I reached Blacksburg was the fact that I didn't even see it. My friend lives off campus, as most upperclassmen there do, so I completely bypassed the university's grounds when I got there Friday night.
Unlike our beloved Duke, the pulse of Virginia Tech seemed to be mainly off campus. Apartment and townhouse complexes pollute the area surrounding the actual campus. Students' "Hokie Passports" (think DukeCards with a really tacky name) allow them to take advantage of Blacksburg Transit, the local bus service. How interesting that students there are so much a part of Blacksburg when most students here don't even seem to consider themselves Durham residents.
Similarly, the night life at VT was mostly an off-campus affair. No section parties with party monitors in frighteningly orange shirts: just people gathering at this apartment or that townhouse with 20 or 30 of their closest friends. How very different.
The weekend gave me an interesting taste of what life may have been like for me at Penn State, or "13th grade" as my Pittsburgh high school considered it. Something absurd like 15 to 20 percent of each graduating class from my high school (which has class sizes of usually more than 600 students) matriculate at Penn State each year, and I've often wondered what I was missing by not attending a larger state school.
For one, by being at Duke, we're definitely missing the quantity of people. VT has a population of more than 25,000 students, so Hokies don't exactly run out of people to meet and new friends to make. At Duke, you just don't have that quantity to immerse yourself in. But there's a plus to our small size, one I'd prefer any day of the week: I know people everywhere I go. It's a rare day when I walk across the Plaza without encountering one person I know. After trekking across VT's campus for quite a while on Saturday, my friend didn't see many people she knew at all (and she's not a dork like me, so she has a lot of friends).
I also happen to very much enjoy the fact that campus is the heart of things here. I like that most people live on campus. I hear horror stories of friends at Penn State, Virginia Tech and similar places dealing with evil landlords, searching for decent apartments only a short drive from campus or living in a house with five other girls (ahhh!). I'll take my double in Wannamaker for now, thanks.
And while the dork in me prefers the academics here, I was a little envious of how relaxed most of the Hokies were when it came to schoolwork. But then, one doesn't really attend a place like Duke because she's looking for easy grades.
I guess I'll never know what exactly I missed by not attending Penn State or some other larger state school, but after spending the weekend at Virginia Tech, I'm pretty happy with the way things are here at Duke. If nothing else, I at least know we have a better basketball team.
Allie Vergotz is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Friday.
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