The trip started off at 10:00 a.m. early Wednesday morning at Ashland's central park. I drove up and parked the Saturnator so that I could ride down with June and Adam.June is starting school herself here in a few days and wanted to borrow my NEC. As I now have an office on campus and can use it to work on my lectures, I didn't need the NEC in my bag all the time. So, since I had it and the charger in my bag for the road trip, I let her take it home. I'm sure that she'll put it through its paces.
After a quick breakfast / brunch in Grayson, we were heading down the road again and the conversation branched and split and retraced its steps a few dozen times. If someone tried to map the topics in the conversation, I would guess that they would swear it was made by a drunken pilgrim.
When we got down to Berea, I was surprised that the University had a student body of around 2k students but had a lot more buildings - a larger 'footprint' than I would have expected. One of the more impressive structures was a replica of Independence Hall from Philadelphia.
I'm not sure what purpose the building has but the design is very... academic. It looks like it belongs on a college campus. One of the things that I have thought about Shawnee's campus is that the buildings don't look like they belong together. Each building has a different style than the one next to it so there's a somewhat disjointed feel to campus; nothing ties it together.
A friend and I have spoken about this and he wants to put a fountain or a statue or both in the middle of campus to sort of establish a 'center' of the footprint. I think this would be an awesome idea; somewhere for the students to sit down around the fountain and such.
The trip down to Berea was not incredibly complicated but June said that it's a solid 3-hour drive. I didn't even recognize the passage of time because it was a good trip. Plenty of conversation to chew up the miles.Even the longest of trips can be taken in stride,
as long as you are gifted with a friend beside.
-Tom
1 comment:
I'm glad your travels were safe and pleasant...
Berea is a beautiful campus.
Shawnee has always had an identity problem. The oldest building on Campus, Massie, was the original Ohio University Southern, and was done in the OU "trademark" red brick. It still feels like that, even though they bleached and re-dyed the bricks years ago to establish their own identity.
They've grown a lot in the years of this identity crisis. The campus reflects that identity crisis.
It's a great place, (certainly better facilities and maintenance than OU Lancaster,) but yeah, it is somewhat hodge-podge in its overall effect.
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