Here's Berg, home of the Sunday morning waffles. Mmmm. On the mornings I managed to wake up in time, that is. And of course, after freshman year, it was kind of a hike across campus for breakfast. But on the rare occasion I made it over there, they were damn good.
MORE new construction betwixt Alumni and Berg. A quick jaunt to Wikipedia tells me that it will one day be a 386-car parking garage. I'm guessing this is because the new $74 million student union's massage parlors, aromatherapy rooms and virtual reality internet simulators will no doubt cover most of what was once the ocean. Things I will never get to use bore me, so we'll be moving on now.
This is the old main entrance to the school. Notice anything missing? Anything at all? Like, say, a so-called eternally burning torch representing learning or knowledge or whatever that supposedly cost one student's full tuition to fuel each year? Extinguished, dismantled and put into storage. Or sold at auction, for all I know. Tragic.
Gellerson School of Engineering. I only had one class here all four years: Calculus. I took it the same semester that uber-nerd Catie was taking chemistry. It was an odd reversal of roles that put both of us out of our elements and threatened our GPAs. One day while I was walking to class, I heard an odd beeping noise. My heart leapt - Gellerson was obviously on fire, and the beeping was the fire alarms! Class would be cancelled! I charitably decided to show up anyways and express my fabricated condolences for the loss of such an important center of mathematical nerdery, and then head home for a well deserved nap. I closed in on the building, craning my neck to look for smoke billowing from the windows or flames licking the walls. Just as I passed the VUCA, I realized that the beeping was not the death throes of my own personal hell. It was the warning sounds of a bus driving in reverse out of the parking lot. I almost cried. Then I went to class and felt stupid. And let me tell you - there's no stupid like calculus stupid.Also, once I lied and pretended to be a new engineering student to get free food at an engineering picnic with Catie, way back in the days before she decided she liked Jesus more than she liked numbers. Free hamburgers are the best hamburgers!
A quick shot of the logical, minimalistic sidewalk layout of Valpo.
Another time I wished I had night vision goggles: One night freshman year we walked to some field back here and played Capture the Flag for holy crap, way longer than I have tolerance for that game. Rachel and I began wandering out in the open in enemy territory we were cornered and talked to but never actually caught. I don't really remember how the game ended, but I think there was singing involved.
Some Chapel.
This used to be a Schlotzsky's Deli, the proximity of which delighted Rachel to no end. One time, during Catie's vegetarian period, the three of us went there for lunch. At the end of the meal Rachel and I had finished eating and Catie was almost done with her veggie sandwich. Rachel was impatient to leave for some reason or another, so I (in my infinite and often hilarious wisdom) said, "Well we can head out of here as soon as Peter Rabbit here's done with her meal." She got pretty mad at me. Sorry, Catie. I don't really think you're a rabbit. :) Now it's some Greek restaurant, which would also probably make Rachel happy. Greek food is harder to make than it is to eat, as we learned during the Harre-insulting, butter-soaked phyllo Space Camp Night. Space Hug!
And then it was back to the exciting and perfectly level landscape of northern Indiana.My self-tour was over, and I had a camera full of pictures and a fuzzy new sweatshirt to prove where I'd been. Feel free to insert your own meaningful aphorisms regarding the past and/or future here. It's late and I'm tired.
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