tejas??

ok, so a week after i return from my travels, its prolly a good time to do a serious post and let you in on my thoughts about where i'm going to be next year. now, before i do that, let me outline for you just what happened during my trip. this will be my itinerary plus a bit of commentary.

tuesday: leave k-zoo on the afternoon train. get into chicago. taxi to beaker's place of employment. chill out. eat dinner at the grand lux cafe (super cool). go back to muppet mansion. answer about a thousand emails. sleep.
wednesday: wake up and get down to UIC, leaving plenty of time to get lost. fail to get lost, so spend lots of time in the grad student lounge introducing myself to random grad students. meet meinwald and have semi-awkward lunch. afterwards, i hang out in the dept a bit more and then proceed to michigan ave. with another prospect. we get lost. walk to navy pier. turn around. buy emergency flipflops for my ouched feet. eventually, i try on manolos. meet beaker, get pizza at chicagos, chill out, sleep.
thursday: go back to UIC. this time to attend some classes and have lunch with some grad students. meet with abe so he can talk some more trash. eventually head out so i can pack things, check out of muppet mansion, and head to evanston. take the purple line up, check into my hotel, find a noodley place to eat, watch tv, pass out. final thoughts on UIC - its nice. meinwald is decently cool, albeit somewhat awkward. the profs are cool and the atmosphere is nice.
friday: wake up, get ready, head downstairs to meet with a prof for breakfast. he's weird and jittery. keeps complaining that everyone is late. eventually, get to campus, meet profs and grad students, eat lunch, talk with profs some more. by the time this portion of the day is done, i've already decided northwestern is not for me... but i still have a day and a half left. kraut (the ancient philo guy) is nice, but too ethics-y. the rest of the dept. is too continental. but, they take us out to thai. that's cool. after, i go back to the hotel, everyone else goes out drinking. i sleep.
saturday: lunch with kraut and some grad students. after, we head into chicago. everyone else is going to a museum, i skip out to go to this cool cat shelter with kyle. seriously, over a hundred cats in one place. amazing. meet up with the group again at a profs place and then go to indian food after. by this time, i'm thoroughly sick of the other prospects. one, a loud self-important german prick, especially. on the way home (i was put in charge of getting everyone back to the hotel since i was deemed 'practically a native' by the grad students taking care of us), i suggest putting him on the yellow line to skokie. unfortunately, it doesn't run that late.
sunday: get up, check out of the hotel, get to the airport. wait forever for my flight. it's late. eat a cinnamon roll. buy some gum. forget about my ever-present, always-bad motion sickness and get on the plane. an hour and a half later, i wake up sick. actually sick. i have to get up and throw up and everything. i am unhappy. finally touch ground again (where people are supposed to stay), get to my hotel. find out its skeevy. order chinese, watch grey's anatomy.
monday: i am now in tejas. after all this time. walk to school. once again, introduce myself to random grad students. meet with a prof. eat lunch with some students. go to a reading group. go to dancy's class. dancy's cool. he comes over to introduce himself and invites me to dinner afterwards with everyone. we go to trudy's, a local tex-mex kinda place. dancy hangs around for a while and tells stories. buys me dinner. he leaves, the rest of us go to a coffeeshop bar place. sit outside! and talk about the program/philo/whatever for a couple hours.
tuesday: wake up, get ready, pack, drag my stuff to the dept. meet with an ancient guy. run into dancy again, spend some time talking in his office. he tells me more stories about how icky northwestern is. wander around. spend some time looking for the perfect texas tee-shirt. meet tye, go to his undergrad class. he's a bit odd. got a bowie-esque air. hard to describe. collect my stuff, get to the airport shuttle, wait for my flight. this time its on time and i remembered to buy dramamine. paul picks me up in chicago. we go home. sleep. important things i learned in texas - if you're cool enough, you can get your way in academia by threatening to resign; if you're not quite cool enough, its important to have cool friends that will do it for you; philosophers are always willing to talk smack about each other and about other departments.
wednesday: paul takes me to the train station in niles. johndepoe picks me up in k-zoo. go to arthur's class. kris brings me home. we eat lunch with dave. i get to drive again (yay). come home. sit on futon with pillows and comforter. sleep.

and that's it folks. i got tired just typing it all out again... much less living it. it was an exhausting week, but i think a lot of good came out of it. i think i'm gonna go to texas. they've got the best program. biggest too. and they've got great resources in ancient. unfortunately, no one there really does late plato metaphysics, which is what i want to do... but given the resources and the placement record (and the freaking coolness of austin) i don't think i can turn it down. UIC has meinwald, but she's only one... and i don't think i would get the kind of training there (in ancient) that i would really need. however, i'm on the waitlist at ND... and i've promised to sayre that i'll wait till friday to make a final decision. he wants to see if i'll get pulled off the waitlist. i doubt it. but i promised i'd wait. if all goes as i think it will, though, next year i will be a citizen in the republic of tejas.