I did have a friend who's daughter went to Harvard (and this time I know I've got the right school) and pretty much hated it for all four years. She's from a liberal, West Coast hippie intellectual family with Stanford/UC Berkeley roots going back generations, and I think massive culture shock was the problem for her rather than the education she was receiving. ("Reserved," "stiff," "self-important" were the sorts of adjectives in play, but much of the Northeast seems that way when you've grown up here where "warm & fuzzy" and "casual" are the operative concepts.)
Regional trivia: Stanford & Cal (and for reasons unknown to me, even though there are a multitude of University of Californias, "Cal" always means Berkeley) have a historical and ongoing rivalry. On either campus, if you reference "the Game," ("When's the Game this year?" "Are you going to the Game?") you're talking about the annual Stanford/Cal Football Game. And in the weeks leading up to the Game, the schools prank each other horribly. The rivalry is so bad that my daughter got scolded at her orientation for wearing a maroon sweater on campus, because maroon is too close to Stanford's colors. (My friend's family is a riot at Game time. Auntie -- 60+ years out of Stanford -- still puts on Cardinal red and goes to the Game every year. My friend is Cal through and through.)
So, hey! If you wind up choosing Stanford, you and Jess might be yelling at each other from opposite ends of a stadium.
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Date: 2009-03-22 07:12 pm (UTC)Regional trivia: Stanford & Cal (and for reasons unknown to me, even though there are a multitude of University of Californias, "Cal" always means Berkeley) have a historical and ongoing rivalry. On either campus, if you reference "the Game," ("When's the Game this year?" "Are you going to the Game?") you're talking about the annual Stanford/Cal Football Game. And in the weeks leading up to the Game, the schools prank each other horribly. The rivalry is so bad that my daughter got scolded at her orientation for wearing a maroon sweater on campus, because maroon is too close to Stanford's colors. (My friend's family is a riot at Game time. Auntie -- 60+ years out of Stanford -- still puts on Cardinal red and goes to the Game every year. My friend is Cal through and through.)
So, hey! If you wind up choosing Stanford, you and Jess might be yelling at each other from opposite ends of a stadium.
Go Bears! *g*