I went up to IWU with my younger brother Evan to do a campus visit. He is considering enrolling in the esteemed university for the fall 2007 semester. The campus brought back many memories for me becasue it is where Molly (my wife) received her undergratuate education and where journeyed to see my wife while we were dating. For me, going to see Molly was a 3 hour trip that I made usually at least twice a month in order to see her and spend time with her. This was done for two years and my gracious brother-in-law Erik provided me bedding during those weekend visits. There are many great memories from my trips to IWU which will not be disclosed in this post.
Upon arriving in Gas City we immeditaly met our friends Chip and Beth at Ivanhoes in order to get some food. If Evan was going to experience fine dining in college his first stop must be Hoes. It was actually great, the Double Cheeseburger is one of the best deals on the menu. After this we went to Chip and Beth's house in the only Swayzee in the world and spent the night. I'm sure Beth will post some pictures on this event. We went hot-tubbing in the neighbor's tub and watched The Office and Grey's.
The next day was our campus tour, which was great, except our tour guide had some sort of cognitive impairment making her socially inept. Here is the story...
While walking around the campus I experienced empathy for her because no one in our group would follow closely. Because of this I decided to follow more closely than the other people in the group, which spoke non-verbally saying that I was wanting to converse. This was not necessarily my intent, but I was not opposed to dialogue, so she initiated a conversation. In a Jessica Simpson sort of voice (at least that is the best way to describe the flighty tone) she said, "so are you in college?" I responded in a witty tone by saying, "oh no, I graduated and have a job." I wanted to see how she responded, to see if she could understand the slight sarcasm in the comment. Undoubtedly most could, however this situation was different. She responded saying, "oh that is neat, what do you do?" I told her and then she asked, "so did you go to IWU?" I said, "no, I went to college at Cincinnati Christian University, but my wife is a Wildcat." She sort of looked at me with that socially inept look that said, "Huh, I'm not sure I understand what is happening" and then said something that I forget. That was pretty much the end of my empathy and following closely. So I faded to the back of the pack and began to remember the nice times I had at IWU. Our guide was very nice, but not all there, I hope she has the "book smarts" and also that she will become "one" with a male figure on campus soon - for her stability in life.
The next best thing that happened on campus was me asking people, "do you have programs that help those students lacking in social skills become connected to others on campus? You see, I am kind of worried because my brother has been home-schooled and is socially backwards." I asked this while Evan was standing right next to me, and we both were assured that many people who were socially backwards felt at home being an IWU student. Home-schoolers fit right in and feel a part of the community, which is good to know. Evan went along with it and just laughed when they answered.
The best part of the trip was touring the famous Bowman Hall, THE place to reside as a freshman on campus. I was told that Bowman is the most immature hall, even assured of that. So we took it upon ourselves to walk on in and ask some of the guys for a tour and what life at Bowman is really like. They told us, assured us, and made it apparent that Bowman = Community and Fun. Good enough, I thought. Then they showed us the wall of heros, the students who resided in Bowman during their freshman year. And who was on that wall? The one and only Erik Roy Timmons! So what did I do, I quickly began operating my junky camera phone to get a sweet shot of my brother-in-law during his freshman year at IWU! So to end this long post, here is the picture of Erik as an establishing forefather of Bowman!
