"Mom, I know that I going to go there this fall, but I would really like to take a look at the campus."
My darling daughter delivered this line to me a couple months ago as I was recovering from the onslaught that is the Holidays. The idea of planning anything, especially a road trip, at that juncture in time was a touch reprehensible to me, but then I remembered that it's always nice to tour the place where you are going to move, work, live, sleep, eat, etc., before you get thrown into the wheels of it.
So I scheduled a campus tour of Idaho State University for Monday, March 27th during my kiddo's spring break.
The date of the tour arrived quickly and we arrived to the Bengal Welcome Center well before our 10AM appointment. You know, because if you aren't fifteen minutes early, you're late.
Anyway, we were greeted by Nick for the first part of our tour, and hour long display of ISU's campus. My face was plastered with a smile throughout that tour because Nick reminded me so much of Pauly Shore in Son-In-Law. He was a business major who had started out in the engineering program, but in all honesty the guy was a walking advertisement for the awesomeness that is ISU. He has to graduate this year and I am willing to bet a freshly made sandwich from the Grilled Cheese Club that he will be remaining at ISU as an employee rather than a student.
Yes, ISU has a grilled cheese club. Its sole point of existence is to give out grilled cheeses to the masses. Of the 150 clubs on campus I have to say that the simplistic, joyful beauty of said club brought a blip of elation to my soul.
As I listened to Mr. I majored in that for two semesters regale us with all the delights for students on campus, I had to often remind myself to close my mouth. Seriously, as I beheld the bowling alley, the arcade, the ping pong tables, the pool tables, the movie theater, the 5500 sq. ft climbing wall, gymnasium, gym, and incredible plethora of dining options available to students on campus I will admit I felt a pang of almost yearning to go to college.
I mean, I went to college but not in this glorious, you'll never be bored and if you are it's because your doing something wrong way.
Nick also took us all across campus and showed up the many different halls of learning. I especially liked his talk about how his Econ professor was struck by lightning through the window as he lectured (he survived) and how the school has one of only 20 nuclear reactors on college campuses in the country. ISU is a pretty cool school.
After Nick finished his part of the tour, we moved on to Bianca who was an admissions counselor. She was just the sweetest and was super informative about the process of admissions as well as pretty pleased that we had already done most of the steps for admission.
Next we met with a lovely lady in the Nursing building who took us on a tour of the ins and outs of the nursing program as our Squeaky is going for her Bachelor's in Nursing.
The Sim lab was especially fun because we got to look at what the mannequins got up to when class wasn't in session. Seriously, though, it's pretty awesome to have a simulated hospital floor in the basement of your building so that you can learn in a realistic, accurate situation.
After the nursing school tour we met up with another student who gave us the housing tour, ISU has some very nice dorms, some that are laid out like apartments and some that are old school dorm style haunts. Every single tour guide we had had nothing but good things to say about Turner Hall, they even spoke of it with nostalgia gleaming in their eyes, which I thought was a nice touch for our girl, since that is the hall she is going to be residing in.
Speaking of residing, the dining hall blew my mind. It had stations. Like a burger station, a Create state where one could get their most creative comestible desire crafted, and get this, a wood fired pizza oven.
I also broke into chuckles when the girl leading our tour said, "And our ice cream machine is NEVER broken." Take note McDonalds.
After wrapping up the housing part tour part of our day, I was feeling a bit peckish and my tail was slightly dragging. The college gave us tickets so we could grab lunch in the dining hall, but we weren't hungry during the little interlude that we had for lunch as we had eaten a respectable size repast at the hotel for breakfast.
After waving goodbye to all the nice people we had interacted with that day, I glanced down at my phone. We had walked almost six miles around the campus. The smell of Chick Fil-A waffle fries wafted through my nose and I looked over at my girl and smiled. I am so incredibly thankful she has the opportunity to go to ISU and fulfil her longtime dream of being a trauma nurse. The tour really gave all of us a sense of comfort about the environment she will be starting off her adult life in, the surroundings are just that cool.
And I can guarantee she will never be hungry or without something to do, heck, I might even stop by for a snack on occasion😉