[Nan3cy]

i had just graduated from eighth grade in Madison, WI, and my parents treated me to a trip to California to visit my aunt and uncle who lived in Atherton. It was a great two weeks, with trips to the beach, a few days in Tahoe, and ending with a day at Disneyland. One of the obligatory features was a tour of the Stanford campus. My aunt's family had no connection with Stanford except for local pride that it was in their back yard. The tour was conducted by an older cousin, with me in the back seat of her VW bug. I remember her as a terrible driver, but at least we got home safely.

Anyway, my reaction to the place was that it was a really ugly campus. Before you get out the tar and feathers, remember that I was from Madison, which is one of the prettiest places in the world in late June (February, not so much). The Wisconsin campus is gorgeous at that time of year. To me the entire campus was monochromatic (sandstone and dried-out hills) except for the red tile. I was dumb enough to say that to some of Aunt Betty's friends -- who were Stanford grads -- before I learned to shut up about it.

However -- since I had been there, I paid attention any time I saw a newspaper or magazine article that mentioned Stanford, and by the time I was a sophomore I had decided that was where I wanted to go. Applied to three schools (no early apps then), got into all three, but never spent much time agonizing over which place I wanted. When I got to campus (which I hadn't seen since the eighth-grade graduation trip), I didn't really notice the dryness because I was captivated by the smell of the eucalyptus everywhere. To this day the smell of eucalyptus in the fall takes me right back to freshman year.

[Nan3cy]

i had just graduated from eighth grade in Madison, WI, and my parents treated me to a trip to California to visit my aunt and uncle who lived in Atherton. It was a great two weeks, with trips to the beach, a few days in Tahoe, and ending with a day at Disneyland. One of the obligatory features was a tour of the Stanford campus. My aunt's family had no connection with Stanford except for local pride that it was in their back yard. The tour was conducted by an older cousin, with me in the back seat of her VW bug. I remember her as a terrible driver, but at least we got home safely.

Anyway, my reaction to the place was that it was a really ugly campus. Before you get out the tar and feathers, remember that I was from Madison, which is one of the prettiest places in the world in late June (February, not so much). The Wisconsin campus is gorgeous at that time of year. To me the entire campus was monochromatic (sandstone and dried-out hills) except for the red tile. I was dumb enough to say that to some of Aunt Betty's friends -- who were Stanford grads -- before I learned to shut up about it.

However -- since I had been there, I paid attention any time I saw a newspaper or magazine article that mentioned Stanford, and by the time I was a sophomore I had decided that was where I wanted to go. Applied to three schools (no early apps then), got into all three, but never spent much time agonizing over which place I wanted. When I got to campus (which I hadn't seen since the eighth-grade graduation trip), I didn't really notice the dryness because I was captivated by the smell of the eucalyptus everywhere. To this day the smell of eucalyptus in the fall takes me right back to freshman year.