Sunday, October 30, 2005

It Says "NYU Alumni" On My T-Shirt

I think I should be sad. I just took this test, and according to it I am only 43% NYU! I studied there, slept there, grew up there, and graduated there, only to get such a low score?

I guess there are a couple of reasons:
  • I was a commuter student from Staten Island for all but one year, when I lived at Third North, and even then I went home most weekends.
  • I never really stayed on campus after classes. I had work or took part in clubs off-campus. Divided my time between the city, Staten Island and New Jersey for the better part of two years.
  • Much of the time I spent on campus when I wasn't I class, was spent sleeping in the lounges. But c'mon, that's got to count towards my score.
I don't think I'm really surprised at my score, but it's a little surprising, since I practically grew up in the NYU system. My mother works at the Medical Center, so I've walked around the halls of the university facilities long before I entered as a student. I wrote for the university paper for two months (under an awfully pompous editor, I should add, whose name I have blocked from memory), worked at the radio station for two years, and at the computer labs for three.

Still, I wasn't totally absorbed into the university culture. It is a world full of otherwise out-of-town students from everywhere else but New York. That's not bad, it's just the truth, and that's partly why I love NYU. In the end, though, it is a world unto itself, part of the city but not really (there was that student singing group at commencement that destroyed just about every major tune about the city - nice try). I was really happy to have a foot in it, but never had more than that, which probably explains why I never had the patience to wait so long at Faye's for a sandwich. I guess whoever wrote the quiz never went to Blue 9 Burger a couple of blocks up.