Sorting through some things

I'm in a unique situation: one of my former mentors from my master's program (who is no longer at OU) put one of his master's students in contact with me for some feedback. She had been accepted in the PhD program at Iowa, and later I come to find out, the new doc program at OU.

At the conference this weekend, some of the profs and staff at OU were encouraging me to encourage this woman to go to OU. She's getting a good funding package (better than Iowa, for sure) and in many ways, I think Norman is the better community for her given that she doesn't do the night life thing that's such a strong suit of IC.

Here's what I realized though: like I already posted today, I absolutely love OU. I love the campus and walking through it. It's an amazing place for me and I have so many wonderful memories there. But perhaps I know too much about it, because although my heart is in Norman, intellectually, I'm at Iowa. I can't deny it.

I don't ever remember hearing about as many interdisciplinary interactions at OU as there were at Iowa. The scholarly environment just seemed so much more rigorous and tangible. I might just get really bored at the inanity of the social scientific-ness that I experienced at OU (I really think that shit is so lame and superficial, despite all the statistical acrobatics they accomplish). Not to mention, the profs at the j-school at OU all go by "Doctor So-and-so" by their doctoral students....that tells you just a little about the atmosphere. There was none of that formality at Iowa. As one of my professors said, doctorals students are looked at as junior colleagues, and if my department was a little dysfunctional, at least the dysfunction between the profs trickled down intact to us.

I have some space from Iowa to see the forest for the trees and to recognize the negativity of a few individuals that really, really weighted me down- for no good reason. Unfortunately, I did not have enough resources in the form of friends physically in the state of Iowa to rely on to help me rise above the fray. With that in mind, I think I can see better now that Iowa is giving me precisely what I came for: a fantastic education. Iowa, as a whole, did this, not just one department.

On the other hand, I don't think the j-school is the shining spot at OU. I think those folks are over in Gittinger and Kaufman Halls and that the geniuses in Gaylord just aren't allowed to shine on their own right. I think about how little I knew when I left OU. What I did know and what prepared me for Iowa were, no surprises, Iowa grads.

So, I will always be at peace when walking between Bizzell and Evans Hall, or looking at the library as we walk down the middle of the South Oval. But it's no surprise that my stomach turned when the current dean at OU got up to talk...it just wasn't right and it certainly wasn't the best.