…yes, we really do hand sign our letters of admission.
Furthermore, if you were wondering whether the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid ever took penmanship classes when he was in grade school, the answer is, “Yes. I did, but they didn’t take.”
I’ve been told that, when I sign “Welcome to Lawrence,” my lower-case “w” looks like a “u.”
For what it’s worth, I believe I heard the same thing back in 3rd grade. (Sorry, Miss Winski. You did everything you could.)
I poked my head outside my office just as our lunch hosts were preparing to take a gaggle (I think that’s the term) of prospective students over to the Warch Campus Center for lunch. As is the usual custom, our students introduce themselves and where they’re from. (This particular group included Lawrentians from Milwaukee, Madison, the Twin Cities, Orange County, and Cameroon.) They then ask the prospective students clustered around our visitor lobby (pictured below) to introduce themselves and where they’re from.
Today’s visitors for lunch (note: this doesn’t include the other 25 people who visited at other times today):
Sacramento, California (2 students)
Minocqua, Wisconsin
Highland Park, Illinois
St. Paul, Minnesota
Hong Kong
That’s right: 12,000 miles’ worth of traveling right here to Appleton, Wisconsin. (And we’re thrilled they’re here on such a nice day.)
Appleton rests in the heart of the swing area of a swing state, which may be one of the reasons Mitt Romney chose to pay it a visit today. By making a campaign address at Lawrence University, Romney joins a long list of candidates—Democrats and Republicans—who’ve made whistle stops at our campus, including John Kerry, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy, and William Howard Taft.
In a piece that appeared in today’s Boston Globe, “Mitt Romney’s Wisconsin campaign swing takes him to ‘Harvard of the Midwest,” Globe staff writer, Glen Johnson, writes a letter to the candidate, opening with:
Dear Governor Romney:
We’ve traveled many miles together over the course of two presidential campaigns, though less this cycle than last.
Nonetheless, there’s one trip that would have been fun to make with you: your stop today at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.
It’s my alma mater, and we Lawrentians don’t get many chances to showcase our small-but-overachieving school to the rest of the country. Not that it doesn’t deserve it…
His article is as much a letter of instruction to Mitt Romney as it is a love letter to Lawrence, covering everything from famous LU alumni, to his favorite professors, to some of Lawrence football glory days. It’s a good, short read that encapsulates some of the magic of Lawrence.
While Lawrence University does not endorse presidential candidates, we wholeheartedly endorse the article.
(However, truth be told, we’ve always been under the impression that Harvard was the Lawrence of New England.)
Went downtown to Starbucks to get a Grande French Roast with a shot of espresso (admissions folks generally caffeinate aggressively at this time of year). I was reminded what a treat walking in downtown Appleton can be if you look up and check out the details above the upper floors of the College Avenue storefronts:
So next time you’re in Appleton, remember: when you’re looking around, also look up.
It has been an awfully long time since our last post, which I believe is sinful of a cardinal order in the blog world.
(We have an excuse. Really. Honestly. It’s legit.)
We’ve been in admission committee pretty solidly for the past few weeks, coming up occasionally for air to meet and greet the caravan of visitors coming to campus. We’re pretty much done with the first part, but won’t be done (and we’re happy not to be done) with the second part till early May.
So, in other words, sorry to have been gone so long. For our next few blog posts, we’ll provide some answers to those “Now that I’ve been admitted, what happens next?” questions.
For starters, feel free to meet some of your classmates on the Facebook*: Lawrence University Class of 2016
* definitive article, “the,” applied ironically to make the author appear out of touch with nifty social media
