Grove City College

Today, just after class, I hurried home so that I could drive up to Grove City College. I was contacted by a professor up there to give a little talk to some students about my experiance going from school to work to school again.

Traffic in this town is crazy. It took me one hour to get outside of the city. Now, this may have been because I missed 2 turns, but still! I spent about 75% of that time just sitting. The pinnacle was where a lady, a passenger, in the car ahead of me, got out of the car, walked in to the bar on the side of the road. She returned with a 12 pack of Budweiser, only to find the car a few car lengths down the road. I almost got on my PA, to convey my joy over what I had just seen, but I decided against using my PA in the middle of a traffic block. On a side note, yes, here in Pittsburgh, they are even more strict with Alcohol sales than in Washington. Not only do they have liqueur stores, you cannot buy beer or wine in grocery stores. Because of this, most bars become the neighborhood alcohol distribution centers. Also, you cannot buy any alcohol on Sundays, holidays, or election days.

Anyway.... so a 1 hour trip turned in to a 2 hour fiasco. Once I got out of the city, it was a pleasant drive, quite the colors on the trees. For those of you in Washington, remember: over here the ratio of coniferous to deciduous trees is inverted. For every one coniferous, there is like 50 or so deciduous trees. This makes for quite a different fall color scheme. The trees also seem to change at different times, so you will have a clump of trees that have lost all of their leaves intermixed with trees that are just turning. It certainly felt like fall.  I eventually made it to Grove City, it reminded me of a classy, newer Mead... with a college in the middle of it. The main drag of the town had quite a few quaint shops and restaurants. I walked down the side walk for about half a block (I know... I was adventurous!) before finding Four Star Pizza. I enjoyed a very reasonably priced and very tasty, Chicken Parmesan Sub Sandwich, with fries and a drink. The town was also having their 'safe trick-or-treating.' So there were a ton of little kids running around from shop to shop getting candy, and in the shop I was in, balloon animals. It was a refreshingly enjoyable lunch.

I found my way to the college, and was amazed at how new everything looked (well it might have been new for all I knew). The building I walked in to very much reminded me of Hogwarts. Very stone and timber looking, but new and shiny. I was rather impressed for it being a smaller school. I found the room, and some of the students. The talk went very well. It was really more of a discussion, which I think the students got a lot out of. There was a lot of the Professor and I talking back and forth, sharing stories about Grad life and about corporate life. I was glad that I could make it up there.

So the connection here is Agnes, the lady across the street. She knew I was going to CMU, and so she asked me for my contact info and some of the classes that I was taking so that she could give it to her son-in-law, who also went to CMU. He ended up contacting me a little bit later, and put me in contact with the president of their Engineering group (I think ACM). So talking with him, I decided that I was not nearly qualified to give an actuall 'talk,' but I felt as though I had some good knowledge to pass on, both about moving from school to the corporate life, and also moving in to the Grad school life.

The drive home took significantly less time, at only 1 hour 10 minutes. I did take some pictures, Ill post them soon.