Rochester Institute of Technology

A Poem by B

My feelings upon going to college

A space.

A certain area in the universe that takes up some amount of the 3 spatial dimensions.

A place.

A certain space in the universe that is so familiar that it’s more than a space.

Seven years old.

My dad says to me “hey, I'm going back to school to get a master’s at RIT.”

I don't understand. School is boring, I thought. Why would anyone ever want to go back?

What was RIT to me then? Just some weird space I've never seen where adults go to torture themselves with schoolwork.

Ten years old.

My dad graduates, and I go to the ceremony.

My first times seeing what was to me then a space. Some weird space where adults go to torture themselves with school work. Some weird space with like a thousand ugly bricks and poor air conditioning, and some weird old guy who used to be president or something spoke.

Who's Bill Clinton?

Fourteen years old.

My robotics club goes to a regional event at RIT.

On the way there, I expect to see RIT as I once saw it when I was ten. But that didn't happen.

What once was a space where adults went to torture themselves with school work, which had like a thousand bricks, poor air conditioning, and some weird old guy who used to be president talking, then became a place. A place where I bonded with hundreds of other nerds over robots who throw frisbees. A place where my team got to the finals and lost by one point.

Seventeen years old.

I tour the campus, and after finally seeing all of it I realized that RIT had a completely different meaning to me than it used to.

It was now to me a place, where adults went to get a better education. A place, with 15,000,000 gorgeous bricks. A place, which still isn't great with air conditioning. A place where the great, sexy former president Bill Clinton spoke at graduation. A place where I bonded with others over a love of robots for four years.

And most importantly,

At 18 years old,

A place that is my home.