Destination: Gettysburg

On Wednesday, I visited Gettysburg, PA for the first time. As a history major, I had an idea of the town's role in the Civil War and enjoy seeing places with past significance. This time, however, I was not there as a tourist, but as a chaperone.

Our high school's college counselor had arranged a campus visit to the college in the town of Gettysburg. I knew all of the students who were going, so I went along as well. It was a small liberal arts college that did fairly well in the national rankings. It had also just become SAT-optional.

It started as a cold, crisp day. As we drove down Interstate 76, we started to see flurries: the first snow of the year. By the time we drove past the town's cemeteries and historically preserved buildings, a layer of white already covered the ground.

At the college, we visited the admissions office and its multicultural student center. We also spoke to students and a professor, ate in the dining hall, and took a campus tour. A snowball or two was also thrown. Life there was very different from anything in our own city. I think some of our own students' eyes were opened, and I know mine were as well.

While I've spent much of my post-graduate life at schools and colleges, I have not been a prospective student anywhere in a long time. Thinking back to my own experience applying to college seven years ago, I only considered a limited number of schools. I definitely did not even think of applying to anyplace this rural or this far west. I'm not sure I had even heard of this college. Things worked out, more or less, but there remains the big "what if."

Knowing everything I know now, if I were a teenager again, would I have made the same choices? It is an impossible question, of course. For the sake of the students I work with now, the ones who will have to face those decisions very soon, I hope they make the right ones.