New York Diary

NYU and the Cloister

I had my first class at NYU yesterday evening. It was fun. The Washington Square Park area is quite cool, full of students, street-side book vendors, hole-in-the-wall eateries, and streets with actual names instead of mere numbers. NYU itself is nice, too. But being in the city, with all the opportunities it affords, cannot, I think, make up for the experience of going off to college. A college town, or even just a self-contained campus, is a different thing altogether. It is a university community that is spatial and physical as much as theoretical--and that, I think, matters. Everybody at Cornell was a Cornellian, was studying and learning (or at least attending classes and hoping to get by without studying). NYU's great diversity and strength derives, at least in part, from the fact that you can't avoid interacting with a million people who aren't students or academics. But isn't that what you go to college to do...?

I believe in the Cloister of education. And then I believe in getting out.

posted by Skay @ 9:19 AM