First Time? My Time Visiting Carleton (as a prospie)!

“Whoa, this place is much bigger than what the Wikipedia page says! LDC looks so distant from everything else, there is no way I will ever find my way there. Why is Goodhue DOWN a hill? Will I have enough time to walk across campus in 10 minutes? Should I even GO to college?”

College tours are weird when you’ve never been on a college campus before. They are weird when you have no prior experience with higher education in any capacity. They are weird when the extent of your parent’s education is elementary school and they have no idea how to assist in navigating this fundamentally new aspect of life. Ultimately, they are weird, when college is an idea rather than an experience. Only a dream rather than reality.

I can attest to these feelings since Carleton was the first time visiting an institution with the intent of attending. I participated in Taste of Carleton during the fall of 2023 (my senior year of high school). Taste of Carleton (TOC) is a competitive, free, all-expenses-paid fly-in program for students who would normally not be able to afford a college visit. I learned about Taste of Carleton when researching other college fly-in programs and saw that they had a later submission deadline than the rest, giving me enough time to perfect my application.

Prior to the Trip

“A free trip???”, I said with my eyebrows raised. Not much in my life came free, so I immediately looked into this with curiosity and suspense. I always viewed traveling as a luxury, so for a trip like this to be free was essentially unfathomable to me.

I applied in one sitting. Retrospectively, the application was essentially a smaller college application, which gave me valuable experience when the real thing came along. I heard back a month after applying from Jorge (a lovely Admissions Officer; I got in if you couldn’t tell!). I quickly got a packing list and a program that described what we were going to do for the 2 1/2 days, but I didn’t really need this list as I am not a hefty packer (Pro tip 1: pack lightly!).

This trip was special because it was my first time ever being on an airplane. I had no expectations of what could happen on a plane, but I do remember the first takeoff feeling like a roller coaster drop and seeing the view of the city I called home from above. I vividly remember shedding a small tear when I saw Indianapolis from above. Only knowing of the shops I frequented with my mom to buy groceries and their subsequent parking lots, seeing them be little specks thousands of feet in the air was surreal; my entire life confined in just a few little blips.

I also remember having the whole row to myself (thanks Jorge!). (Pro tip 2: if a college visit is your first time flying, buy some gum. It’ll help your ears pop when you’re in the sky!).

Trip!

I’ll be completely honest, I knew very little about Carleton when I visited. I found out about Carleton while looking over Northfield on Google Maps, and only knew what the website specified. To make up for this, I decided to read the entire Carleton Wikipedia page on the plane to catch up on any facts that I should probably know (this is where I learned about all the traditions we have like Friday Flowers and Schiller!).

I landed in MSP and immediately got scared. MSP is significantly larger than the Indianapolis airport and I thought that I wouldn’t be able to find my group after 20 minutes of walking. Eventually, I found the other prospies (wearing our TOC shirts!), got some food, and got on the bus to Carleton.

(side note: I facetimed my parents and saw my dad crying because I was away. This was one of the few times that I saw him cry, but not anymore. This is now a recurring theme when I go back each term…!)

First order of business: room! Unfortunately, we stayed in the Fairfield hotel in town due to COVID restrictions and thus couldn’t sleep in a dorm. From here, we began our tour of campus. Looking back, it shocks me as to how foreign campus felt when I first stepped foot here. Going into Hasenstab to look at a classroom feels so ordinary now but was so surreal back then. Giving tours now is a routine, but I always go back to this moment so that I remember what the prospies I give tours to are experiencing.

The rest of the day is a little fuzzy. I remember going to the Weitz and Jorge giving an info session, then a group of other TOC prospies and I making a trip to Family Fare (our local grocery store). I could go on a tangent about how different but similar Family Fare looked compared to local grocery stores, but because I shop there so frequently it has become MY local grocery store…and also because it would make this blog too long and quite frankly no one really cares about that.

Afterwards, a lot of us made the long, treacherous journey to the Libe where we larped as college students and got some of our own homework done…or at least tried. I averaged around 4 hours of sleep at this point, and so I really couldn’t get much done without falling asleep. But, this was also my introduction to Toff the library cat! TOC was in October, so the library workers decked Toff out in his Halloween fit, and I couldn’t pass the chance to take a photo of him! I liked Toff so much that I made him the profile picture of my Carleton email, and I have no plans to change it anytime soon.

The next day, I woke up and then attended class! This particular class was a History A&I on US-Latin American relations taught by now-History chair Andrew Fischer. I was initially meant to go to Leighton, home of the History department (and best academic building on campus), but the location got changed abruptly which made me pretty confused and scared as a prospie who didn’t know their way around campus at the time. After conversing with Andrew, I managed to find the class and sat down next to these welcoming students (whom I don’t remember!).

I enjoyed the session. Most of class was spent going through how to write a bibliography for the student’s upcoming essay, but the start-of-class conversation regarding their readings was interesting, and I was able to add some of my own input based on what I knew about the subject at hand! While I was expecting to see students discuss the readings they did beforehand, I wasn’t expecting to also be included in that, which made my time in the class a lot more enjoyable than if I were to just sit there and do nothing.  We then had lunch in the LDC, which at the time blew my mind. LDC seemed so big, almost like there were endless stations of food for you to eat! (I don’t remember what I had. Probably some spaghetti or whatever the usual at LDC was at the time).

Afterwards, I explored downtown with some of my TOC friends! We explored the coffee shops and the river walk, walking into many businesses (and not buying things because I was a broke high school student). I loved seeing all of the chalking left by the locals on the sidewalks downtown, as well as the ground murals on the library steps. (Carleton has a rich chalking history as well! If you ever come to Carleton, make sure to read and appreciate the chalking left behind by students, especially in front of Sayles! 🙂 )

I remember visiting Carleton’s Latinx interest house, CASA, in the evening. While I don’t remember much about the conversation I had with the residents (most likely the lived experiences of being Latinx at a PWI), I remember feeling safe and accepted when I saw a lot of people that looked just like me talking about how they’ve been able to manage being in an institution where our presence is limited. Having gone to a high school where the vast majority of students are Black and/or Latinx, I knew that I was most likely not going to get that in college. A school with these sorts of groups and institutions allowing for the existence and proliferation of Latinx success was a huge box that needed to be filled by any college that I was interested in, and this moment checked the box for Carleton.

To wrap up the day, we had dinner once more in the Weitz and went back to our hotel as a group and hung out for a long time in one of our rooms. One of us brought an UNO deck, and so we played a couple of round before we decided on an incredible idea: playing Murder in the Dark in the cramped room! (spoiler alert: it was fun, though we kept bumping into each other and the rounds went quickly because of how small the room was). Afterwards, we had a discussion on our own mortality and spiritual beliefs until around 3 AM. This discussion was a little glimpse into the type of conversations that I have had at Carleton, which would directly change the ways I view myself and my world. It all started in a hotel room with people I only met the day prior. Needless to say, Taste of Carleton wrapped up pretty well (or that’s what should’ve happened if I didn’t almost miss my flight the next day…)!

Final Thoughts?

Taste of Carleton wasn’t just a college trip for me. It became a milestone point in my life, making college seem something attainable to me than just something for show. While Carleton was already high up on my list during this time, Taste of Carleton cemented my decision. For many reasons because and not because of Carleton, I have come to not regret my decision! Carleton is where I became the person, the activist, and the student that I wanted to become, and is where these roles will continue to blossom for the rest of my time here.

Jonathan (they/she) is a rising junior History major & Africana Studies+Religion double minor from Indianapolis, IN. In their free time, they like to be a part of the organizing and activism scene in Northfield and the Twin Cities, participate in LASO, QTBIPOC+ (for whom she is a board member), WOC+, and TRIO events, spend time outside walking across campus, visiting the numerous coffee shops in Northfield, read a new book or catch up on the latest global news, and enjoy the quiet but busy life of being a student at Carleton!

Jonathan works for Residential Life as a Resident Assistant (RA) for Huntington House, also known as the Wellstone House of Organizing and Activism (WHOA), and uses the skills they learn from residing in this space across different projects, both locally and nationally.