Our First College Tour

Where did all the time go? Clock: stop now, please. :) This September, my son is entering his sophomore year in High School, so he has a couple of years to ponder and prepare for college. The two of us had a quiet afternoon together so we decided to do our first college tour.


For our first official tour, we went to the “Harvard of the West” - the University of Washington. ;)

Since this was our first you will have to realize that we had no idea that you have to sign up on line ahead of time. We showed up in the Husky

Building with a smile on our faces and no reservations. Fortunately, those Sweet Dawgs got us in.

As we zipped around campus with our spunky student guide we were given endless facts about how big classes are made small and how the big campus has opportunities for relational connection everywhere. Could that be possible? It all was encouraging as I thought of my child attending a campus of 30k students. Yikes!

The architecture on campus especially caught my eye. The UW campus was moved to its current location in approximately 1900 from downtown Seattle. Many of the older buildings have such academic personality. The old Suzallo library was especially beautiful. However, I think that a tour during the academic year would be even more useful because the University would have been in full session. Note to self: do college tours during the school year. It would be great to see the campus fully alive rather than in the sleepy months of summer.

Even though I don’t like the idea of my son leaving for college, I have to say that the campus tour was really exciting. Personally, I love school and can only fathom the many possibilities ahead.