I didn’t come to Drexel for its co-op program. I didn’t even know it had one until Accepted Students Day, and I nearly missed the deadline to even apply to Drexel. Much to the concern of most of my high school teachers, I started applying to college very late in the year. When I finally did, I applied to Drexel because I vaguely remembered the name from passing by Drexel while leaving the Philadelphia Zoo many years ago. Well, that, and the Keg Party that was going on as we drove by. I learned what that meant that day.
When I did finally see the actual Drexel for the first time on Accepted Students Day, the iSchool (as it was still called then) took me by surprise. Honestly, its exterior didn’t leave a very promising first impression. The garden was nice, sure, but the building looked pretty terrible for being home to the IT college. Thankfully, the inside of the Rush Building is actually decent. It is very small though.
And that’s exactly what won me over. The iSchool was a small, pretty close-knit community just minutes from the city. I had already loved Philly before coming to Drexel as I was already moderately familiar with it thanks to my mom growing up here. In fact, having gone to Temple, she knew more about Drexel than I did when I applied.
“Oh Drexel. That’s an engineering school.”
Those were words when I told her I was applying.
Now that the iSchool is the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI officially, CCiSchool unofficially), we’ve gone in community size a fair bit. The building hasn’t, but the number of new faces each year definitely has. And I’m OK with that. We’re still small enough to be a close community. Thankfully, one thing that hasn’t changed is how few people know you can use the second and third floor balconies to do work or relax. I unofficially designated the third floor one as my office.
