College Stuff and All That Jazz

My least favorite thing to do lately has been to think about the future. College, basketball, majors, location, all that stuff that deals with the next four years. It's one of the biggest decisions we'll have to make in the upcoming months, yet I'm not excited at all. The whole process is overwhelming for me. I've realized that now I need to make the most of these last few months with my friends and family because I won't be seeing much of them over the next few years.

I know a few things about what I want in a college. I want to play basketball wherever I go, I want the school to be in a cool location, I want the school to have a unique campus, and I want to study business managment or marketing (some kind of business).

This weekend, I travelled with my mom to Schenectady and Saratoga Springs, New York to check out some schools out there where I may play basketball. We flew out of Fort Wayne on Friday morning around 6 a.m. After stopping in Cleveland, we flew into Albany around 9 a.m., making it a nice, short trip. Upon arrival, we drove about 10 miles to a small town called Schenectady, where Union College is located. My mom and I drove up to the campus and immediately noticed how beautiful the campus was. The campus buildings were amazing, greek houses lined the streets, and big areas of green grass were all over the place. It probably helped to have perfect weather, but the campus was without a doubt an amazing place. Even the girls were beautiful, which is always a plus. The only problem we found was that the school didn't have a set Business Marketing or Management degree, only Managerial Economics which may or may not be the same thing. We walked around, bought a Union College basketball shirt, and decided to head to Saratoga Springs where we were staying for the weekend. It was about a half hour away. As we pulled onto the main street of Saratoga Springs, which was Broadway, we immediately noticed how cool this upstated New York town was. It had the feel of a quaint little town, but had major shopping stores like GAP, Starbucks, and Borders. Home of a major horse racing track, the town gets busy in the early summer for about 5 months.

Skidmore College is right in town, and that is where I was visiting. The coaching staff had been in touch with me for a while and I was excited to meet the guys on the team and play with them. On Friday, I met the coaches for the first time in person and was able to get a tour of the campus. Although it wasn't as beautiful as Union College's campus, the school was still very cool. It didn't have a football team though. One former student said that Acapella was like football at this school, and that caused some red flags to go up. I met some of the guys on the team, and they took me around the campus which was cool. They took me and another recruit named Tucker from New Jersey to the food court, so to say. It was pretty awesome. Many different stations which served all kinds of food. I was able to get a great meal before going back to one of the guys' dorm to play video games. After a quick game of NBA 2k8, we went over to the gym to play some ball. My team was pretty good. One kid on our team named Melvis could jump out of the gym. He was about 6'2" but had possibly a 40'' vertical leap. It was incredible. We played a good amount of games and I held my own. I think some of the guys were impressed with my play, or at least I hope.

Overall, the trip was a great experience. It really opened my eyes to schools out in the east. I hope in the future I can take another trip out east to visit those type of schools.