National Lampoon's Empire College Tour of NYC Schools

Man, am I glad to be home!!!  I just came back from my first College Counselor tour ever, the brand-new Empire Tour of NYC schools.  If I had known this was the first time they were running the tour, I wonder if I still would have gone?

I left home at 9:30am on Sunday morning to make it to St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens, NY, by 3pm. Thankfully, the drive down was uneventful and easy, actually.  I have never liked Connecticut--it seems so ugly from I-95, and this trip only confirmed it.  I'm sure there are nice areas, but certainly along 95 you don't see any.  To make matters worse, it felt like all of 95 in Connecticut is 2-lanes and both lanes always appeared to be under construction.  Anyway, even with traffic around New Haven and Stamford, I still make it there in about 3.5 hours.

When I arrived, the campus was empty.  There was no one around.  I begged my way into the library--which was closed--to use the bathroom.  Then I sat in an Adirondack chair to read.  It was over 90 degrees out, but there was a nice breeze on campus.  After a little while, a girl strolled by with her suitcase and asked me if I was also there for the Empire Tour.  Her name was Nicole, and we ended up hanging out together for most of the tour.  People started to trickle in, but there were no organizers or people from St. John!  The security guard that let me into the bathroom started bringing people and their luggage from the main gate to the Admissions Welcome Center in his SUV.  He gave us water.  Finally, our fearless leader Dave showed up.  He was way younger than I expected and was the coordinator of the tour and Director of Admissions at St. John's.  They opened the welcome center and gave us only a fuzzy idea of what time check in would start.  They had iced tea (but no water?!), fruit, and veggies and dip.  I was starving because I'd missed lunch.  We were all a little tired and hungry when we arrived, and the lack of a clear plan was a bit strange--an indication of what was to come.

Finally we checked in and walked over to the dorms.  We were in freshman dorms, and four of us had to share a suite.  The suite had 4 single bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, but neither toilet flushed normally.  After a while, we figured out how to flush the one that was farthest away from my room.  You had to yank the handle like you were starting a lawn mower.  The one close to my bedroom flushed sometimes...We asked the front desk people to call facilities so they could fix the toilets while we were having our tour of campus and dinner, but they were student workers and didn't seem to understand the nature of the problem!!!  After a full day of travel, you don't want to mess around with a bathroom that doesn't flush!  The dorms were also extremely gross--dirty and just gross.  It looked like a freshman boys dorm.  I wish I'd taken photos, but I was too taken aback to think of it!

The tour was ok, dinner--meh.  The info session was supposed to last a half hour and dragged on over an hour.  By then it was after 8:30 and we were all beat.  Some of the people had been up since 3AM.  Finally we went back to the dorms.  I managed to take a shower, but was nervous about the toilets!  The facilities guys finally came but they said they'd send someone in the morning--after we would already be gone!  Thanks for your help, dude!

Carlos sent me pictures of the boys via text message, and he told me that they were asking for me at bedtime and when they woke in the morning.  It made me so sad!!

The next day we met at 6:30am and had warm NY bagels before boarding the bus.  That was nice.  Then we went off to Marist College in Poughkeepsie and Iona College in New Rochelle.  Neither school was a NYC school, but whatever--they made it onto the tour!  Marist was a pleasant surprise!  I didn't really know what to expect, but it was an amazingly nice campus, and Poughkeepsie looks pretty nice, too.  After our info session and tour we had lunch at their boathouse with a view of the Hudson.  The campus is up high, overlooking one of the longest straight stretches of the Hudson there is.  It was really quite nice...

That's one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world

The view from the porch on the top of the boathouse

After Marist, we took off for Iona College, which I'd never heard of except for driving by it the previous day on I-95.  On the way there, the driver pulled over on the interstate and got out...the engine door had popped open on the highway!  Cars whizzed by us...we thought the driver said that it was the luggage door that had opened, and we were all imagining our luggage strewn across the Bronx, but thank God it wasn't.  Also on the way to Iona, the AC on the bus broke.  We arrived hot and tired, but had a nice tour and an even nicer meal:  great appetizers, plenty of booze, and a delicious selection of dinner food.  They were also generous with the free stuff: t-shirts, coffee mug, etc.  Iona was a really pleasant surprise, although I don't think New Rochelle is anything to write home about!

While we were at Iona, the bus company sent us a new bus.  However, it STANK like sewage when we got on the bus!!!!  And, it didn't seem the AC was working all that well, either.  The new driver put two cups of water down the toilet to flush it out and then sprayed air freshener all over.  It was so gross...It was actually so funny because I was sitting at the front of the bus with some others.  Everyone was getting on the bus so happy that we supposedly were going to have AC...but it only took about 10 seconds for each person's face to twist into a scowl as they smelled the sewage!!  Too funny to watch everyone's reaction.  But it wasn't so funny to have to ride the bus back to the NYU campus in Manhattan where we were staying that night!

You can almost see the air freshener haze...

When we arrived to NYU like an hour and a half later, we checked into another freshman dorm.  It was in a high rise, but seemed fairly nice.  (However, our suites had no soap or tissues, and the cheap sheets kept coming off the bed.) Then we found out that we would have to walk 10 blocks--2 blocks west and 8 blocks south--to Washington Square and their Welcome Center at 7:30am for breakfast.  No big deal except we had to do that WITH all our luggage.  No fun for a lot of people.  I packed light, but some of the others were sticking around or doing other things after the tour and had heavy suitcases.  Our fearless leader Dave walked the 10 blocks pushing this down the street!

As we walked down the streets of Manhattan-30 people with suitcases--we got dirty looks and some guy said, "Oh look!  It's like NYU for old people!"  Who YOU calling old, buddy??!

NYU was a disappointment to me.  There is NO campus except buildings.  I know you go to NYU for the city, but basically that's their sell.  The city.  There doesn't seem to be much to NYU except an almost $70,000 price tag/year.  Yikes.

After NYU we went to City College which is part of the CUNY system.  We got off in some sketchy part of Harlem and toured a residence first.  Then they marched us in 95 degree weather through a really huge construction site to get to the rest of the campus.  It was an unpleasant walk, but once through the battle zone, we discovered a perfectly lovely urban campus with stone buildings and a lot of charm.  It was a nice surprise!  We had lunch and then took off for Fordham in the Bronx.  Some of the areas of the Bronx we went through were sketchy to say the least, and I was sure I wasn't going to like Fordham.  But when we pulled up to the campus, it was leafy, green, and absolutely gorgeous.  Wow.  They were the classiest school of the bunch.  We all got a $10 gift card and time to shop in the bookstore.  They had a great dinner prepared.

After dinner we all took off in the bus for SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island.  It was an over 1.5 hour ride.  Our bus driver Thomas was CRAZY and proceeded to honk at people to get out of our way.  He had us there in record time.  We were all so excited because it was the first night of staying in a hotel, and our last night of the tour.  I paid extra to have a single room so I wouldn't have to share with some other person on the tour.  The hotel was brand new--as in it opened about a month ago--and it was AWESOME.  I took a shower and put on my PJs...and then the fire alarm went off.  I stuck my head out into the hall...so did a few other people...then we all just went back inside.  (We found out at breakfast the next day that someone had burned popcorn in the microwave!)

We all slept better than the previous 2 nights, had a not very good breakfast at the hotel, and then endured a presentation and a tour of Stony Brook.  It was fine but not great.  We had a tight schedule for the day because we had to finish with everything by 2pm so that people could catch trains and planes.  We actually had to tell our tour guides (undergrads) to take us back because they were showing us every little thing and taking forever.

On the way from Stony Brook to Hofstra (also Long Island, near the airports, back west), the AC on the bus broke again.  This time it was so freaking hot that we all thought we might pass out.  The worst, though, wasn't the heat but the lack of air.  I felt like I couldn't breathe!  I think there was literally almost no oxygen on the bus.  It was seriously dangerous because we had older and heavier people on the tour.  If I was feeling like crap, I can only imagine what they were experiencing!  Also, as we are driving to Hofstra, Thomas our driver missed the exit for 495.  So he pulled over on the side of the highway, backed up the bus, and then drove over the median to take the exit.  It was crazy!

Hofstra met us with cold waters and gave us time to cool off before giving us another very long (too long) tour.  By that point we were all DONE.  Some of our group left directly for the airports from Hofstra and most of us went back to St. John's to get our cars or take transportation from there.  They had switched the bus AGAIN so at least we had AC on the way back.  I would have taken a taxi from Hofstra to St. John's if the AC had still been broken!!!  We jumped off the bus, yelled thanks and goodbye, and sped off in our cars at 3:15 to try to get out of NYC before the rush hour traffic was too bad.

I made it out of NYC no problem, but hit traffic from Greenwich all the way up to New Haven, essentially.  It was long and boring and frustrating.  Then I made it all the way to Mass fine...I was so close to home...and the traffic stopped near Mansfield on 95.  AGH!!  There was a show at the Comcast Center last night (not sure what, but something for teens).  NO ONE was moving.  So I got off the highway and took back roads until I could get back on 495 without all the 14 year old girls being driven by their dads.

I left Queens at 3:16 and got home at 7:57.  No too bad all considered.

Boy am I glad to be home.  Despite all the adventures and hiccoughs, the people on the tour were amazing.  No one really complained too much (beyond making fun of our situation and laughing about it and whining a LITTLE).  Everyone was really good natured and fun to be around.  It was a really nice mix of people from all over the country, and I made 2 new friends that I hope to stay in touch with (and others that I hope I see again on other tours--if I dare go on a tour again!).

 I survived The Empire Tour 2013.  Don't anyone ever question my dedication to college counseling!