The word "verdict" comes from the Latin "vere dictum", meaning "truly said"

If you didn't know that I've deciding between two colleges, now you know. Grinnell and Miami. My decision was due postmarked on May 1st, so I actually had to decide by today or (really, best) yesterday. I visited Grinnell on the 20th through 21st, and Miami on the 23rd. Then I started mulling it over.
-Here is a sample of my thoughts.
Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami Grinnell Miami
-I needed my decision by Saturday night to make it easiest to turn in the forms. At various times I made decisions, but they were all only waiting for the next decision to kick them into the past. On Saturday I spent all my waking time thinking about which college. Think about that. Involved in thought for an entire day. The consequence determines where I spend my next four years. How happy or miserable I'll be. How I'll spend all my time, excluding summers and a few breaks. Where I'll be geographically, whether I can go back home. What kind of environment, physically and in respect to the attitudes of the people around me. Thinking nonstop. Weighing the two options. My brain slowly decomposed. Melted into a gray gel. I kept having to push it back into my head. During the day I thought Grinnell would be better. At the end of the day, I attempted to give a decision. But, on their way to my mouth, the two names Collided with each other. They had a violent running-in and after socking the snot out of each other - this being inside my head, which didn't feel really hot - eventually decided that, since both couldn't go, neither would, and Miami shut off the lights behind them when I went to bed.
-Sunday, now. I got up and thought more. We went to church. Mom sought Pastor Curry's advice and prayer. I continued thinking. Grinnell and Miami battling it out at the exit ramp. Miami gained a foothold. I ate breakfast distractedly, and went home and thought and talked with Mom while thinking and thought. Then I walked up to Warder (barefoot, by the way) and climbed up a pine tree that Micah and I know. We call it the Ivory Tower. I hadn't been in it since last year. I realized that the ice storm we had this February really did a number on it. At least five really formidable branches had snapped off - branches six, seven inches in diameter. Sap was oozing prolifically from the nubs of the former branches. I climbed up to the top, which was slightly more difficult now, and several times stickier. Then I thought. I believe I sat in the Ivory Tower for at least two hours. Miami and Grinnell pushed and shoved. No holds barred. I didn't climb down all at once; rather, I came down a branch at a time whenever I was getting tired of the branch I was on. Ultimately, I jumped off the lowest branch in a pro-Grinnell mood. I visited some websites. The GORP website (Grinnell Outdoor Recreation Program), on the GOOP (Grinnell Outdoor Orientation Program) page. Greyhound's website. Something that started with R, something that started with C. RateMyProfessor.com, which is a very good resource. I went to bed having kept Mom up until 0130. At that time I finally told her Grinnell, but qualified it by telling her to keep her ears open the next morning in case I changed my mind again. My brain was now somewhere past fried. Charred, maybe.
-I thought until I got to sleep and then woke up at 0630 and I was struck by an overwhelming sense of dread at leaving home so far and for so long, being way the hell off in Iowa, and I thought about this too. I told Mom, "Now I want to go to Miami." And she said, "Okay, so do you want to make it Miami?" It was 0705. I leave for school at 0700 each day. I leaned my head down, let it suck into itself like a black hole, then tried to coax it to decompress; made a desperate rattling moaning noise, and forced out an inhuman: "Yeah." Then, "And no turning back."
-I biked to school. First band. We're playing a great song called Vesuvius, which is loud and in 9/8 time, and another one called October, which is possibly the smoothest and most beautiful concert band piece that a high school band can play, and another one called Duke Ellington in Concert, which I don't care for. Strictly speaking, Vesuvius isn't really in 9/8. It's in 4/4, 3/4, 9/8, 8/8, 1/4, 2/4, and 11/8. But the action part is in 9/8. After band, I went to psych, and Keith and I did notes. This is something we've been doing since we first had classes together back in 6th grade. Cartoons, recent things we've done, total nonsense, whatever. It all goes on the notes we pass back and forth.
-I had a vague inkling, which by the time psych was over had grown into a fully-fledged thought - "Ah no, not another thought!" - and I took it with me into bio 2nd bell. The thought was: "What am I doing? Miami? Why Miami? Grinnell! Grinnell is way better!" But this time, there was no warring. I just knew it, and though I can't pretend I had absolutely zero doubt, what doubt there was got swept away. Grinnell. It was really clear. I needed to call Mom at work and tell her.
-I had to try in between several different classes before I finally got a hold of her at the end of 5th bell. And then I was done. It turned out that all I needed to do in order to get an unconflicted thought was to stop thinking, which band and psych certainly made me do.

Now I will, as I've promised some of you, tell you how I decided what I decided.
Let me first off say that Miami and Grinnell are both excellent. It's not as if I decided on Grinnell because Miami is terrible and I suddenly realized it. If that were the case, I'd be a frickinidiot for putting myself into so much agony for so long. Plus, I was accepted into the Honors program at Miami. Here are some things Miami had going for it.
-It's close to home.
-It has more classes to choose from.
-I was in the Honors program. and I would be able to live in an Honors dorm.
-It has a 44-foot rock wall and an ice rink and (in Peffer Park) a giant sledding hill.
-There's also a big forest (Hueston Woods), something Iowa doesn't have a lot of.
But, here's some stuff it had in the minus column.
-There are drunkards everywhere.
-It's impersonal.
-It's probably harder to get into programs like the student newspaper, because they're really large.
-http://hs.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2200501989 (I don't know if you can get into this without a facebook account, but give it a try)
-Class requirements. This is a big one. There are 36 required credit-hours that you have to take in order to graduate, disributed nitpickingly across several different disciplines. On top of that, to graduate With Honors, you have to take ten Honors courses. I think these can overlap at least partially if not wholly with the required credit-hours, but they still limit the class choices that much more. By the time I got done with all my required classes, I would have been there for two years. When I realized this, I realized the Honors program is more of a hindrance then a help. Honors students are also required to keep a 3.5 gpa, and strongly encouraged to write a thesis.

Meanwhile, Grinnell was sitting there all like, "I've got these benefits."
-Really, really smart students and professors.
-Quiet small size.
-A rip-roarin' winter.
-I can elect (and have elected) to stay in a sub-free - substance-free - dorm.
-The open curriculum. There's only one class that's required for graduation, and I would take it if it weren't - the First-Year Tutorial. This isn't in a traditional subject like English or math, but rather it's something where you get to pick from a list of like 30 really fascinating and exhaustive subjects. Here's a list of them from last year, but they're totally different each year.
-Way more personal. The professor who teaches you the Tutorial becomes your advisor for the rest of your time there, and you get well acquainted with them. And everyone's nice*, and the professors are accessible. *generalization, but true from everything I've seen
But what kept me from it? Here are disadvantages.
-It is, as I say, way the hell out there in Iowa, and there are cornfields all around for like a thousand miles. There's a park, Rock Creek State Park, which has a nice lake, but it's not very well forested - just a few scrubby trees along the banks. Also, I'll be 400 miles from home.
-I think it's a bit more expensive.
-It has great classes, but not quite as many of them to choose from.
-Because it's small, there are fewer fine honeys to choose from.
However, I will finish with more of its benefits.
-I'm guranteed a job somewhere on campus to help pay for my Education.
-Most of Miami's broad selection of fine honeys are total airheads anyhow, and I'd have to be careful to get one that wasn't lousy.
-The classes are way better.
-I found a good amount of forests around, after doing some searching; there's the Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA), which has a 40-acre (1/4-mile square) oak forest; there's actually more forest in Rock Creek than I thought; there are other areas of forest around. And I can go to exotic (read: domestic) places with GORP, like perhaps Minnesota (I don't know this one for sure though), or the caves of Iowa (these apparently really exist), or Wisconsin (where GOOP is).

Sure, I'll probably get homesick. But this is the Information Age, you stupids. I'll open up a special private email account just for talking to home. I imagine I'll get frequent phone calls. Plus, the winter break is like four weeks long, and I can use that to take advantage of the hill in Peffer Park and catch up with the family and all that stuff. And of course I'll continue blogging until the end of time.

Now, who'll take this Miami t-shirt and Miami window cling that I got when I visited?

Now this is something

Well, GRINNELL LET ME IN! I got a hefty, cheerful packet today in the mail, and they say they won't be so embarrassed if I show my face around campus for a few years. They're even offering to throw $25,800 at me. This means that (1) I'm not totally worthless after all, and (2) I have options now! So, what I'm going to have to do is take an extensive tour, and maybe sleepover if it's offering, of both Grinnell and Miami. However, I don't know if Grandma and Grandpa will be available to take me.
-Grandpa had to go to the emergency room the other day, and he's still there. He had it all - the total package. They got him through the initial stuff, which we'll just not mention, but now he's got kidney failure and congestive heart failure to deal with. They say that he'll make it, but once he's out he'll have to make some drastic lifestyle changes. Every aspect of his diet will be carefully regulated, is one thing I know. Maybe he'll also have to give up strenuous activities, or a variety of other medical concerns like that. Everyone is pretty antsy around now. It's a nervewracking development, no doubt about that. Kidney failure and congestive heart failure seldom aren't. I believe Mom is taking me to go visit him in the hospital there tonight.
-It's spring break, by the way. I forgot to mention that. I've already plowed through about five days of it without really doing anything. Well, yesterday, Micah and I went on a comprehensive bike ride, and I read a book (The Road by Cormac McCarthy) but other than that I've done very little. What should I do? What I'd really like to do is get started working on that book I want to write, but I still need to create a coherent plot for it before I start writing. And I need to figure out how to make it interesting. People do read boring books, but I don't want mine to be one of them. I'm considering making it a story with two parallel main characters, one of whom is less focused on. That won't make it more interesting - I'm just saying it, is all. I have a good feeling about it, but I can't seem to assemble it. And of course I'll work on that. That's what I'll do with the rest of this break. Something useful. Or I could work on my snake cage. That thing is almost a joke. It's been sitting in the exact same spot in my room for about five or six years and I haven't done a thing with it. Mostly that's because I need a sheet of Plexiglas for the front door. But shoot, I could build the framework of the door, I suppose. So, with my remaining three days (starting tomorrow), I'm doing one of those two things. Yes! It's good to have a plan worked out.