The Story of a Vocation II** ... how Steph makes decisions

** Part I here **

Upon returning home for my senior year, I began to feel a little more OK about my place with my classmates, due both to the positive experience in Houston as well as various events of senior year (retreat, misunderstandings with school administration, etc.). So, while in some respects it was too late to develop too many deep bonds, at least I went out on a pretty good note.

Senior year also brought the alleged college-hunt. I say "alleged" because otherwise there's the implication that I was actually looking at different schools. The reality of it, however, was that there was absolutely no looking going on. I'm the youngest of six; the oldest went to Xavier in Cinncinnati, and three of the other four went to Dayton. Living in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area (Maryland suburbs), we had no Ohio connections, and therefore no logical reason for all of us to end up out there for school. Apparently, as the story goes, my second sister went along for the ride with a friend's college hunt and called my parents from Dayton saying "This is where I'm going to go." My parents, then, after dropping the oldest at Xavier for her freshman year, stopped by and checked out Dayton.

By the time it got to me, then, I knew the campus pretty well, having visited it gazillions of times over the previous eleven years or so. The others loved it, so there had to be something good there; they had a strong engineering program; I was familiar with the place; and, since my brother was graduating just as I was starting, I at least knew a few people if I got into trouble. While she loved the school, my mom was sick of driving to Ohio (go figure!), so she first tried to get me to look at George Washington --- I wanted at least one tree on my campus, plus I wanted to be a little farther than a Metro ride. We did go check out Villanova, though, but the whole time I was there, I kept saying: "I like Dayton's _____ better. Dayton's _____ are nicer" and so forth. (Open-mindedness was not necessarily my strong suit!) Consequently, I sent out three college applications: Dayton (duh!), Villanova (just cuz), and Maryland (in case something came up and I had to stay home).

So off I went to become a Dayton Flyer.