Ivies

The idea of "Ivy League" universities has consistently blown my mind. I find articles like The Disadvantages of an Elite Education very interesting (and ideas like a Ivy pre-k beyond ludicrous, but that's a whole other issue)

I chose the university I attended based on two factors:

• it was one of two universities in the same city I grew up in, and
  
• it was the bigger one of the two and had more science and professional programs, which is where my interests were.

Also, the idea of leaving the province to study somewhere else, rather than living rent-free with my parents in the house I grew up in, was unfathomable to me. Some people might leave home to go to university as a rite of passage, to leave the nest. 4 years into my degree, I left my comfort zone and took a summer job in another province, and then moved in with my boyfriend when I came home for the final year, which was pretty much perfect.

I completed a degree that I really enjoyed and absolutely prepared me for a job in the same field, in the same province/country that I fully intended on staying in.

To me, Yale, Harvard, and others sound like fancy, prestigious words, almost fictional in my mind. To this day I still think I would have been fine to attend universities in Calgary, or Regina, or the other university in my city, or wherever, based on where I grew up and/or intended to have my career...

I have nothing against any of you for getting schooled wherever you happened to want to get schooled (way to alienate half your friend/relative readers with this article, me), I'm just trying to explain why it wasn't for me.