Eric

Eric and I toured Brown University, but knew we would not likely get in.

It was a cold day in Providence. It was raining so very hard. It was what people call "teeming."

It was cold, grey and miserably wet outside. However, Brown University is, of course, one of those campuses that still looks great on that day like that. It looks like the sort of place any high schooler would like to go to college.

I know I wanted to go there. It was in the heart of a hip section of Providence that seemed so rock-and-roll. The campus itself was filled with brick buildings so venerable and stoic. Who wouldn't want to go to college there?

Eric and I were lucky. Our parents brought us to Brown to get an experience. We were not pressured to attend an Ivy League school. We were invited to explore and make our own decisions.

I had toured Georgetown and George Washington. I had walked through Harvard Yard. I enjoyed every moment of these visits because I just admire what these places stood for without feeling an ounce of pressure to be among their alumni one day.

I think Eric felt the same way because we simply enjoyed the visit that early morning as the rain and wind relentlessly forced our huddled tour group to follow our guide under archways that shielded us.

It was under one such archway our guide, outfitted in a hooded blue raincoat, started to shout over the sound of the storm. He was telling us about life in the student dorms.

Then we heard it. We heard a scream. Eric and I looked over.

A girl was in a dead sprint out from under the archway into the pouring rain. She was screaming something so loud it must have woken up everyone in a nearby dorm room on campus sleeping off their hangovers.

"I DON'T WANT TO GO HERE!" she screamed.

Her parents took off in tow. The three continued on into the storm.

"It's a terror knowing what this world is about and watching some good friends scream, "Let me out!"/... This is ourselves... under pressure." -David Robert Jones and Farrok Bulsara.