Farewell Column by Jessica Goldstein | It’s always sunny in Philadelphia

You know what feels like it happened forever ago? The College Search.

It was like academic prostitution — running all over the country, begging a bunch of strangers to love me, love me, say that they’ll love me. The whole thing was a miserable means to an end even if, like my mom, your parent let you buy something at every school’s Urban Outfitters so as to get the “full experience.”

Penn was the first school I visited. I lucked out on the day of my tour — it was, in fact, sunny in Philadelphia. Campus looked like a postcard. My guide was essentially my four-years-ahead-of-me doppelganger, an English major from New Jersey with long hair and a smile that took up half her face.

She’d engineered her tour as a kind of Dante’s Inferno in reverse. We were building up to the thing she loved most about Penn, starting with the meal plan — presumably the thing she loved least — and then on to housing and academics and student life, with a couple references to blue light phones that, obviously, were obsolete because we all had cell phones.

Like every other tour guide in the history of tour guides, she pointed out that if you stood at one blue light phone and turned in a complete circle, you would be able to see another. In the same breath, she swore that despite West Philadelphia’s violent reputation, she “never felt unsafe” on campus. (Even then, I wondered, Why not just say, “I always feel safe”? Is it because she doesn’t?)

The tour ended at Franklin Field, where she said, “This is my favorite thing about Penn.”

What? That’s … not what I had in mind. Her favorite thing about Penn is the football field? Is Penn even good at football? I had no idea.

“It’s the spirit,” she went on. “School spirit. I know it sounds sort of cheesy, but the people who go here love it here. I love Penn more than anyplace in the world.”

When I got home, I scribbled a note to myself that even though I had expected and sort of hoped to hate it here — I was in a very devout, Kerouac, go-west-or-bust phase, and winding up in Philadelphia felt like quitting on a dream — I hadn’t hated it at all. I really, really liked it. “Maybe I’ll end up feeling this way about someplace else,” I wrote. “But I’ve just got this feeling about Penn that I can’t explain.”

So anyway, I could tell you some things I’ve figured out in my four years here. Make your Facebook profile settings private now in case you ever want to run for president. Don’t bring your laptop to class. You do not need it to take notes; you only need it to G-Chat. (This is especially directed to kids from my “The Third Reich” lecture who, with professor Thomas Childers at the front of the room, were looking up “WWII” on Wikipedia. Seriously?) Do not hook up with people who live in your hall until they don’t live in your hall anymore.

That is all pretty solid advice. Still, there is something else I think is more important.

You’re probably going to spend four years learning how to think with your head. But one of the best decisions I’ve ever made — the decision to come to school here — was a decision I made with my gut.

And now, I’ve come to love this school in that classic, cliche, all-consuming way. More than anyplace in the world. The thought of leaving makes it hard to breathe. Take that for whatever it’s worth.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t a feeling. It might have been the weather. I guess I’ll never know.

All I’m sure of is that the sun was shining on Penn that day, and on me.

Jessica Goldstein, a former columnist, 34th Street Guides Editor and Under the Button Associate Editor, is a College senior from Berkeley Heights, N.J. After graduation, she will intern at The Washington Post.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.