So I might have found a grad school with my name on it…

I am convinced that I am destined to go to the American University of Beirut.  After all, the signs everywhere on campus are just calling my name…literally.  A.U.B.  One of my nicknames.  We took a tour of the place yesterday before lunch and I was pumped to actually get to tour a campus of a Middle Eastern university that I was considering attending anyway.  Really, it’s walking around the place and seeing myself there which really determines whether or not I want to go to a school.  AUB wasn’t too bad.  Not only is it a no-smoking zone (which is fabulous when the rest of Beirut is smoke-smoke-smoke), but it is also American property, so any threat to the campus is a threat to the United States of America.  This means special security, which eases my mind in terms of a country thinking twice before it messes with this school.  Our student tour guide claimed that it was, ironically, Israel of all countries which attacked AUB quite a few years ago now and killed the university’s former president; yet, many scholarly sources lead my group to believe that he was sadly mistaken and rather the fundamentalist Shia group of the 1980s, Islamic Jihad Organization, may have been responsible for this.  Whoever it may have been, security is a serious concern…

Also, the place is reasonably small, which I am a big fan off (15 minutes max. to get across campus?  Yes, please!) and basically all of the classes are taught in English.  There are also quite a few grassy areas, and there is a beach (just a rocky one, though) reserved especially for AUB students.

The downfalls that I saw of the university?  Even though it doesn’t take long to walk anywhere, there are no bicycles allowed, and my bicycle is my best friend back at Grand Valley.  It saves me loads of time getting around town.  The tour guide also informed us that the chapel originally built on the school grounds is now reserved for large lectures because the entire university has been deemed secular grounds.  I’m not quite sure how I feel about this—on the one hand, this discourages the idea of the sectarianism which has caused so many frustrations in the past, but at the same time this does not promote an urge for understanding in order to achieve a tolerance and respect for other religions, which I think is a very necessary attribute for a person to have when heading off to the real world.  Another unfortunate aspect I picked up on about AUB, and I realize that it’s hard to find a newer university than Grand Valley (built only 51 years ago!), but beyond the beautiful stone walls and the exquisite mosaics on the buildings, the classrooms and hallways do not give off the “fresh and clean” environment like the one that I very much appreciate at GV.  And finally, I noticed right away that there are only about a dozen different clubs offered on campus which is not a large variety when I consider the 100+ option I enjoy at my current university.

Still, I could really see myself getting a lot out of the place, if even just for one year on a Fulbright or Boren grant.  With the comprehensible Arabic dialect here and the rich history of conflict and attempts at conflict resolution, I believe that in attending AUB for a few months, I could advance far in my understanding of this region of the world.