The Required Versatility

In the summer before my senior year of high school, I decided to set out and visit a couple college campuses in order to develop a personal taste of what I would like to find in an university's environment and society. I will admit, however, that when compiling my list of “colleges to visit” I had not marked The University Of Texas at Austin down as a destination for my trip. During that time, I had my eyes set on viewing the campuses of select northeastern schools, which included Boston University, Cornell University, and New York University.

And surely enough, I visited each campus as planned. However, there was one major factor that prevented me from liking each university. Academics and people aside, I found myself disagreeing with the actual places that these schools inhabited. Though they were beautiful in their separate ways, I realized that each lacked a special versatility that is needed for my ideal college environment. Each of those aforementioned campuses and their architectures seemed to impose a kind of lifestyle that I did not want, providing a single linear path as to who I ultimately wanted to end up as, which was counterintuitive to my “opening doors of opportunity” stereotype for college.
As I am typing up this recollection of my visits to those schools now, I find that I am scolding myself for taking The University of Texas for granted in the past -Mainly because I have actually found what I was looking for in terms of a college campus here. I have found the “versatility” in this school's architecture, people, and overall place. While most campuses carry special distinctions and main styles of architecture such as Gothic, Spanish, and in some cases Oriental, I am finding comfort in the varying and “inconsistent” types of architecture that UT has been criticized for. Though this may be a negative to some, I find that most of the campus falls directly into the criteria that our former president Larry R. Faulkner initially described in the campus master plan: “We must design every element in a way that serves our architectural heritage, the adjacent environments, the broad goals of The University, and the highly specified demands of our academic and research programs.”(Faulkner, Bump 410)

Buildings such as the Robert Lee Moore hall deal with mathematics and other sciences which can explain why there is a strong modern structure to it that is based around a boxed shape. While others, such as Parlin Hall or the other buildings that are found in the “six-pack” usually house classes and courses that are based on the liberal arts,  possessing a kind of structure reminiscent of the Mediterranean as well as Classical ages.

As I walk through this campus every day, I am enjoying it more and more. Though some may argue that it is not as beautiful as other places such as Stanford, I find that the beauty lies within its ability to adapt to my needs as well as the needs of others on this campus. While I am living in San Jacinto, I cannot feel anything less than comfortable with its contemporary Spanish design, characterized by a mixture of colors reminiscent of the sand and the beach, instilling in me a certain warmth that is almost indescribable. As I walk to my first class in the mornings, I pass by the McCombs Building, accommodating business majors with its tall glass windows, stock ticker, and modernist design, characteristic of the busy and bustling nature of its respective profession. In effect, I find that each building on campus hosts a primary purpose and “piece” of our [cultures] that ties into architect Paul Phillipe Cret's vision: “The modern university has to be, on account of its size a grouping of several compositions, related to be sure, but independent, and requiring a certain variety of treatment to avoid the monotony and the institutional character inherent to the repetition of similar units.” (Paul Cret, Bump 415)

Though some may argue that the architecture in most of UT's campus is inconsistent and unrelated, I believe that versatility of the buildings on campus outweighs the other argument. In addition, the argument of whether architecture harmonizes well with nature seems biased towards only one side of nature. The other side that is not usually contemplated is suggested to be us, as the inhabitants: “What physics doesn't teach, however, we humans are also part of the natural order.” (Adamson on Vedic Architecture, Bump 427)
Like everyone else, I am unsure as to how this place will affect me in my up and coming years. Though there is uncertainty, I also find that there will be a constant thing that will always influence me on this campus. And that is the versatility of UT serving as a crossroad for the different paths that I can take to “follow my bliss” (Joseph Campbell, Bump 71) and to end up where[ever] I want to be.