Yes, Harry Went To Rhodes

Upfront, the admissions counselor at Rhodes College said, "Don't send us a Harry Potter essay." I swallowed my disappointment. That was my plan for getting into Rhodes. Then I remembered, Birdie is looking at colleges. Not me. My role is to help pay for college and to announce my visits. At first, I thought the Rhodes admissions counselor was a little tough on Rhodes stone-faced resemblance to Hogwarts Academy. Then Birdie and I stepped into the dining hall. Students fling their backpacks onto the entrance hall floor, then compete elbow-to-elbow for access to pizza, pasta, hamburgers and weird vegan stuff. While I know not everything vegan is weird, that day, I saw weird. Once the students have lunch in their grasp, they sit at long wooden tables in a high-domed chamber just like Harry and his buds. Acquiring lunch is crazy, collisions happen, and lunch trays hit the floor. For the excitement alone, I'd go to Rhodes. Birdie would, too, although she claims more scholarly reasons. Only two days before our visit, Rhodes announced two new majors: Environmental Science and Environmental Studies. The biology professor who met with Biride helped craft the new program. What she said about it was dead-on to what Birdie may want. I figured some sort of wizard magic was at-play like if Birdie thought she wanted a college major that let her design bikinis and other beach fashion-wear for kitties, Rhodes would have read her mind and offered it. Now that I think it through, our whole visit had a strong touch of magic. Birdie's first love is to sing. We met with the head of Rhodes choral music department. And guess what? The choir need sopranos. A shortage of sopranos simply never happens. At Rhodes College, science, singing and lunch as a contact sport collide. That's plenty good enough to keep this magic place on the Birdie short-list.