Rice University Outing

Ah, going back to Rice University brings back many good memories. At the time I couldn't wait to get out. Now I wish I could get back in! The campus is, simply put, spectacular. If you are familiar with Houston, then you know that the Rice campus is right in the middle of the city. Just a couple miles from downtown and across the street from the world class medical center. Being "inside the hedges", which is Rice-speak from being within the confines of the university, makes you forget that you are actually in the middle of the fourth largest city in the U.S. Pictured to the right is the academic quad. Graduation ceremonies are held here. Yes, Rice is that small. When you come into the university as a freshman, there is a ceremony where you enter through the sally port, pictured behind the middle tree. It is considered bad luck to exit it before graduation. And of course, when you graduate, you walk out of the sally port.


Anyway, Rice is the perfect place to take some photos. Unfortunately, I don't do the campus justice, but I tried. When I get better with my camera, I'll come back and do these right. To the left is another view of the sally port.

Rice has a small student body. I'm not sure about the numbers know, but if memory serves, the undergraduate population was around 1700 students. Another piece of lore is that there is a tree planted for every student.




To the right is where I spent most of my time. This is the engineering quad, housing the classes and labs for engineering. I studied Electrical Engineering at Rice, along with Economics and Business. Ironically enough, my occupation has nothing to do with any of my majors. I am a software engineer. In the background, you'll see the huge slabs, they are at angles of 180, 90, and 45 degrees. I took alot more pics of this area but unfortunately most didn't turn out well. I've been having problems with a blown out sky. I believe I need a polarizing filter to fix this. Unfortunately, to get the proper exposure of the landscape, I would have to either set at neutral or positive exposure compensation, resulting in the sky being blown out. If I set at a negative exposure compensation, the sky looked great, but everything else was dark. Maybe its my metering. Who knows, I'll need to find out.

The Nations Largest Graveyard!

That's right, at least that's how I remember it. I may stand corrected. Rice is a huge campus. The founder, William Marsh Rice, is entombed in the statue you see pictured above. Honestly, I forget the exact statistic (if its largest private graveyard or what, its more anecdotal I guess than anything). There was a "jack", a Rice term for a prank, where engineering students got together, and with only pulley's and rope, rotated the statue 180 degrees. The university hired a well known engineering firm to turn it back around. However, they couldn't do what Rice students could do: turn it without damaging it. Yup, the engineering firm damaged the statue when they rotated it back. This lead the university to force the students involved in the jack to pay for the expenses, which they were able to cover by selling t-shirts on campus. Also note in this picture the blown out sky. Looks terrible.

Anyway, I'll close out with two pictures of the Berlin Wall, located on Rice Campus. This subject has so much potential and in the hands of a better photographer. But the image of it is awe-inspiring and shows the power of the people and democracy can't be contained. I was young when the wall was still standing and even then, I never thought that thing would come down.

PS: I apologize for the formatting of this post. It doesn't look as good as it did in preview. I promise, I'll work to make other posts more readable.