SLU Squirrels

A quick update from the road: 

Greetings!  Today, I technically am not "on the road", as I have 1.5 days in Canton between recruiting trips.  I have to say, the one downside to the admissions staff traveling in the Fall is that we miss the most beautiful time of year in the North Country.  The colorful leaves, the mums, the pumpkins...how can anyone not appreciate autumn in Northern New York?  On my walk to work this morning, I snapped a picture of the foliage on campus:  

My colleague, Tim Akers, just compiled some numbers which explains why most of our staff is missing autumn in Canton.  According to Tim, in this past week, our office has driven over 7,059 miles, flown 28,752 miles, visited eight countries, visited over one hundred high schools, conducted 117 off-campus interviews, and attended thirty-six college fairs!  I'll be adding to the numbers tomorrow when I fly out to Seattle to attend college fairs and visit high schools in Washington and Oregon.  It's safe to say our staff will not see much of each other as a group until application "reading season" begins this winter!

I'll conclude with an explanation of the title of my post:  "SLU Squirrels".  Everyone who has attended or worked at St. Lawrence knows how tame (and sometimes aggressive) the squirrels are on the SLU campus.  Before I left for my first recruiting trip a few weeks back, I had some company at my office window for literally four hours...I think he smelled the crackers leftover from my lunch and proceeded to crawl up and down my windows, as you can see:  

The squirrels on campus are getting much more competitive and are "in your face" (sometimes literally) during this time of year in order to fatten up for the North Country winter...which is right around the corner.  But lets not think about winter, as we still have time to enjoy my favorite season!

One last random question which does relate to my blog post:  Do you know why our school colors are scarlet and brown?  There are two official answers.  Respond to my blog with your guesses and I will give the answers in my next post. 

Unitl next time....