LETTERS
No Survivor, please

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Reading William S. Wan's article, "Home, Home in the Reg" (April/02) reminded me of two things. First, I recalled my reactions during a tour of the recently revamped Regenstein to the physical alterations of the place. A College friend (now a Ph.D. student) at Chicago referred to the unfinished wood and metal entrance as resembling a Starbucks. I noted that the carpeting had been switched to a more sedate and uniform grayish, which presumably promises not to fade as much as the lime and orange that used to color-code the floors.

Second, I was reminded of how incredibly hard some of us worked, and more particularly, how this factored into the boot-camp ethos of which Chicago students are so proud (as David Forbes put it in the same issue, "In the end I felt like a U of C survivor.") In retrospect, I cannot help but wonder whether we sometimes confused outrageous study binges with intellectuality. After all, there is no "life of the mind" when one's mind is mush. I just hope that CBS does not get any ideas about making the first-year experience at U of C into the next season of Survivor.

Tobias B. Jacoby, AB'00
New York City

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