Taking My Son to College

 This past Saturday and Sunday were a bit bittersweet as Mary Beth and I took our son, Sean, to Pittsburgh to start his freshmen year at Carnegie-Mellon.  The first picture is of the SUV being packed up.  At first I thought we were over-packing as we almost filled the whole thing up and had to take two vehicles to Pittsburgh, which is a 4.5 hour drive from where we live in Maryland.

 Sean, sitting on our front porch just before departure.  You might be able to discern from the photo that he is more than a little excited to be going to CMU.

 Our route took us past Sean's elementary school and we stopped off for a quick picture - when he first started at Triadelphia Ridge he was shorter than the bushes!

 At bit of history.  We stayed at the William Penn hotel in downtown Pittsburgh and the Terrace dining room is a 60 foot mural of "The Taking of Fort Pitt" during the French and Indian Wars.  The William Penn is a grand old hotel which is a lot of fun to stay in.

 To be honest, I was dreading the move in process as Sean's room is at the top of a hill and all his crap - oops I mean, important school supplies would require multiple trips.  We were all very pleasantly surprised that once we parked in the designated spot our car was descended upon by an army of CMU students who carried everything to Sean's room while he went and got his student ID. All I had to do was stay in the car and then move it out of the way once it was empty after a few minutes.  It was an amazingly well organized affair.

 Here's a shot of some of the academic buildings at CMU, which has a very nice campus in Pittsburgh.  Sean is enrolled in the Mellon college of sciences and is currently planning to major in physics and robotics.  The university is a temple to geekdom, which means Sean will fit right in.

 A shot of the room after we've finished unpacking.  As I indicated earlier, I thought Sean was bringing too much stuff to college but after seeing what the other kids brought he's definitely one of the lighter packers.  We do need to get some wall art for the room.  Sean will share the room with one other student.  As far as dorms go, it's a very nice room - he was very pleased with the wi-fi speeds.

We had a wonderful day at CMU and there were some programs to occupy the parents while the students got acclimated.  There was also a firm deadline for parents to leave which we adhered to.  While I'm very excited for Sean - college is a great experience and CMU is the finest place in the world to study robotics, it will be very different not having him around the house.  Did I cry as we left?  Lets just say I had something in my eyes...