<p>Thanks for the tip unalove but I just thought I’d clear up, the reason I decided to mention details about my school life was to give everyone an idea of the type of person they were talking to, and why all the talk about the intellectual richness of the school wasn’t what I was concerned with when making this thread. Obviously, my performance in school isn’t something I go about flaunting in real life and I’m pretty sure I’m quite amicable. Thanks for the reply though. :)</p>
<p>Lucifuger: All I meant – and I think you understood it perfectly well – was that whether you go to Chicago, Penn, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, wherever, there is very little chance that you will have the same level of success you had in high school without (a) caring, and putting a bunch of yourself into it, and (b) putting in a lot more work. You may still want to put in the minimum effort for maximum results – efficiency is a highly regarded concept everywhere, including Chicago – but the whole calculation changes at a world-class university. </p>
<p>In high school, all you need to do is learn what they teach you (which tends not to be so much) and do well enough to be among the best. The ceiling is very low. In college, there really is no ceiling – no level of achievement that is clearly “good enough”. If you do more work, you’ll learn more, accomplish more, and it never maxes out. On the downside, since you won’t have a bunch of people who are way less talented than you supporting the curve and damping down expectations, you will generally find that merely keeping your head above water – being not great, but average, OK – requires a lot more effort than you are used to. And it’s hard to do that without putting yourself on the line a little, something it seems you are not used to.</p>
<p>Believe me, I know what it’s like to be a good student to whom everything comes easily. I was. And I know what it’s like to love parties and getting laid, and to have contempt for people who felt that being a good student precluded that. I was that, too. There’s nothing wrong with it (except for the contempt part, that’s a little immature, but you grow out of it). Still, any top college, whether it’s Chicago or elsewhere, is going to kick the butt of someone like that until he gets to the point where he is frightened by his own ignorance and cares enough to work hard, or he gets comfortable with his own mediocrity.</p>
<p>OP – as an EA admit, I have the same concerns about coming to Chicago. I consider myself “intellectual” in that I love to learn and think and discuss academics, but I also love to go out with my friends and be loud and silly and, on occasion, drink or smoke. I would be miserable if my college experience consisted of mainly studying and very little socializing. </p>
<p>After I got in, I contacted a girl who graduated from my school and is a member of the class of 2013. She is very smart but also very social, and she told me that she absolutely loves it. She says that it is a lot of fun and that there is a definitely a big social scene, despite the school’s reputation. She, too, was worried about the supposed lack of a social scene when she was making her decision, but she assured me that those concerns did not prove to be realistic in the least.</p>
<p>In addition, my school college counselor told me that in her 20+ years of advising students, she has found that every type of student that she has sent to two colleges, the University of Chicago and Wesleyan, has been absolutely delighted there. :)</p>
<p>What other places are you looking at? The reason I applied to Chicago EA is because I liked it a lot when I visited, people from my school tend to get in and love it, and it is a bit less selective than the other colleges I’m applying to, so I figured that it would be nice to have a college acceptance by December so I can relax until April. To be honest, though, U of C is not my favorite. If I get into Penn, for example, I am likely to choose it because the social life sounds more appealing and because unlike U of C, it is right in an urban area. I like U of C’s location in Chicago, but the neighborhood immediately surrounding it is a bit sleepy for my taste. I’m still a bit unsure whether Penn’s Greek-heavy social scene will be to my liking – I am definitely social, but I’m still quite the nerd. Other favorites include Brown and Harvard, but I am not even considering colleges with single digit acceptance rates to be real possibilities. I expect rejections from Harvard, Brown, Yale, and Stanford.</p>
<p>eliana - I apologize if this information is already redundant to you, but a while back I posted on the differences between Chicago and Penn. Most seemed to think it was a pretty objective and helpful comparison. Since I don’t know how to link to my exact post, here’s a paste of the post:</p>
<p>Please note the assertions I’m about to make are broad generalizations (and of course there will be exceptions and outliers found at either school). That being said, here are my observations:</p>
<p>I think Chicago and Penn are very different academic environments. To start, Chicago has only around 1300 per class, and Penn has around 2500 a class. When I was at Chicago, it was even smaller (maybe around 900 a class) so it was a really intimate learning environment. I think the College at U of C is still pretty tight-knit and intimate, and Penn, just given its sheer size (both on the undergrad and grad level), probably wouldn’t be characterized as an “intimate” environment. Of course, this can cut both ways, Penn just has a wider range of schools that Chicago just doesn’t have (an undergrad business school, a communications schools, engineering, etc.).</p>
<p>In terms of the larger ethos of the two schools, I think Chicago’s generally more ivory-tower, academically-geared at the undergrad level, whereas Penn, given its roots perhaps, can generally be seen as a more practical undergrad environment. Of course, you can find exceptions at both schools, but generally, Penn overall has a more pre-professional, practical feel, whereas at Chicago, there are a lot of students who want to spend considerable time to academia (i.e. get a PhD).</p>
<p>Penn still possesses a pretty strong “work hard, party hard” culture, whereas Chicago still focuses more on the “life of the mind” culture (where academics are generally at the forefront of a student’s mind, whereas Penn students can often be juggling various obligations and academic pursuits). This isn’t to say Chicago students lack balance or that Penn students are detached from their academic pursuits, its just the slants of the two schools are different.</p>
<p>A good example of this arises at the various alum events I attend for both schools. At the Chicago events, alums invariably strike up conversations by talking about their majors, professors they had in the past, and various classes they took. After that, the alums sometimes mentions various social aspects of the school (frat parties they attended, sports teams they played on, etc.), but academics are usually the first part of the discussion. At Penn events, the conversation almost always goes in the other direction - alums talk about their social experiences, frats joined, clubs participated in, and sometimes discuss academics after if there was some overlap in their coursework. I got the sense that certain big undergrad traditions (hey day, feb club, etc.) tend to bond Penn students in a way that you don’t really get at Chicago. Chicago has a bit more of an individualistic social culture, where students just sorta do whatever they’re into, and there’s no connecting social fabric or traditions in the way that ALL penn juniors participate in Hey Day.</p>
<p>Again, this example illustrates how the academic environment becomes a common thread for Chicago students/alums, whereas Penn, given its size, doesn’t have the same connecting thread. I think Penn is just a more disparate environment, with students taking courses and pursuing a really wide range of endeavors. At Chicago, the Core Curriculum does indeed connect students, and the smaller size makes for a different feel on campus.</p>
<p>In terms of other observations, I found the Penn undergrads to be a bit more materialistic (I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense - they just seemed to have more of a sense of fashion and upkeep overall), and savvier in terms of using their education to meet a certain goal. The Penn kids tended to be a bit more outwardly wealthy, probably because the schools cater to different type of family. A larger percentage of Chicago students tend to be the sons and daughters of professors and teachers and public policy wonks, while Penn very much seems to serve the offspring of business men, lawyers, doctors, hedge fund managers, etc. I think the specter of Wharton kind of looms here over Penn - it gives the school a bit more of a career-oriented feel, both in the familial backgrounds of its students and these students’ ambitions. Penn also had a very distinctly east coast feel - and this probably altered the flavor of the school a bit. There were more prep school types walking around, and more students who already had their hearts set on some sort of job in NYC. Chicago does have more of a midwestern flavor - there are just more born-and-bred midwesterners from iowa or indiana walking around in Hyde Park.</p>
<p>More Chicago students seemed to be of the head-in-the-clouds type, and there tended to be more of a hipster community when I attended Chicago than anything I ever saw at Penn (from what I know, students don’t exactly form Marx/Plato reading clubs at Penn with the same regularity that these groups sprout up at U of C).</p>
<p>Location is another big difference. Penn is much closer to the heart of downtown Philly, but Philly as a city tends to have a “grittier” feel than the more skyscraper-filled, somewhat awe-inspiring classic big midwestern city of Chicago. West Philly also tends to have more commercial offerings than Hyde Park (think lots of fast food restaurants, a Gap, an Ann Taylor, bars, etc.), whereas Hyde Park has more of a “scholarly” residential feel, with lots of used bookstores and coffee shops all over the place.</p>
<p>One other note, I think Chicago does provide a more distinct sort of environment. I don’t say this as a way to deride Penn, but what I mean is this: there are very, very few other schools that couple such a relatively small college with such a wide array of absolutely world-class academic departments. Penn has lots of great departments as well, but it also has double the number of students, so it changes the feel of the place. Out of the top schools, I’ve heard Chicago and Yale are somewhat similar in terms of vibe, as are Chicago and Swarthmore (if you shrink Chicago down to a LAC size), but that’s about it as far as comparisons go. Penn, on the other hand, I think shares a lot of similarities with Duke and Northwestern and Emory and Georgetown and Wash U etc etc. It’s just more of a typical college experience, and one that you could probably have at another half-dozen very good schools. It always strikes me as funny when I hear Northwestern grads talk or Penn grads talk - the experiences are so analogous.</p>
<p>Of course, a large segment of the Penn undergrad community would be perfectly happy at Chicago and vice versa, but the schools do generally have very different vibes. What I’ve described, of course, are broad generalizations, but they’re just my observations after spending time at these two institutions. Finally, I’ve tried to be as objective as possible here, but you should know that I have tremendous allegiance to Chicago - I’m still very grateful for the education I received there, and the school really built up my analytical and writing abilities. Nevertheless, take from this what you will.</p>
<h2>(End Re-Post)</h2>
<p>There have been some threads about this in the past too - just search for “UPenn or UChicago?” or the like. I hope my post was helpful. Please keep in mind, in terms of my subjective view, I’m strongly biased toward Chicago, and I don’t think Penn is at the same level as Chicago. To be blunt, I still believe Chicago offers the very best liberal arts education in the country. There are a couple other schools that give Chicago a run for its money on this front (Yale comes to mind most readily, maybe Columbia), but I would not put Penn in the discussion for those that want the very best lib arts education. Don’t get me wrong, Penn is a GREAT school, but I just have a lot of loyalty to Chicago. Of course, everyone’s a little biased for their college :-).</p>
<p>Thank you for your informative post! I understand these general differences between Chicago and UPenn, but the problem is that I am really unsure which suits me the best. I want to get a PhD and I can see myself working in academia, but there is so much more to life that I want to explore. I want to see arts performances, I want to meet all kinds of different people, and I want time to have fun. </p>
<p>I would not go so far as to say that the experiences at UPenn, Northwestern, WashU, etc are all interchangeable. One of the things that most appeal to me about Penn is that it is located in the heart of a big city. I live pretty close to WashU, which definitely does not have that benefit. It is not in St. Louis city proper, and even if it was, St. Louis is not that exciting of a city.</p>
<p>In your opinion, why does Chicago offer the best undergraduate education? Is it the core? And what about Yale and Columbia make them come close?</p>
<p>Eliana - toward the end of my post I was just throwing in schools that have generally analogous experiences. You’re right - Wash U in terms of location may be different than Penn, just as Duke and Penn have different locations. I’ve met grads from all of these schools though, and just the way they talk about their respective institutions is very very similar. Kids from Emory or Penn or Northwestern might talk about various city events more, but you’d be surprised by how similar these college experiences can be. Penn kids may have access to better museums and arts and the like, but you’d perhaps also be surprised by how insular the college experience can be. </p>
<p>Just briefly, the key distinguishing factors that separate a Chicago education from the education found elsewhere are: 1.) The caliber of the academic departments coupled with such a (relatively) small college and 2.) the near-unparalleled focus on creating and emphasizing the importance of scholarly pursuits. </p>
<p>On these fronts, Chicago probably has one of the strongest assortments of classic liberal arts departments (History, Economics, Art History, Physics, Chemistry, Theoretical Mathematics etc etc.) with such a small College. This leads to a really intimate learning environment, where you know professors very well and your peers too. Moreover, unlike Penn, where more value is placed on the “practical use” of an education, Chicago really does value learning for the sake of ideas, and in compelling all of its graduates to be discerning, critical thinkers. I get the sense that at Penn, as with other top schools, you are kind of joining a “club” and the education can be secondary at times. In other words, you can float by. At Chicago, it’s almost guaranteed that you will FEEL the impact of the education, and this type of training will stay with you the rest of your life. </p>
<p>I have to go for now, but I don’t really know how else to explain it. I found a Chicago education to be one of the most liberating and formative experiences of my life. You’re just exposed to so many ideas by the core and the demanding professors, and there’s an ethos that preaches a love of inquiry above all else at Chicago. The same energy isn’t really found at many other places. I’d say maybe Yale and Columbia compare because they are both smaller, and because the grads from those two schools seemed to share some of the sentiments I had at Chicago. For better or worse at Penn, the majority of the student body is using their degree and education to meet a practical goal (be it medical school or a wall street job or whatever). Chicago is just different in this regard.</p>
<p>When you listen to Chicago students complain, they don’t complain about the lack of a social life, but they do complain about the intensity of the work and the presence of more socially inept people than they think would be at a school like Penn. When you listen to Penn students complain, it’s about social domination by ostentatiously wealthy kids from the New York metropolitan area, and the persistent anti-intellectualism of the campus culture.</p>
<p>You pays your money; you takes your chances.</p>
<p>I agree with your general assertions. However, I don’t think that a student who wishes to choose a practical field of study should be considered unintellectual. I have a close friend who is very intelligent and very intellectual, but she plans to go into engineering. I would like to work in academia if possible, but I realize that this is very difficult, so I am considering law school as an alternative option. I would not say such students don’t value scholarship, but that they recognize how difficult it is to succeed today with a degree in a liberal arts department. </p>
<p>But if UChicago students as a whole do value scholarship more than UPenn students, wouldn’t it be more beneficial for me to go to a place with many different kinds of people? At UChicago, wouldn’t I just be in the overwhelming majority and would not have the benefit of learning from a very diverse and rich student body? You wrote that at Chicago arts or athletic events you got the impression that “here is a smart kid who happens to enjoy __.” I am definitely one of those. I enjoy playing the violin and have been doing so for years, but I am first and foremost just a smart person who likes to think about ideas. I exist very much in the mind. So I’m not really concerned about fitting in at Chicago, because I fit its student description perfectly, but my main concern is this: would it really be in my best interest to surround myself with people who are just like me? Wouldn’t I learn more if I was surrounded by people whose passions were the in the arts or in sports, as well as people passionate about academics? </p>
<p>That’s just my take on it, and I’m aware that there are weaknesses in my argument. I, who am passionate about anthropology, will be very different from and have much to learn from a student who is passionate about physics. In addition, there is some truth in the argument that if you aren’t passionate about academics, there is no reason to get a liberal education at all.</p>
<p>Eliana - obviously you are on a Chicago board so the information here will be biased, but by the way you describe yourself, you seem to have a LOT of classic Chicago qualities, and, from what I see so far, you seem like less of a comfortable fit for Penn. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are PLENTY of people at penn who take scholarship very seriously and are intent on careers in academia. That’s not really the ethos of the school though. </p>
<p>On another unsolicited note, if you’re seriously considering anthropology, outside of maybe Harvard (and Berkeley on the grad level), I think it’d be hard to turn down an acceptance to Chicago. Now, Penn has a wonderful program in anthropology, and there’s a great museum right on campus, but overall, I’ve heard Chicago is preeminent in this field. </p>
<p>Now, on to your key point of how at Chicago, you might just be clumped in with the majority of students, whereas at Penn, you might be “enriched” by a more diverse and varied student body. I have some significant reservations with this line of argumentation. Don’t get me wrong, Penn students pursue all sorts of passions and extra-curriculars during college, but don’t be mistaken, the overwhelming majority of students are quite direct and unified in their collective purpose: achieving some sort of professional success. You know those great singers and performers I raved about from Penn Masala? They are all pretty much in one of two fields: finance or medicine. Again, this is fine, and Penn does a great job of producing future leaders in the professional fields. </p>
<p>In many ways, though, I’d argue that Chicago offers a more varied atmosphere than Penn because the students are sincerely interested in a wider variety of long-term paths. My classmates at Chicago went on to be chefs, programmers for videogames, world-class budding academics, rhodes scholars, doctors, poets, lawyers, journalists, guitarists, etc. The mantra at Chicago is: develop a type of critical thinking and apply it to all endeavors possible. I don’t know if Penn shares this ethos. At Penn, I think it’s more common to see students thinking “ok, I’m gonna work hard in this a capella group now, but I know this is pretty much just a college phase. After this, I’m heading to Goldman Sachs or med school.” At Chicago, kids are beginning to take up hobbies and endeavors that may inform their work for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>Yes, I am seriously considering both linguistics and anthropology. Chicago and Penn are both leaders in these fields, which is actually how I discovered the schools in the first place. </p>
<p>You make excellent points all around. Living near Wash U, I know exactly what you mean about Penn Masala. Wash U has some great a capella groups, but most of the members are going into engineering or business or medicine. Wash U’s preprofessional environment is one of the major reasons that I don’t want to go there. It’s great for some people, but not for me. I wasn’t aware that Penn’s environment was the same. I know four people who go to Penn. Only one is studying business at Wharton, and the other three are majoring in anthropology, international relations, and visual studies.</p>
<p>Great point about the diversity at Chicago. I hadn’t thought of it that way. When you said that Chicago students tend to be students first and musicians/dancers/whatever second, it sounded like all of them are aspiring academics. If a student is concerned with his or her studies more than with his or her music, how does the same student then go on to be a guitarist? Do you see what I mean? </p>
<p>Oh man, what a hard decision this is going to be. Maybe every other college will reject me and I won’t have to choose :p</p>
<p>Eliana - I guess what I mean is that a Chicago education is very portable, and can be applied to a range of endeavors. So, in college, a student may be developing his/her love of guitar, while building all the skills a Chicago education teaches (analytical abilities, endurance, stamina, etc.). After college, if the student decides to pour him/herself more into guitar, the student will do that with the lessons from Chicago in tow.</p>
<p>So for all my friends now pursuing a wide range of paths, they focused primarily on academics at Chicago, and secondarily on the “hobby.” After college, the focus switched. They went to culinary school, or joined a band full time, or tried harder to get published in an anthology of poetry. At Penn, students poured their efforts into the extra-curricular, and then promptly gave them up to join jp morgan or go to georgetown law. It’s a different process. In general, if you were a bit turned off by Wash U, you should think long and hard about Penn - these two schools are quite similar in a lot of ways.</p>
<p>I’ll definitely have to put a lot of thought into it. Other than Penn’s city setting, the only factor about it that I like better than Chicago is its semester system. I have no experience with the quarter system so I really have no idea how I’ll do in it, but it scares me a bit. I don’t like the thought of covering a lot of information in a really short amount of time. Not only is this bad for comprehension, but also for long term retention. Of course, Chicago isn’t known for its excellent academics for nothing, so I am sure that whatever it does with the quarter system works. Perhaps, though, it is responsible for the lower average GPA at Chicago in comparison with its ivy counterparts? This worries me somewhat because I’d like to be accepted into a good Ph.D. program. </p>
<p>When I get my college acceptances in April, I’ll just have to visit and choose the places where I feel the most comfortable. I know visits are usually considered the best way to tell whether a college is a good fit for you, but I have become skeptical of this. So many little, insignificant things can dramatically influence the impression I get of a college – the weather that day, the individuals I interact with, etc etc. If I visit Penn and happen to meet a person with the same academic interests as me, I might mistakenly decide that Penn is a highly intellectual college that suits my personality, which, as I have gathered from your description, may not be true. My Brown interviewer told me that when he got into Brown, he visited and didn’t like it much. He went anyway, and ended up loving it. The impression that a teenager gets of an entire institution on a cold, dreary day in April may not be the best way to decide whether or not it’s a good fit. </p>
<p>I have certainly digressed from the original purpose of this thread… :p</p>
<p>somehow, there is this popular sentiment that being intellectual means heading in the direction of choosing academia as a career choice. </p>
<p>I do not agree with this. I believe you can be a used car salesman and an intellectual at the same time, not just as a “frustrated poet” selling his soul out everyday to put bread on the table, but as a consummate professional approaching the job of selling used cars with a finely tuned intellectual approach. If you are a successful used car salesman because you dutifully investigated all the factors that affect the value of the used cars, read 100 books in social psychology of attitudes and behavior (on the part of the customers), and studied, in depth, the game theory, that makes you an intellectual used car sales man.</p>
<p>When I was negotiating business partnership, I thoroughly researched all the surrounding ecosystem issues of the core business subject, investigated the financial structure and potentially successful scenarios of various business cases of the partner companies to come up with a proposal that hit all the right notes for them, and at the same time very beneficial for my company. My colleagues ridiculed my “nerdy” approach: their approach of building a good partnership is to go and do male bonding at a strip bar. When we go on a family vacation abroad, I read the history, culture, and economic/demographic details of the country thoroughly before I land there. In a very modest way, this way of conducting business and living makes me an intellectual though I am not doing any earth shattering theoretical research. </p>
<p>I put a very high value on the intellectual approach in most things. I think it’s the recipe for a long term success. It is for this reason that I am so happy that S1, who wants to join the likes of Goldman Sachs upon graduation, is at Chicago. </p>
<p>If anything, I believe it’s the pre-professional types who REALLY need to be educated at Chicago, more so than the future academicians. For my son, the four years of his college experience is about the only concentrated time where he can hone his intellectual way of thinking. Unlike the aspiring academicians, once he leaves the ivory tower, he will be sucked into the “practical” aspects of all things. </p>
<p>Though he is not likely to openly admit it, S1 is actually a very intellectual type. His way of becoming the best candidate for the financial industry career is to thoroughly, methodically, and passionately study everything there is to study in his chosen field. That, in my book, makes him an intellectual. (he is the kind of kid who read on line game manuals cover to cover thoroughly to become the best in his game league).</p>
<p>Unless you are the type who has to party 24/7, you can party as much as you want: yes, even in Chicago. However, it won’t be as easy to find a school where the intellectual air engulfs you so that you absorb it through osmosis even without realizing it. </p>
<p>My son is very happy at Chicago. Based on what I hear, he gets to party as much as he wants, but at the same time, is basking in the glory all things intellectual. He wouldn’t have been happy at a school where he couldn’t engage in deeply intellectual conversations with faculty and other students on days when he is not partying (weekends). Especially faculty - he is so pleased that he can just pop in and spend hours talking with faculty members renowned in their own fields. </p>
<p>If I were 18 again, Chicago is the kind of place I want to go to.</p>
<p>OP, I totally relate to the concerns that led you to start this thread. As a prospie myself, I think anyone who derides a frustrated high school senior for being “shallow” with his or her concerns over a decent social scene isn’t really making much of an effort to put themselves in our shoes. </p>
<p>That said, I remember last summer at UChicago spending a good amount of time speaking to my RA about the social scene and two things stand out in my memory. </p>
<ol>
<li>If you go to a frat party, you will get drunk and laid. The question is whether you want to or not, and this is where Chicago’s “anti-social” reputation comes into play; relative to a school like Penn, many choose to answer that question in the negative. </li>
</ol>
<p>The point is that if you (and it seems clear that you do) choose to answer that question in the positive, you will get what you asked for. So your concerns, while I totally relate to them and shared them myself at one point, I think aren’t something to worry about in the slightest. </p>
<ol>
<li>UChicago is the kind of college where you can go to a frat party and expect to have a long conversation about Nietzsche, if you’re into that kind of thing. </li>
</ol>
<p>Aside from the fact that this made me almost squeal with delight, I think (with what limited knowledge I have of the institution) it perfectly illustrated the dynamic between the academic and social scenes at UChicago. </p>
<p>UChicago is a nerd-school. No doubt about it. And that is one very large reason why it is rapidly consolidating itself as my first choice by quite a large margin. Nerds, however, aren’t necessarily boring. To digress, I think there are numerous factors in high school, such as immobility (especially in the suburbs), lack of freedom, the presence of parents, and a lack of “adult confidence” that translates into a fear of trying “new things,” that contribute to the stereotype of nerds being boring. UChicago puts you in an environment absolutely devoid of all of these restraints. Nerds can have fun too, they just do it while retaining their intellectuality. </p>
<p>Ultimately, my R.A. as well as alums from my high school who are currently in the UChicago class of 2013, told me that Chicago frat parties are NERDY - and I love that. To spell it bluntly, to be able to go to a party on a weekend, talk about philosophy or politics or monty python, get drunk, and hook up - all at the same time - pretty much seems like a dream come true. And as far as self-selectivity goes, maybe Chicago isn’t quite perfect for the kind of people who hear “Categorical Imperative” and turn in the other direction*.</p>
<p>*Not to suggest that all nerds like philosophy. Plenty of my friends see it as a load of nonsense, so no offense if you do too. :)</p>
<p>Understand, too, that many colleges have strong fraternities that pretty much dominate the party scene. At Chicago, frat parties are a relatively small slice of the party scene. It’s a slice that’s very public an thus accessible to first-years, and that’s great. But the people who you would find at a frat party are only a small percentage of the people having an active social life that particular night. And I’m not talking about quilting bees or study groups, either (although that happens, and it’s fine); I’m talking drinking, dancing, and doing.</p>