To Campuses Without a Compass

The last thing a dad gets to really teach his daughter is how to drive a car. When I say teach, I’m talking the moment that begins with the instructor knowing nearly everything, while the pupil knows almost nothing. By the day a kid earns a driver’s permit, there’s been a lifetime of these handoffs: how to dice a carrot, tie a shoelace, skewer a bully. […] Our new itinerary would begin at the New College of Florida, then a drive north in a U-Haul truck to pick up some heirlooms from my family in Charleston (where I’m from). The next day we’d hit some North Carolina colleges before heading back home. New College is obviously a serious academic campus, but one of those closeted colleges that feels compelled to make a pitch that is largely about the good life. The beachside campus in Sarasota does resemble one of those vintage postcards boasting Art Deco mansions and psychoactive sunsets. The first thing you hear about is its hippie-dippie curriculum, and that the entire campus was once the estate of Charles Ringling, one of the maestros behind “Ringling Brothers United Monster Shows, Great Double Circus, Royal European Menagerie, Museum, Caravan, and Congress of Trained Animals.”