When I was 12, I moved from the loud, smog-ridden city of Houston to a quiet town in Ontario called Oakville. Years later, even after gaining citizenship and developing a worrisome addiction to all things maple syrup, it came time to apply to colleges, and I knew that I wanted to go back home to Texas.
Whenever someone asks me where I'm from and I tell them I'm from Canada, the question that follows is always the same. No, it's not, "Are you a Lumberjack?" (Although I do love flannel shirts and killing trees, hence the reason I work for a newspaper); it's always, "Why UT?" Or as Bob Jensen, one of my outspoken professors put it best: "What the hell are you doing here, you Canuck?" Every student has their own reasons for choosing UT, and here are mine:
The tradition. In the Dan Jenkins novel "Baja Oklahoma," Juanita Hutchins critiques the age-old Hook 'em Horns sign by performing it with both hands and asking "What's this mean? 'We're No. 4!?'" The truth is that the gesture has different meanings depending on where you are. In 2005, President Bush learned that the hard way while in Norway. In a cunning foreign relations move, the President hooked his horns only to discover later that the gesture is believed to be a salute to Satan there. I'm sure this belief holds true in College Station, as well. Around the UT campus, however, it can be flashed among friends and strangers alike and always be greeted with a smile. Texas tradition stretches far beyond making your hand look like an herbivore, though. I doubt that any other student section in the country concludes its fight song by urging its athletic teams to make their opponents eat excrement. Even though these are not the actual lyrics to the fight song (it officially goes, "Hail, Hail, the gang's all here!," which sounds like it's straight out of West Side Story), the variation is so widely adopted that it is as much apart of UT athletic events as the beloved T-shirt cannon that always causes mass chaos upon being launched.
The weather. Upon returning to Canada for Spring Break, I was greeted by five feet of snow. To a native Texan this might sound magical, but I wouldn't wish Canadian winter on anybody (well, maybe Bob Stoops). While I prayed to the global warming gods and their fearless leader Al Gore to bless my meager hometown with a sight it hadn't seen in months - the sun - I checked the weather forecast in Austin to see that it was a balmy 75 degrees. Damn. Some of my friends often joke that they'll move to Canada with me if the draft is ever reinstated, but what they don't realize is that six months of the year, the Cold War is alive and well north of the border. Austin, on the other hand, doesn't have a winter; it just has Canadian Summer.
The co-eds. No need to elaborate.
The town. From Sixth Street to Barton Springs to everyone's favorite transvestite Leslie, there isn't another college town in this galaxy quite like Austin.
The academics. UT is a very good school. I'm sure you know this. Although some of my lectures contain roughly the population of Poland, the class sizes are not nearly as threatening as I imagined. If you don't count the students that skip class or go into an open-mouthed hibernation as soon as the professor speaks, the class sizes are actually relatively small.
The campus. Whether you're being preached to on the West Mall or evading one of the Kamikaze bicyclists on West 21st Street, the UT campus is always lively. The UT Tower itself is very impressive. When it's lit up burnt orange, I doubt that there is a more breathtaking sight in American academia. All that's missing is a statue of Vince Young; he's made this school enough money to build a thousand of them.
And the final and perhaps most prudent reason why I chose UT - Because Texas A&M isn't No. 4 on its very best day.
As we trudge on toward finals and reinvigorate our lurid love affairs with espresso shots and Red Bull, it's easy to take our time here for granted. So while I do my best to temper my ever- increasing work load, I'll remind myself why I'm at UT, and for a few fleeting moments, why there's no place else I'd rather be.
So Bob, that's why the hell this Canuck is here.
Treadway is a radio-television-film sophomore.
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