The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know

Why would I ever want to go to Kale University in the first place?

Why would I ever want to go to Kale University in the first place?

Let's just say that I've had a bit of a rough year. Between work, studies, pressure to join various Greek organizations, arguments with my roommate, unexpected heartbreak...well, I'll get to that later. The important part is that all of this started when I first found the name "Kale University" in my college search.

Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a philosopher. I had a lot of ideas about human nature, and I desperately wanted to find somewhere where I could share them to my heart's content. I still have a lot of ideas, especially after spending a whole year studying philosophy at Kale, and I'll share a few of them with you over the course of this book. For example, the dictionary defines philosophy as "the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence," but what does that mean? Do I need to study philosophy at college to be a philosopher? Confucius and Socrates never had a formal education in philosophy - were they not philosophers? What if I am studying the nature of nonexistence - is that not philosophy either?

As you can see, I tend to go off on tangents, so bear with me throughout this tale.

When I was a junior in high school, it seemed only natural to major in philosophy. Despite my mother's warnings that I would never be able to find a job, it was the only subject that I truly loved, which begs another question. Should I be forced to learn the same things as other students? In my opinion, it's unethical to compel a student to learn something that they are uninterested in. In my case, that's math. Mathematics has never been my strong suit, and it is completely unrelated to the wonderful field of philosophy, so there's no point in learning it. Similarly, a student planning a career in math should never have to learn philosophy, even if I do believe that an education in philosophy can compliment any discipline.

Once I determined that I wanted to be a philosophy major, I realized that I would need to find a college to go to. To complete this task, I Googled "best colleges for philosophy majors." An article popped up with a list of the highest ranked collegiate philosophy departments, and I read it.

Princeton University

Harvard University

Kale University

I looked at the third item on the list to ensure that I hadn't read it wrong. It had to be a typo. If the people compiling the list had truly meant Kale University and not Yale University, then it would be the only college on the whole list that wasn't an Ivy League school, and with a 26 on my ACT, there was no way that I would make it into Princeton or Harvard. Then again, what's the point of standardized testing? How can a three hour multiple choice test tell how smart I am? The test doesn't know me, although sometimes I think that my piano might know how smart I am. The piano knows a lot of things.

I did some more research on Kale University, and the more I looked at it, the more I began to fall in love with it. I learned the basic facts, like that Kale was a private university in Old Haven, Connecticut with 6,000 undergraduates and a 58% acceptance rate, but I also learned some more unusual facts. Kale had a jungle gym at the center of campus. Kale had clubs such as the Guyliner Club and the Cookie Baking Club, both of which I desperately wanted to join. Each year, the first year philosophy students came up with a new school motto as an assignment, and the entire student body voted on which one should actually become that year's motto.

I looked at a few other schools, but by March of that year, my heart was set on Kale. However, I still had to convince my mother to let me visit Kale over spring break.

"Ryan, Kale is in Connecticut," Mom said. "That's way too far from Nevada for us to visit over spring break. Why don't you look at some local colleges?"