That's probably a good idea. Sorry!

The remaining itinerary says:

- Fitness center
- Physical plant
- Pond
- North dorms
- Sculpture building/garden
- Science quad
- East dorms
- Social science tower
- Fine arts semicircle
- South dorms
- Medical building
- Music building
- Central classroom towers
- West dorms
- Security office
- Gallery
- Art library
- Campus store
- Admin building

He probably only needs to see one set of dorms and can skip social science and medical.

What is the 'physical plant'? I can't think of anything that makes sense there.

"It's maintenance of all the buildings and infrastructure - they show up if there's a lightbulb out or a window broken or something. The itinerary's written this way because it follows the spiral, I don't think it shortens the walk by much to omit a handful of things, but we don't have to stop those places."

That makes sense. The spiral is a neat idea. It sort of seems like there is a fair bit of effort being put into making the school nice to be in instead of - or as well as - good at teaching, does that sound correct?

"It's not instead of, but the students do live here for a year, sometimes two, unless they happen to live right in Aupto which most of them don't."

I'm going to be a bit uncomfortable anywhere but my island no matter what and I want to attend for the learning opportunities more than for the nice things, but nice things are still nice. And I will probably learn more things if I'm not horribly stressed all the time.

(He quickly checks the ongoing auctions to see how much money he's likely to make.)

They're looking to be very pricey.

"Well, all the universities are designed for Amentan students and faculty, so they'll all have I think a similar ratio of environmental spending to educational spending, so you can still use the niceness of a campus as a sign of the quality of staff and student population they'll have been able to attract."

Nice. Well, of course, they're all great. His worry about not being able to afford all this mostly goes away.

Headtilt. Why do you think they'll all have a similar spending ratio? I don't see that as a very obvious conclusion.

"I mean, of course it'll vary at all, especially if you look at really old places with huge endowments and old buildings, but I don't think there are any campuses that are horrible to be at and have really good professors, because the really good professors can go wherever they want, and they care about money, of course, but by the time they're very sought after they're past twenty, not scrabbling for credit money. Once you're past twenty most of what you'd buy is just a nice place to be, and if that comes free with work you can take a lower salary."

Society is weird. I thought I was starting to understand but I really don't.

If I wanted a nicer place to be I'd make it or try to take it. I'm not stupid enough to try that on Amenta, I'm not going to challenge a government. Anyway. On with the tour?

On with the tour. The remaining statues are scattered throughout. "You're scheduled to sit in on a class in the science building in half an hour. Do you want to stop by the dining hall under West Dorm first? We told them you were coming and they got you some Draak food."

Ooh, a class! I'm good on food and want to look at an entrance exam right now. Unless it'll go to waste if I don't eat it.

"I don't think it will, they probably got something they can use for something else. You can go ahead and look at exams."

So he goes on, what was it, Proctor Net and sees what this university tests on.

This university is listed as taking the General Green App, which has lots of practice test options for gen ed and subject tests.

He's really quite good at physics up to electromagnetics and math, and passable on the general biology/ecology type questions, and does well at anything that is pure intelligence instead of specific subject knowledge. Everything else is much more spotty.

He gets wildly variable results. The website tries to sell him study guides in areas he's weak on.

'34/100' doesn't feel like anything and neither does '97/100'. The important part is what his guide thinks about these scores, so he reports them to him.

"- we wouldn't usually admit a student with those scores without exceptional circumstances but you have exceptional circumstances. We might assign you your own orange for accommodations and catchup tutoring."

I'm not sure it actually makes that much sense for me to follow a traditional green track. I'm not looking to get a green degree and then a green job - I just want to learn what you all have learned, specifically the science, and maybe art.

"Maybe what you want is to audit the courses?"

Yes, maybe. Well, I'm not entirely sure what I want but it seems like it's probably not shaped the same way as what an average green wants? All of this is very new. Perhaps I could try that for a few months and then see if I want a whole year or two of study here?

"We can probably set that up."

Perhaps I would prefer that. Spend a lot of my time in a rented place making art, and some of it learning science at my own pace. That sounds nice. I'm supposed to sit in on a class to see what it's like next, yes?