I first started off the assignment today with the intention that I was going to base my blog off of the reading “Tyrants of the Shop,” by Fanny Fern. As I was just finishing the reading, which was rather good by the way, I saw right in clear peripheral sight written in big bold text was “MARK TWAIN.” Mark Twain has been one of my favorite authors since about the 5th grade when I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the first time. I just couldn’t help myself I had to read this piece. As I read on, paragraph after paragraph, I thought to myself “I once stood where Mark Twain wrote.”
When I began my search for the “perfect” college as a high school senior my first priority was to dorm. All I wanted was to be out of the house and hours away. So the first college my cousin and I visited was Elmira College in Elmira, NY. Elmira is a glorious 6 hours away from my house and the opportunity to dorm was right at my finger tips. As we walked all over the campus with our tour guide my only thought was “This is it.” It had everything I could have ever wanted. English major, ice hockey team, cozy dorms but then I discovered history.
We were walking through what I thought was a giant random field in the middle of campus our tour guide stopped us to show us something that she said “Elmira College is very proud of.” It was a tiny cottage like house with wooden window panes and a giant stone chimney. “This is the renowned author Mark Twain’s Study,” my tour guide said.
Standing there suddenly because as exhilarating as standing in Time Square. Everyone expects that great people from New York usually come from New York City. It is the city Alicia Keys says is “concret jungle where dreams are made of.” Yet all the way in upstate New York resides Mark Twain’s Study. Where he sat, thought, wrote, and rewrote (because all great writers rewrite so I hear). We then learned that Elmira College was the center for Mark Twain studies. At that point, that was enough to make me want to attend Elmira College. Forget ice hockey, Mark Twain wrote here. Too bad tuition was $50,000 a year…