Wow! I did a lot this weekend. My dad is on the alumni board at UF and this weekend he happened to have a meeting. A lot of my senior friends headed up there recently like Carleigh, Billy, Justin, Monica, and Daniella, so I decided to go up with my dad.
We got there Thursday night and picked up Carleigh from her dorm and went to Dragonfly: which is by far the best sushi restaurant in all of Florida. I was born in Gainesville and spent my first few years there and we actually lived in an apartment right about Dragonfly so I was known as the baby that ate sushi. Gainseville is a pretty small town so everyone knew me. Anyways, after we ate we got some popsicles from a really good popsicle place right across from Dragonfly then we took Carleigh back to her dorm.
The next day I was really busy with classes. It has been my dream to go to UF and I am really hoping I get in but I know it has a reputation for being a hard school, so I thought it would be good to sit in on a few classes and see what it would be like. I sat in on Carleigh’s bio and calc class which I loved! The professors at UF are articulate and explain the information very well making the slightly harder and more in detail content actually easier. After that, I got Justin, Carleigh, and Carson together and we all went to Chipotle. Carleigh tried convincing me to head to another class but I decided to go see Carson’s new apartment. It wasn’t too far from campus and was really nice. He also got a moped which went pretty fast and was really fun to ride on. We went to his physics two class which followed the same pattern as Carleigh’s classes. The content was hard but the professors were easy to understand and good at teaching which made the concepts easier to grasp. As my last class, I headed to Daniella’s statistics class which was a lot of fun and once again I loved the professor.
After that, I explored the campus and some of the study rooms with Billy and Justin before heading with Billy to GMS: a UF club building a racecar. Billy has been talking about this club for the past month since he got up to UF and Cross who helped found Techgarage a few years ago was also in GMS.
GMS is separated in too many different subsystems such as suspension, engine, etc. I stayed there with Billy until around 10pm and just kind of CADed some stuff for the car and ran some static stress simulations for the parts. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to be on the team in two years. Then Billy and I met up with Carleigh and went on a small adventure trying to catch a bus to take us back to their dorm. We eventually got a bus and got back around 11:30 just for me and Billy to go to my hotel’s gym until 1:00am. I took my dad’s car and dropped Billy off at his dorm and when I got back to the hotel someone had taken my spot! I probably drove around for 40 more minutes until a spot opened up for me to park in.
Probably the best part of the trip though was game day. It was a home game against Tennessee. I have always sat with my parents in the normal section, but this year I was able to sit with Billy and Justin in the student section. The experience was so different, I was next to people closer to my age so I just let go a little and had some fun just screaming and shouting with my friends.
UF obviously crushed Tennesee so we left at the third quarter and headed over to Justin’s apartment. Which was somehow nicer than Carsons apartment but it was a lot further away from campus. We hung out there for a few hours and the Billy and me headed to Silver Q which is a bar that my parent’s friends owned. It was actually a really cool spot, they had a bunch of pool tables, a free throw basketball hoop, a bunch of arcade machines, and every game console you could think off. I could see myself spending a few nights there in a couple years when I am up at UF. Then I got everyone together to eat at The Top which is a really good restaurant in downtown Gainseville. Around 10:00pm we left everyone and dropped Billy off at his dorm then headed back to the hotel so we could leave in the morning.
I don’t know if I am biased but I just feel like UF is the perfect school. The town is just big enough that you have places to explore. The campus is huge so you can meet a lot of new people. The classes are awesome. The football games are so hype. It just feels like home and I can’t imagine my life when I am up there two years from now.
Devin Willis 