Today’s question/challenge for stalwart IWSG bloggers like me is: Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work? https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

If you tell me your secret, I’ll tell you mine…

I attended Purdue University, considered an ivy league engineering school by those not-in-the-know, which is code for anyone not born and raised in Hoosierland. My dad called it the udder college because he and my mother went to IU, the main college in Indiana.

I enrolled there for several reasons. Some of the reasons are more valued than others, just as some of the animals in Animal Farm were more equal than others. Let’s see what you can suss –

• the college had one of the most highly regarded speech-language pathology programs, which was my major and intended career.
• the college was not the one my parents intended/preferred me to attend… Indiana University also had a highly regarded speech-language pathology, yet
• the ratio of women to men at Purdue was 1/4. And everyone enrolled at Purdue was smart… including me, a National Honor Society and Mensa member, something I never flaunted or mentioned. I was playing it meek and mild as a freshman, trying to find my place in the herd. I soon clamped my mouth when the opening round of questions began: What’s your major? What’s your minor? Where are you from?
• I felt especially cowed when kids, often from Ohio, (which meant they paid a premium to attend a prestigious school) announced they attended a small high school with only 300 kids in their class (my graduating class numbered 33).
• the college didn’t have a music school. Indiana University’s music school had a reputation for excellence, but Purdue, without a music school, had a huge marching band, plus the world’s largest bass drum, rolled onto the football field on a special stand with two band members alternately launching themselves, on both sides, to bang the drum!

In hindsight, I should have attended IU.

While the ratio of male-female seemed to be good odds, I discovered that engineers and farmers were not my types of guy. The love of my life attended IU. I would have met him sooner, but he marinated well… and all is as it should be in the romance department.

Indiana University is a gorgeous campus, which rolling hills among trees and green grass. Tiny creeks run through it, inviting dalliances, friendships, and bird song.

Purdue campus was austere brick and concrete, inducing good study habits.

But I, who adored sunshine and green grasses, seldom saw such at Purdue. Perhaps during fall and spring, on the eight-block walk from my sorority to campus.

Now that I’ve told you my secret, please share yours in the comments –

P.S. I graduated summa cum laude – in a graduating class loaded with studious engineers. My friends were shocked because they’d only know me as goofy (their term, not mine)