After convocation, every freshman walks to the Quad with his or her parents to eat Ted Drewes ice cream. But it’s not real Ted Drewes. It comes in a small cup of either vanilla or chocolate which you can finish in two minutes, and it doesn’t cost you anything. It’s as hard as the real thing, but it’s not real Ted Drewes.
You can only get real Ted Drewes at the Ted Drewes store, which is off one of St. Louis’ 12 highways. (44? 55? 64? 40? I don’t know.) In the summers, the small shack that is St. Louis’ second most well-known landmark hums with the sounds of an army of 16 to 24-year-olds filling the orders of a mass of people pouring out onto the streets in front of the store.
At the real Ted Drewes, you get a “concrete” ? any of two dozen toppings blended with one of as many flavors of custard. What you get in the cup in the Quad may be good, but you don’t get the same thing as what you get in the store.
What you did in high school is like the Quad Ted Drewes. You had fun, you did some cool things, but assuming all goes well, your college experiences will outstrip and overshadow everything you did there.
Everyone at WU was editor of the yearbook, captain of the lacrosse team, and donated time to a soup kitchen. What you can do in college that separates yourself from your peers comes in many forms.
Think big.
College is about big ideas. At WU, we float around the world in hot air balloons. We teach dozens of children to read each year. We fight racism and sexism and every other ?ism you can think of. We build facades for the largest student-run carnival in the country. We sit in the Quad? even when there isn’t ice cream.
In many ways, ice cream is like college. It’s sweet and fun and gets you fat, but unlike college, it doesn’t usually take four years to finish.