A Grand Tour of the Universities in Ankara
As our tour program of Ankara universities as 11th graders started with the 7 am flight from Adana on November 2nd, we arrived at the Ankara University’s Tandoğan Campus, our first stop, at around 10:00 am. By this time our eyes were swollen from a sleepless night and we were quite hungry. The excitement for this tour of universities was quick to overcome all these complaints about eating and sleeplessness, though.
We were informed about the history and mission of the university in the presentation given by the university’s PR department. This interactive presentation, it made it very easy for me and my friends to ask the things we were curious about with the sincerity of the facilitator. By 12:00, we arrived at METU and we were welcomed by a little surprise. It was the time of METU Career Fair, which was organized for only two days of the year and various companies were presenting and answering METU students' questions about the future. At this fair, we were fortunate enough to come across the panel led by an old METU graduate, motivational speaker and educator Mehmet Auf. Until then, I thought it was impossible to silence forty young people, including myself, and draw their attention to the one point that the speaker was making. As the whole class, we listened to this talk with great interest and were very impressed with the conversations. Although we wanted to stay for the second half of the panel discussion, we had to continue with our campus trip. METU really impressed us with its campus, its history and culture, as well as our guide in this tour whose age was close to us, making this a thoroughly enjoyable tour for all of us.
When we departed METU, which was already a part of our post-secondary dreams, and headed for Anıtkabir, it was 15:00. We spent about an hour to visiting the mausoleum of our great leader and paying our respects.
We went to the shopping center immediately after we settled into our hotel. After a few hours we spent here we returned to our hotel.
The next day we got up early in the morning and after breakfast we headed for Hacettepe University. A silent campus, although some of us found it dreary, many of our friends who wanted medicine walked around the campus with interest and excitement. From there we moved to Bilkent University where we had a good time chatting with graduates of TAC. Our encounter them who provided us with valuable information about the university was a big gain in terms of our introduction to Bilkent University. Our tour of Bilkent, which impressed us with its library and facilities, ended at a shopping mall where we had lunch and we headed for the airport.
Bartu Bayraktar’s, one of our friends, being selected the "the Student of the Month" in October and our friend Mert Kepece, who was not doing that great academically, being selected the "Student of the Month" by us for July and August added to the laughter on the bus which housed our road adventures on these two days. The tour of Ankara was made even more memerable with the reciting of poetry and slogans with our supervising teachers. Even if we experienced quite a few number of delays at the airport, we were finally greeted by the warm temperature of Adana after Ankara’s biting frost. On behalf of all of us, I thank the teachers for their sincere dedication to our well-being during the trip.
Cevahir BOZKURT / 11 IB