Senior piano performance major Elena Lacheva brings us the latest news of her search for the perfect graduate school for her music studies.

Already stuck in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport for the past six hours, watching my flight be rescheduled for the third time, I start to think how much easier it could have been to drive to the University of Cincinnati instead.

Finally, I land in Cincinnati at 3 p.m., my 4:45 a.m. wake-up time a distant memory. I have a cold, probably caught while waiting for my flight, and my nose is running. With a brain like melted white cheddar but a heart full of joy, I greet a dear old friend of mine from Bulgaria who has agreed to host me for two nights.

After gluing myself to her Yamaha upright piano for hours in a row I get an exclusive private tour of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s facilities, and my friend shares inside scoops about the brand new CCM building and about life in the University.

For me, the Corbett Center for the Performing Arts strangely resembles an airport — long, echoing hallways, a lack of comfy couches, high ceilings and wacky, dizzifying sloping walls. It houses nearly 5,000 rooms (only 2,000 of which are above ground level) and several performing spaces. Strangely enough, they all appear to be offices, classrooms, but not practice spaces.

My friend points out two separate buildings, gloriously lit in the night — a cottage-like stone establishment (the Dieterle Vocal Arts Center) and Memorial Hall, a dormitory that had been converted to around 70 practice rooms and teaching studios in 1996.

“Practice rooms are only on the 4th floor, and it’s hard to find a free one during the semester, and almost impossible during auditions,” my friend explains. How cheerful....

The next morning, I try to convince myself that in the sunlight, the campus will look more welcoming, somehow cooler — more like a place which I could consider a second alma mater. But the eerie feeling remains that I don’t like what I see. The reason eludes me — maybe it’s the humongous, chaotic, confusing facilities, my friend’s warnings about her everyday problems, the cold, or the   gloomy look of the empty campus — I cannot tell, but my gut feelings are kicking in.

Snotty ballerinas pass me on their way to their own auditions on the same day. Students are absent — they’re still on break. The ones that are here working for the admission office do not look awfully happy, though they try to sell me CCM merchandise.

I ask myself how long it might take me to learn where room 2647 is so I’m not late for class. Should I sleep in a practice room just to have somewhere to play in the morning? With the amount of work which a graduate assistant must complete, will I have time to practice at all? The future seems dim. I’m restless and want to come home to Oberlin.

The piano faculty is friendly and polite, and after being done with auditions, I finally sit down and catch up with my friend. We end up talking until 3 a.m.