Monday, May 16, 2011

Thoughts on the Wizards' New (Ugly) Jersey Design

As I'm sure a lot of you have heard, the Washington Wizards have recently completed a complete redesign of their jerseys and their logo. It seems to me that their are two reactions to the new uniforms- either you love them or you hate them. Well, I, for one, hate them. I honestly don't understand why everyone in the media is so happy with these jerseys. There's no other way to say it: They're just ugly.

To all those nostalgic for the
Bullets' uniforms, I ask, why?
The main praise for these uniforms seems to be that they look similar to the old uniforms of the Washington Bullets. Well, I've got news for these people: the Bullets had really ugly uniforms too (just look at the picture to the right). Besides, these new uniforms will theoretically be used for the next couple of decades, so it shouldn't matter at all how much they look like the old uniforms- because 20 years from now, no one is going to remember the old uniforms. What matters is that the uniforms look good to the new generation of fans that the Wizards hope to attract. Unfortunately, the team failed at this task.

I have two main problems with this uniform. First of all, there's too much going on. The stripe across the middle of the jersey really ruins it. It makes the uniforms look amateurish and screws up the continuity that a good jersey needs. Just look at how much better the uniform would look without the stripe in the middle:
I don't know where this picture comes from, but if these
were the real uniforms they actually wouldn't be half bad.

But even without the stripe, another big problem plagues the Wizards' new jerseys: the ugly red color. The red they chose for the new uniforms just does not look good. Compare the Wizards' ugly, eye-straining red to the much more classy red of the Chicago Bulls and even the Miami Heat. There's really no comparison. Because the red completely dominates the away uniforms but is only an accessory to the home unis, I like the home uniforms a lot better. Regardless, both are pretty ugly.

Even considering how bad the jerseys are, the new logos are even worse. From what I've heard, the main logo will continue to be the weird Wizard-like scribble, just re-colored in a hideous combination of red, white, and blue. Honestly, I don't think an uglier logo could exist.

What were the Wizards thinking
when they made this?
And the secondary logo isn't much better: the generic letters "dc" (my friend thought it said "cic" at first, not a good start), with a random hand extending from the stem of the d, trying to catch a basketball. I know that this is also a shout-out to the old Bullets and their logo, but just because something is retro doesn't make it automatically look good.

Maybe I'll learn to like these uniforms; that's what I'm banking on. But if I'm being honest, what I really hope is that these new jerseys go the way of the alternate gold uniforms the Wizards unveiled a few years ago, and just fade into oblivion (with much better-looking jerseys to replace them).

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Why I chose UChicago

An aerial view of the University of Chicago campus
So this is a little overdue, but I wanted to explain why I decided to go to the University of Chicago over Georgetown. In my last blog post I said that I was leaning towards UChicago. But soon after writing that, I changed my mind and started leaning towards Georgetown. The first day back from spring break I had a meeting with my counselor and came away convinced that I was going to go to Georgetown. But the next day, when I was supposed to pay my deposit, I started having second thoughts. I was telling myself the reason I wanted to go to Georgetown was because of its location in Washington D.C. (I'm thinking of majoring in political science), a feeling I had that I'd fit in better with Georgetown students (as I said in my earlier blog post, there are a lot of weird people at UChicago), and the belief that Georgetown and UChicago were pretty academically comparable.

But the more I thought about it, I realized the real reason I wanted to go to Georgetown was because I was scared of UChicago. I was scared that it would be way too much work (the Huffington Post rates it as one of the 10 most grueling colleges), that everyone there would be weird, and that it'd be bitterly cold. As I pontificated (there's an SAT word for you), I realized that I didn't want to choose my college based on abstract fears that may not even be true. I also realized that while Georgetown's location in Washington D.C. might be a deciding factor for most poli sci majors; the fact that I lived in Northern Virginia meant that I could get a poli sci related internship in D.C. pretty easily over the summer.

A conversation I'd had with a family friend who was a senior at Georgetown didn't help either. She said that there were some crappy professors at Georgetown and that "I guess you could have more interaction between students and professors at other colleges." I compared this to the glowing praise for the professors and classes by people I knew who went to UChicago. This helped me realize that UChicago really was a better school academically than Georgetown.

I still wasn't convinced about UChicago, so I decided to call a family friend who lived in Chicago and had graduated from the university about 12 years ago. She really reassured me that I would in fact be able to have fun at UChicago and find plenty of people who weren't weird to hang out with. She said it was a lot of work, but that it would prepare me well for the rest of my life- because life is a lot of work too. Even my BC Calculus teacher, a 2008 UChicago grad who had told me that almost everyone at UChicago was weird, told me that while it's true that the majority of people at UChicago are pretty weird, there are non-weird (what he called "worldly") people who go to the University also. Plus, he's pretty weird himself (this is self-professed), so I feel his perspective is a little bit skewed.

After I made my decision, I knew it was the right one. It just felt right to me- unlike my earlier decision to go to Georgetown. I realize that it's going to be a lot of work and I'm still a little scared, but I'm also excited to be going to one of the best universities in the country and maybe even the world. Soon enough I guess I'll be fully immersed in "the life of the mind."