College Confidential - View Single Post - The "other" Johns Hopkins (no final exams)

roberthhid · 12-10-2006, 04:22 PM

This weekend I spoke with my son, a freshman at JHU, about final exams. He’s not doing any studying at all for exams. No he hasn’t dropped out or flipped out. He has no finals. He has some reading to do and some papers to write. He is a part of the “other” Hopkins, the one you don’t read about much on CC. It seems that almost all the JHU student posters here pre-med or in the sciences.
When I tell people he’s at Hopkins most times the response is “Oh, he’s going to be a doctor!”. (The fact that his parents are physicians may also play into this.) However he’s never liked science at all. He has always wanted to do creative writing. It came down to a choice between Bard and JHU. Bard was attractive because of small class sizes and the popularity of creative writing. However JHU won out with the shear depth and breadth of its Writing Seminars courses.
He went ot a tiny private high school and made JHU in his image. All of his classes are 20 students or less. He takes no science classes (he got AP credit for bio and calc so he placed out of most of JHU's science requirements). He doesn’t know about “cut-throat” competition or pressure to perform. He likes his profs and they like him. Having been there a number of times, Hopkins still has the atmosphere of a science/pre-med/engineering type campus. However he’s found creative writers and theater people to hang out with.
There’s tons of theatre opportunities at Hopkins – at least every other weekend there’s some show going on. Witness theater (student written and directed one act plays) has already had 2 well received showcases. In addition the freshman one-acts by the Barnstormers were put on for the parents weekend.
1st week in December, Throat Culture put on their “Saturday Night Live” type comedy shows. 2nd week of Dec, the campus Improv group Buttered Niblets put on their comedy show. Since DS is involved in all of the aforementioned activities I’m not sure when he gets his class work done! (As an aside, Rushmore is one of his favorite movies so life may be imitating art here.)
Next semester comes more writing classes and an acting class taught by John Astin.
Of course, there’s always a down side. One writing sems senior plans to live in a cardboard box http://www.jhunewsletter.com/media/s...newsletter.com and another is planning to tour with his own heavy metal band http://www.jhunewsletter.com/media/s...newsletter.com
If I'm lucky he'll go to grad school or teach. At least he's doing what he wants to do.

12-10-2006, 04:22 PM	#1
roberthhid Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 275	The "other" Johns Hopkins (no final exams) This weekend I spoke with my son, a freshman at JHU, about final exams. He’s not doing any studying at all for exams. No he hasn’t dropped out or flipped out. He has no finals. He has some reading to do and some papers to write. He is a part of the “other” Hopkins, the one you don’t read about much on CC. It seems that almost all the JHU student posters here pre-med or in the sciences. When I tell people he’s at Hopkins most times the response is “Oh, he’s going to be a doctor!”. (The fact that his parents are physicians may also play into this.) However he’s never liked science at all. He has always wanted to do creative writing. It came down to a choice between Bard and JHU. Bard was attractive because of small class sizes and the popularity of creative writing. However JHU won out with the shear depth and breadth of its Writing Seminars courses. He went ot a tiny private high school and made JHU in his image. All of his classes are 20 students or less. He takes no science classes (he got AP credit for bio and calc so he placed out of most of JHU's science requirements). He doesn’t know about “cut-throat” competition or pressure to perform. He likes his profs and they like him. Having been there a number of times, Hopkins still has the atmosphere of a science/pre-med/engineering type campus. However he’s found creative writers and theater people to hang out with. There’s tons of theatre opportunities at Hopkins – at least every other weekend there’s some show going on. Witness theater (student written and directed one act plays) has already had 2 well received showcases. In addition the freshman one-acts by the Barnstormers were put on for the parents weekend. 1st week in December, Throat Culture put on their “Saturday Night Live” type comedy shows. 2nd week of Dec, the campus Improv group Buttered Niblets put on their comedy show. Since DS is involved in all of the aforementioned activities I’m not sure when he gets his class work done! (As an aside, Rushmore is one of his favorite movies so life may be imitating art here.) Next semester comes more writing classes and an acting class taught by John Astin. Of course, there’s always a down side. One writing sems senior plans to live in a cardboard box http://www.jhunewsletter.com/media/s...newsletter.com and another is planning to tour with his own heavy metal band http://www.jhunewsletter.com/media/s...newsletter.com If I'm lucky he'll go to grad school or teach. At least he's doing what he wants to do.
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