These were really helpful to me when I was looking at schools so I thought I'd write one up. I think there's a new trip report feature on CC but I don't know where it is but whatever.
We got to campus around 10:00 in the morning. A few students were walking around campus but seeing as how it was nine degrees, there wasn’t much activity on campus. It was also around the time when most students are in classes so that may have contributed to the emptiness. Nevertheless, the campus is really pretty. None of the buildings really clashed with one another and there were plenty of trees. Snow covered everything but the walkways were kept clear. My mother and I checked in and got my folder. We decided to take a tour later on so I went to visit some classes.
I got there a little late so I couldn’t sit in on some of the classes that I wanted to though I did see a first-year Chinese class in its entirety. I’m fluent in Cantonese so it didn’t seem too challenging to me but I think that for a beginning, the class was perfectly paced. There were only eleven students in the class and everyone seemed to be friends with everyone else. The teacher was really good; she answered questions very well and despite the fact that I grew up heavily immersed in Chinese culture, the culture tidbits were fascinating. The students were doing a unit on food so that definitely captured my attention. I also had the chance to listen in on a Spanish 210 class (I think). It was conducted entirely in Spanish. It was a little simplistic IMO (I live in CA and am almost fluent in Spanish) but I was impressed that the students were doing that well after only three or four semesters of study.
After visiting classes, we had some downtime. We went to the Turtle Creek Bookstore so that I could buy my Beloit sweatshirt. It’s about two blocks away from campus and is the campus bookstore though few shop there due to high prices. We also stopped at Wal-Mart, about two miles away from campus because my mother, the typical Californian, forgot gloves and a scarf. I also noticed that there were Staples, a grocery store, and other basic stores around Wal-Mart. For those coming far away, you could basically bring bedding and clothes and buy the rest in Beloit.
We ate lunch in the Commons. There was a salad bar, some hot entrees (BBQ chicken, chicken fingers, fries, etc.), and a place to get sandwiches. There was also stuff to make waffles and basically every cereal imaginable. While the food wasn’t too good, I think that I would be able to survive off of it. I think that you can use some of your meals at DKs and they have standard “carnival fare.”
We went on a campus tour and I was actually surprised by the size of the campus. My high school is twice as large as the entire Beloit campus but everything was really spread out. The buildings were all really warm, which was nice. The campus itself is split into two. On one side of Emerson are the academic buildings and offices and on the other side are the residence halls. I only saw the insides of Bushnell and Aldrich but from what I can tell, they seem to be standard college dorm rooms. My host and her floor mates all have singles in Bushnell and they’re really nice. My tour guide told me that the best way to get a single is by making sure that Res Life would have a hard time finding you a hard match based on music choices, i.e. putting down rock, classical, Celtic, and show tunes or something to that effect.
I met my host at around 4:00pm, after the welcome address from the president. We dropped off my stuff in her room before heading down to Commons for dinner. She told me that while Beloit’s food isn’t the greatest, it’s great when compared to the food at other campuses. There seemed to be more options at dinner and because it was Friday night, there were ice cream sundaes for dessert. I met a lot of my host’s friends and everyone basically welcomed me with open arms.
After dinner, I went to the meet-and-greet dealio with professors from every department while my hosts went down to the Java Joint for salsa dancing. I chatted with a lot of professors but the biggest thing in my mind was when I ran into a girl from the Chinese class I had sat in on earlier that day. I was really surprised that she remembered me but she came over and basically told me about all of the opportunities available to Chinese language students. Beloit has a summer program where you can study languages intensively and when I mentioned that money might be an issue in attending, she told me about a scholarship I would qualify for. She also gave me her contact info so that we could keep in touch. I was impressed that someone would go out of her way to do that much for a prospie.
Later that night, I went with the group to watch Retta from the Comedy Central in the Wilson theatre. We also went to C-Haus, which is the campus bar, to play pool and air hockey. The basement of the building is actually where bands perform. Going to these shows are a pretty popular thing to do. I had a lot of fun losing games of air hockey to Carolyn’s daughter but I don’t think that the C-Haus will be somewhere I’d hang out at often because I don’t really like the smell of smoke.
I stayed up until almost 2:00 am that night just sitting in the lounge of Bushnell 2nd and chatting with people. Everyone was really friendly and I was amazed that people would just randomly come out to chat. I had a really great time that weekend and Beloit is definitely one of my top choices.
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