Applying to St. John's this year?

eamon
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:04:23 +0000

I am also a student at Annapolis and can attempt to field questions.
For phishsticks
1: I prospied in Fe twice and then chose Annapolis sight unseen. While Fe was a beautiful place, the campus is isolated from the rest of the town. It is several miles up in the mountains and so it was difficult to get anywhere without walking down the mountain if you didn’t have a car. It was also very quiet, peaceful, serene (I heard it described as a sanctuary/church on several occasions), and coming from a metropolitan area, I just needed more civilization. Being able to walk into town and get a bite to eat on weekends or being able to take a bus into DC, etc. were factors that were important to me because I didn’t want to feel “trapped”. Also, Fe is very big into outdoors activities, and me notsomuch.


I have so far enjoyed a lot of the close interactions between the tutors and the students. For instance, I am able to take my tutors to lunch or coffee and meet with them to discuss anything I want, be it problems I am having with the material or topics of interest. I meet with my tutors after every paper I write (a meeting after every paper isn’t required) and so I am able to discuss with them my ideas thoroughly. The tutors are never condescending and are always eager to meet and help their students. I haven’t seen or heard about that kind of care from faculties a other colleges.
I would change two things. First, the food. It isn’t great. It isn’t horrible. It feels monotonous a lot of the time. But, it is getting better. This year they have implemented a stir fry station and a sandwich bar, and they seem to be making an effort. Secondly, I would change the fact that I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do. I know a lot of people who commit themselves to one extra-curricular and then struggle to pick up a second (although some people are incredibly successful with this). I wish I had more time for my study groups, pleasure reading, another activity or two, etc. But I think this is part of the nature of college: you just aren’t going to be able to keep everything up that you did in high school.
Everywhere you go you’re going to find yourself incredibly bored some of the time, it is inevitable. Fortunately, there is always some work to be done, so you aren’t going to be going up a wall from the lack of work. There seems to be something going on all the time, whether its dance lessons or aikido practice or people getting together in the common rooms to watch movies. And there are almost always people on the quad standing around talking. So…I don’t think boredom is too much of a factor, at least in my experience.


Hope that helps.