LAC's: Claustrophobic

dchow08
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:22:41 +0000

I go to Swarthmore, so I have some experience with claustrophobia :)

It’s perfectly fine to question if a small school ever feels too small. A lot of people wonder about this, and lots of people ask that question during tours.

I was quite concerned about this myself, because I’m from Seattle and I’m used to being in a city and going downtown often and just being around lots of people a lot of the time. I think that you won’t feel claustrophobic, as long as you get out of the campus every once in a while. I’ve certainly had that feeling you get when you stay home for too long–you’ve just got to get out of the house and walk around and see something new. My English professor put it perfectly: “If you stay at Swarthmore for all four years without getting out, your head will explode.”

So every once in a while, I find that I have to talk a walk in the woods and walk around the tiny town next to Swarthmore and have a coffee once in a while. Less often, I just really want to go to another city and explore. Fortunately, Swarthmore is close to Philadelphia. People don’t go there all the time, maybe on average once a month, but it’s still a nice break. I’ve even managed to be able to take a few trips to New York to see my friends and to see my sister who lives in Connecticut, during the school year. So, in short, you can avoid the claustrophobic feeling by going off campus and forgetting all about college once in a while.

The claustrophobic feeling is a major reason why I kind of shy away from schools in the middle of nowhere, especially if they’re small schools. It’s a good question to ask on tours: “What else is there to do if I just want to get away from campus from time to time?” Because I’m sure that eventually you’ll want to just get away for a while.