Swarthmore's fortes

johnwesley
Thu, 23 Mar 2006 07:54:30 +0000

The push to self-start and to contribute to class discussions seems almost universal among certain of the more “intellectual” LACs. This from an anonymous Wesleyan freshman:

"I don’t know what I didn’t see before, but I see it now. My friends here are wonderful, and I’m making new ones all the time. My grades are much better than I expected them to be (except in RELI381, hehe), at least for now, and I actually care about my schoolwork. And, holy ****, all my classes are fascinating - even Physical Geology. And the “fishbowl” discussion we had in Religion the other day made me really want to start participating more in class, and I will from now on, because I get mad at myself all the time because the same situation plays itself out all the time: the professor will ask a question or ask for discussion, and I have something to say but think it’s stupid or that someone will say I’m wrong, and then a classmate will say the exact thing I’m thinking and it’ll come out fine. I need to get some balls, lol.

And Wesleyan is where I want to be. For the next four years. It’s definitely not easy, and it is a lot of work, but this is where I want to be."