what makes swarthmore special

dandylions
Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:42:49 +0000

Like Sopralto above me, I attended Discovery Weekend last fall as well, and I completely agree with her 10 points. Especially the last one. Hahaha that was pretty funny.

One of the things I’ve always liked about Swat is that the academic community is very collaborative. The work is known to be intense, but the students help one another versus being cutthroat and competitive. They’re said to be “only competitive with themselves.” At one of the workshops I went to during Discovery Weekend one of the visiting seniors asked if there was a lot of pressure at Swarthmore in academics or the party scene or whatnot. The Swat students basically said that there’s very little pressure, and if there is, it’s usually self-induced. Most students do what they want and their peers respect their decisions. And then one guy chimed in “The only pressure, really, is to change the world”. That made everyone chuckle, mostly because it’s very true to the underlying philosophies of Swarthmore.