Exclusive Parties in the Public Lounge: On Probation for Dressing Up?

Introduction
First of all, I really liked the campus. Being from a city, I didn’t want to go into a very rural place where I didn’t have the option—I like that I have the option of going downtown into Providence and kind of getting off campus, but there’s still a really pretty campus.

I really like the Open Curriculum because, since I’m not that focused right now and I don’t know what I want to do, there’s a lot of room to experiment and kind of try different classes. The fact that you can take things pass/fail has been amazing and I’ve definitely utilized that in trying out new things.

I’m on the squash team. I really liked the team here, and I really like the girls here, and I had a really good time when I came to campus. They showed me a good time.

My biggest problem when I was meeting with my advisor and going though classes is that I had a list of 30 classes I wanted to take and I could only take 4.

Campus Life and Social Life
To be honest, initiation was really bad. Brown tried really, really hard and they had all of these activities. I personally found it really overwhelming. But once classes started, I found it was really easy to meet people. Everybody’s so friendly, upper classmen and everything, it’s not like typical high school where the upperclassmen tell you the wrong way to get to class. Everyone is so friendly and so willing to help you.
It’s really not that competitive Ivy League atmosphere.

The Freshman social scene is actually really fun. There are a lot of parties in the beginning of the year that are basically aimed towards freshmen. You really have to take advantage of it because after freshman year, you’re going to be too cool to attend. So you just have to go Freshman year.

There are all sorts of like theme parties in Sales and Fonts, which are two of our main buildings on the Main Green. Sales- you actually have classes in there- so it’s kind of funny, the contrast of having a class there on Friday afternoon and then being at a party there Friday evening. Academics
Dorm life is good. I really like my room because its really big. The bathrooms are fine. The only thing is, they clean the bathrooms everyday, but they don’t do it over the weekend, so by Sunday, the bathrooms are gross. It took a while to get used to a stall and showering in flip flops and stuff, but it’s part of the experience. The hallways are co-ed but the bathrooms are single-sex. I have guys living on the left and 2 girls living on the right.

We have RC’s, resident counselors, we have MPC’s, which are Minority Peer counselors and a WPC which is a woman’s peer counselor, but it’s all the same to me. It’s not like on the weekends they’re patrolling the halls, they’re chill and they just hang out with you, they hang out in the lounge. It’s just like having older people that you can go to if you need something, like help picking classes, or if you’re having a problem with anything. But if you’re not having a problem, it’s just like having a friend around that knows a little more about the campus than you do.

The meal plan is not bad. There are French fries everywhere on this campus, so I put on my freshman 15 in about a month just eating French Fries everyday. And there’s always cheese to put on your French Fries. The food options are actually really good. My biggest problem was that the food here was kind of too good and that’s how I put on my weight from food, not alcohol.

Student Body
Some people I know got in trouble for throwing a party in the lounge and it’s not because they threw a party, but they threw a cocktail party, and you had to be dressed up to get in. So they were put on academic probation for throwing an exclusive party in the public lounge.

The authorities around campus are more there to make sure that you don’t hurt yourselves than to monitor and make sure there’s no underage drinking or you’re not having fun. One of the biggest things they tell us during orientation is if anyone’s ever sick or anything at night, don’t hesitate to call EMS because no one gets in trouble.

Everyone jokes that a piece of paper that says 21 will get you in. It’s pretty easy.

The Squash team is really fun. At first I thought it might be difficult because squash, even though it’s a team sport, we do have challenge matches and it is somewhat individual so I thought it might be competitive when the season started. But the girls are so sweet that we just leave everything on the courts. And we have our challenge matches and then we go to dinner together. It’s not a really cliquey team; we’re not together all the time, but a lot of times we’ll go out together and have a Beirut tournament or pre-game together and then we all just go out and go our separate ways.

In Closing...
Everybody is very competitive with themselves. Everybody is striving to do their best. But people aren’t really competitive with each other. After you have a test when you come out of the class it’s not like, “oh what did you get? What did you get?” It’s more, “I got an A-, I should’ve gotten and I could’ve gotten an A.”

When you take a class, there’s such a huge range. Right now I’m taking a Classics class and I’ve never taken Latin, I’ve never read Virgil-the class is called Virgil Agustus and Rome-and I just know nothing about Classics. And just in that class there are Latin scholars and people who have been studying Latin all through high school, they’re majoring in Latin. And then there are people like me, who are just reading and not getting it, going to class and saying, “okay, that’s interesting.” And there’s just such a variety of people and that’s fine. It’s not my thing, but I never feel intimidated or uncomfortable.

I feel like the professors know that there’s such a range of people with different interests in their class, and all the professors have office hours so if you don’t feel comfortable asking questions in class you can go to their office hours and they’re more than willing to help. But I find even in class, professors are very approachable.

I thought for sure that when I got here into the classrooms, I would have to work twice as hard. And when I got here, I realized that that’s not true and there’s tons of diversity, there’s so many types of different people. And that’s the one thing I wish I had known, I wish I had more confidence, first semester in my classes.