Great TAs, Drinking in Your Room

Introduction
I actually came to Brown more because of a summer program I had done here. It was off-campus by the Naragansett Bay. We lived in tents, and our “classroom” there was actually a semi-circle of old beat up couches, and our alternative classroom was actually the Naragansett Bay itself. It really gave me a feel for what Brown was like as a school because it was an Environmental Leadership program and every thing we did was outside it really involved the students. We were learning completely hands-on and it just gave me an amazing feel for what the school would be like.

Campus Life and Social Life
I think the classes are extremely interesting and they love to get Brown students out into the classrooms in Providence. So Providence has become a great resource for me because of the education department.

But anytime a class is over about 50 students, you have a teaching assistant who has sections with you, or sometimes even the professors do it themselves. And they have a section which is usually about 20 students at the most, and this way you can ask the questions you couldn’t ask before in a huge lecture.

I’ve actually been pretty impressed with the TA’s. Last semester in one of my English courses, the professor was very intelligent and very interesting, but not the best lecturer I’ve ever had. The TA actually made the course for me.

As freshmen we have Units. So each unit, is divided by floor. It’s about 40-70 students in each. And each unit has their own Woman’s peer counselor, Minority peer counselor, and Residential counselor so we don’t have RA’s like other schools. What’s really nice about the counselor system is that they’re really there for anyone. Their names just signify what they’ve been specially trained in. Academics
I was definitely afraid of school food. I think most people are. But actually the closest dining facility has a lot of options. I was really impressed with it. A lot of students here are Vegetarian, Vegan, and there are some students who keep Kosher, so there’s Hillel food. So anytime you want anything it’s really here. There’s pizza, pasta, there’s always a salad bar, there’s always fresh fruit. You can always get any kind of deli meat you want and then there’s the main dish that they’re serving for the day. So, there’s always something for someone.

There’s a really free open partying atmosphere. You can drink in your rooms—you’re not really supposed to, I guess. My cousin was visiting me and he was really surprised by the partying atmosphere as far as it goes in the dorm. Because your counselors aren’t there to be police, they’re not going to get you in trouble. If somebody gets sick from drinking too much, they’ll call the EMS service and they’ll come help you feel better but they’re not there to bust your chops. And I think it actually leads to less getting sick from drinking, because this way it’s just a free open atmosphere—you don’t have to binge drink because you feel like you’re allowed to drink. This way, people can drink a little bit, they can drink a lot. I think that it definitely cuts down on the amount of alcohol poisoning because I haven’t seen kids get really that sick.

I was pretty surprised because I didn’t drink much—or at all—in high school. So I was surprised that it’s pretty easy to get drinks. Especially as a freshman girl because I mean, frat boys are like, “oh, freshman girl, look we have beer, sure you can have some” and then they open it for you!…But again, because it’s so easy to get, it doesn’t feel like a real commodity—something you’re never going to have again so you need to get it now.

I wouldn’t say there’s a high drug use. I know a lot of kids that’ll smoke pot and stuff and apparently people have this view of Brown as being such a Pot head campus. But you’ll definitely see pot being smoked around here. There was a concert the other night and sitting on the side you could kind of see clouds mushrooming from watching the concert.

Student Body
I think the most interesting thing I found is that a lot of Brown students, because there are no requirements, end up taking a little bit of everything. I think it’s pretty similar for a lot of Freshmen. You just kind of want to try something—you don’t really know why.

A GISP is a Group Independent-Study Project. And basically one student suggests a topic—my Resident Counselor is really interested in Tea, drinking tea, and he wants to create a GISP which is like a course on the history of tea in different countries and America. It’s not my forte. It could be cool. He’ll probably find three of his friends or so and they’ll get a professor in some department, it could be the history department who will work things out with them. And they can meet once a week for a little bit, or two times a week for a little bit, and they end up writing a paper or turning in some project in at the end. It’s definitely cool to have because if there’s a class that doesn’t exist, you can make your own with your friends.

You can create your own concentration. We call majors ‘concentrations’ here. So you can create your own if you find that working between different departments isn’t working for you so much, and that takes a lot of work. I’ve heard it’s like taking another course, trying to create it, because they really want to make sure that you not just creating something to avoid some of the requirements and so they want to see that you’re combining all different departments. You have to have A LOT of motivation. I think in the end, the thesis that you write, would be different from anything that anyone does in another concentration in other schools.

In Closing...
I think I was pretty nervous for the courses and that other students would be a lot smarter. I worked a lot in high school and I was one of those kids who studied really hard and I was really nervous- “oh, I’m going to an Ivy League school, I’m never going to make it, every thing is going to be so difficult.” But I think confidence is a big part of that. But you come here and the students are just so down to earth.

I think the important thing about academics and being nervous in that at Brown, the kids are so nice, they’re always willing to help, there’s none of that tearing the pages out of text books so you can’t get to it for your paper. That would never happen here. As far as academics go, people always ask, “oh, is Brown really hard?” I don’t know. You come, you do your work, you have fun, it’s not the intense academic environment that I think a lot of Ivy Leagues have.