A Perfect Fit

Introduction
When I visited here – when I was a senior – I looked here in September and just fell in love with the place. I loved the campus. I loved the Duke Forest. I’m a person who likes to get out, be able to run or be able to go hiking in the forest or go sit in the Duke Gardens over there and just be outside and it a beautiful place to be outside. Beautiful architecture. You feel like it’s just a good place all around to be. When I first got here, I applied early to Duke and that’s where I wanted to go and as soon as I got here I just fit right in. Just about everything you need is there. You can do what you want on campus.

Campus Life and Social Life
Freshman year, I only missed 1 basketball game – slept out in the rain for a couple of games against Georgia Tech and Wake Forrest – got to be front row, center court, which was one of the most amazing experiences – got myself on Sports Center. Basketball is just so much fun there’s nothing like right before the big games, especially the tenting games, against Carolina where you’ve got almost the entire student body sitting out in K-Vile, drinking a beer, eating pizza, watching old games of Duke Basketball and then you go in and you listen to Coach K speak and then you go to the game next day and there’s nothing better than that. I think it certainly brings people together – its something you can unite around, which is basically that no matter what it is that you do around here or who you are or who your friends with – you just have that common bond. Advertisement
Academics
I started something called the Duke University Greening Initiative – which started as a student led initiative to make Duke a more sustainable place. We worked then with faculty and students form the undergraduate and graduate schools who brought in outside experts – Duke just recently passed an environmental policy that applies to the entire university – the entire health system, they committed to building all new green buildings – were doing an environmental management system for the University and Health system – it’s really taken off and moving into one of the strongest and best environmental programs across schools in the country. That was something that I came up with – I had an idea and partner, another student, and that we were just empowered by the administrators, the faculty and basically they made whatever resources we needed at our disposal – whether it was in terms of advice in terms of money or access. Everybody was willing to make that happen. And there’s all kinds of other projects like that – you know I’m not the only one who’s done something pretty cool like that anybody who’s wanted to – wanted to put in the time – whether it’s to change Duke or change something in the community they’re able to do that and Duke is sort of unique in that way in comparison to other academically similar schools where I got calls form people Harvard who had more money, more resources,

Student Body
A lot of the partying has moved off campus. I’ve lived off campus this year and last year, so I could throw some parties in my apartment or go to other parties off campus. There’s a few places to go in Durham – I live on 9th Street, there’s a few bars on 9th street, which is fun, if you just want to go and hang out and get a beer or two. Or there’s Chapel Hill which is fun to go – it’s only 8 miles down the road and there’s more bars and clubs than you know what to do with.

In Closing...
The party scene has certainly been on the decline since Duke has worked hard to make itself a more academically focused institution than the party school it was in the 70’s