Stereotype abounds

Introduction
I wasn’t very interested in Miami when I first heard about it, but when I came and visited is when I really fell in love with the campus and I think everybody says that they love the campus and it is beautiful. Miami is very much what a college is supposed to be. Out on the quads, People lay out, they play games. You always see people out having fun. People playing Frisbee and playing guitar and you wouldn’t normally expect that because it looks like they’ve been staged for picture, but that’s how it is here and I was really shocked to see that when I got here.

I would say the availability of faculty is excellent. I loved the fact that when we were at orientation and all the faculty were talking to us and they wanted to meet us and they told us how awesome it was that we were coming and I just felt really wanted and needed.

Campus Life and Social Life
The university’s actually known for its preppiness. Which I didn’t know until I got here because I wasn’t very preppy in high school. I went to a Catholic high school and so I wore preppy clothes because I had to. So I came here not expecting that at all and it ended up being very much like that. I would say everyone here is pretty cool. There are a lot of people here who are very well-endowed, a lot of people have parents who are paying for college and that can become kind of a hindrance and a little bit of a break between the students that pay for their own college and those who don’t.

There’s definitely an attitude of the J.Crew U, but a lot of people don’t claim to be that. I don’t wear J.Crew clothes, I don’t wear Abercrombie, I don’t wear American Eagle. I shop at thrift stores. Everyone says there’s this stereotype and there’s this way people are and they’re right. There’s definitely a feel and attitude about it. But if you would ask every student on this campus, I would guarantee, I would say like 90% of them say that they know there’s an image, but they don’t even fit that image. When in reality, if you would look at everybody you would say, “They fit it, they fit it, they fit it,” but they would claim themselves that they don’t. Advertisement
Academics
I’m pretty busy. I started off my first year here involved in Hall Council, which is kind of like student council, but on a hall level. And I was a programming director so this last year, my sophomore year, I moved up to the executive position. And so I was in charge of all the programming directors from 36 halls on campus and had a budget of about 10 grand to basically plan big parties and to create big events on campus for students to come to. One of which was field day which was just a bunch of big games.

Some of the Miami Plan classes I’ve taken that are the required classes have been classes that I never thought I would have liked at all and I found that, yeah, some of them are really hard and I get bad grades and I get mad because it lowers my GPA and it’s not something that I feel is that applicable, but I keep finding myself turning around and using it everyday. This past year I took a Poli-sci class that I thought I was going to hate because I don’t like government and I fell in love with it during election year and now I’m a political science minor. So I would say that the classes are manageable if you do the work you’re supposed to do.

Student Body
Almost all of my professors have given me their email, they’ve told me their office hours, and they’ve made it very clear that they want to meet with me outside of class. I’ve had people, like professors give me their home telephone number because they want so badly to connect with students. Go to office hours and call the professors and email them and use them as allies because they very badly want to help you, and I would say one of the strongest points is that the professors are there. In math, I had an excellent TA who helped me through calculus and probably saved my grade. Some of them are called SI’s, which is Supplemental Instructors and I’m going to be an SI for a class next semester because I was so happy how that worked for me and so I want to do the same for others. I’ve had a couple professors who are very stuck in their ways and who don’t really appreciate think outside of the box. I have had couple of professors who frustrate me because I don’t understand their grading system or they’re not available, but I would say on the whole, I’ve had a great experience, but there are definitely a few out there that just make you want to hit ‘em.

The Western college program, from what I’ve heard, is that everybody who is in it, loves it, but it does have a little bit of a stereotype of being completely separate from campus because Western College for Women, joined with Miami University, it is like a separate campus and the buildings look different, it’s a little further away from everything and their style of living is different. I would say one of Western College’s most important factors is they house the school of interdisciplinary studies, which is kind of like, there’s a school of Education, there’s a school of Business, School of Interdisciplinary Studies and other’s of course. And so it takes a lot of extra work on the part of the student to create their own work, but they can take classes from all over and they take Western College classes and then they make their own major.

Especially with the school of Business, internships are very common and almost expected. I would say that out of the people that graduate from Miami, having an internship is more of a rule than an exception these days. I will be doing an internship after I get back from Study Abroad next year. I would say it’s probably 90% of people do them.

In Closing...
My favorite thing about campus is NOT the rec, because I hate working out. I would say my favorite thing is the lawns. And I hate nature, really, I’m not an outside person at all, but there’s nothing better than taking your books outside laying out a blanket and hanging out with friends and reading for the next day’s class. I’d say that my least favorite thing is the rec center because it’s beautiful and it’s really well-done, but it’s often really crowded during the day and I get intimidated by the amy of skinny people who are working out there all the time.

I lived in Tappan Hall, which is the Honors and Scholar’s Residence hall, and it had the reputation of “the kids who study” dorm and very quiet, but it actually was a lot of fun because I found that since I came in with very high academic expectations, that I was going to get a lot done, I was going to keep a high GPA. I found it was a really good environment for me because students were studying, they paid a lot of attention to it, but they also had a really good time and I felt that it was a really nice balance. My roommate my first year and I were complete opposites, which is really funny. I’m not a total neat freak, but I definitely like to know where my stuff is. And she, pretty much had stuff everywhere all the time. Dirty dishes sitting on her desk. She took the doors off her closet and all her clothes were spilling out all the time. So I had to keep picking them up and throwing them back in. I would say my first year, I really learned like you don’t have to be best friends with your roommate, which I think is so important to know.

I would say for your first year here, living in residence halls is probably where you’re going to find almost all your friends. As you keep getting older, more and more people move off campus. Probably by junior, senior year, half or almost all of your friends are going to be off of campus.

Miami’s Food rocks. Just so you know, it’s awesome, you should all come here for the food. I took the Diplomat Meal plan and—there are two plans, there’s Passport and Diplomat—and I had passport for the first couple weeks, which is breakfast, lunch, dinner, and there’s diff time slots you can them. And I did that, but then my schedule got messed up and I couldn’t eat at all during the lunch period so that would be wasting a whole meal a day so I switched to diplomat which is where you have $1,000 and it kind of rotates down for the rest of the semester.

You have your Jimmy John’s, Pita Pit, Wendy’s, same type of thing, but we also have a Skyline, and Great Steak and we have a really interesting feature on the ID card that you can used called MU Bucks or Uptown bucks. And you can put $ on your card and then when you’re uptown, with your friends on weekends, you can just swipe your card and pay for it. You have an account that does your vending and your laundry, you have, the same card gets you into your room and the same card gets you your meal plan as well as you can even do Uptown Bucks.

There’s quite a bit of a mix when in comes to relationships on-campus. I have a couple of friends this year where one of their roommates like brought home someone, probably every other weekend that she had just met at some drunken party, but then there’s also people who have like actual dates, where you go to real restaurants and sit down and so I would say there is quite a bit of a mix.

I would say that you should be super careful if you’re planning on bringing a fake ID or getting one here because if you get caught uptown with a fake ID, you’re not only going to get Oxford police to get you, but you’ll get sent to Miami police who will then send it to Judicial affairs and it is a code 1 violation: dishonesty and it can get you kicked out of the University. If you really want it, you’re going to have friends who can get it for you.

33% of Miami’s campus is Greek and that is a lot compared to a lot of other schools. You can still have fun if you’re not Greek. The Greek life is definitely a big part of the party scene. All the people I went with weren’t drinking and we were just dancing and having a good time. Another thing that students forget about…it’s called After Dark and it’s every Friday, they bring in bands, they bring in stuff to do and there’s always something going on here. It’s a very small town, but there’s never a dull moment.