Close to home, but far enough.

Introduction
I chose to come to Boulder because I’m from Albuquerque, NM and I wanted to stay relatively close to home, but also be far enough away where I wouldn’t go home every weekend. I immediately knew that I was going to come here. I visited the summer before my senior year and I just knew that it was the place for me. I drove over The Hill, it was just a perfect match.

I’m not very outdoorsy compared to most. Especially with the mountains so close, a lot of people will just go snowboarding all weekend. You know, not go to classes one day, just go hit up the mountain. I do that occasionally, but not as much as most people.

Campus Life and Social Life
In high school, all of my friends were guys and I figured that if I joined a sorority it’d be the perfect way to meet girls and so I didn’t just go throughout college having just guys as friends as well. And I met 100 of my closest friends doing it. The sorority house is a lot of fun because there’s always something to do. There’s always someone to hang out with. But there’s also a lot of drama. So it has its ups and downs.

Pretty much anyone can go to anything. At fraternity parties, it’s hard if you’re a guy to get in unless you know people, but girls can go to any one and same with sororities. It’s just if you know people, you can go. But no one’s going to turn you away at the door because you’re not in their house.

I just wanted to meet a lot of people so I got a brochure about Fall Rush, so I was just like, I’ll go through it. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to join. And I mean, I met some of my closest friends that actually joined my house during rush. You meet so many people and it’s fun. Advertisement
Academics
Each house will have a philanthropy; my house is Cardiac Care so we just raise money throughout the year for heart disease and there are parties, there’s sisterhood and brotherhood events.

Greek Week is where Sororities are paired with a fraternity and you do competitions all throughout the week and it’s just a Greek-wide competition, which brings Unity among all the Greeks. So there’s always something going on in the Greek system.

Most of my friends are Greek. But because now that I’m further along in the journalism school, I’ve met a lot of people that I have classes with, who aren’t necessarily Greek and I’ve become friends with them. It started off that I hung out in my sorority group all the time, but now that I have friends that I’ve had classes with more than one semester, I’ve been hanging out with them too.

Student Body
A lot of times we’ll just go up to the Hill to go get food or if we’re going to go out on a Thursday night we’ll go down to Pearl St. where all the bars are, but most of the time if we’re just going to hang out, we’ll just pick a friend’s house and all end up there. The bars are really strict. I actually had an ID, but I was always too scared to use it with the bars. And I actually have friends now who are under 21 and have gotten them taken away. I always used to go to the fraternity parties or sororities or house parties. I’m just going to wait till the bars until I’m 21.
Most of my friends are out of state, but most of the people that I have classes with are in-state. I think that in-state and out-of-state can mesh. I don’t know of any big problems that I’ve seen, but just once everyone gets here, Boulder’s like its own little bubble and once you get here, everyone’s pretty much same and it’s really easy to get along with people.

I would say that to the average person it looks like more of a drinking school because the people who are doing the drugs are hiding it. They’re very secretive about it, but yet if you go up to The Hill on a nice afternoon. If you were to go up there in a couple of hours, everyone would be at the bars drinking, with all the patios. So it’s much more drinking because once you’re 21 you don’t have to be secretive about it.

In Closing...
You can definitely wear pajamas to class. I do that probably 9/10 classes a week. Boulder is so relaxed that you can get away with wearing pajamas, you don’t have to get in your like formal gear to go to class or even to go out on a Thursday night, you can wear jeans and a T-shirt. And you won’t stick out.

The football games are amazing. They’re so much fun. The amount of spirit that the student section has for our team, even if they’re having a horrible year, is amazing. The stands are always full way before the game, people are so excited. Singing the songs and throwing marshmallows. They tried to ban the marshmallow throwing but didn’t really happen. During half-time, everyone sneaks in Marshmallows to the game and during half-time, it’s just a big marshmallow fight between the whole student section and they get really sticky and it gets really gross, but it’s so much fun. Half the marshmallows will end up on the field, and then the security has to sweep them off.

I think we have the best school mascot of anyone possible. We have a live buffalo. Ralphie is so cool. That’s actually one of my goals in college was to run with Ralphie at a football game. Ralphie runs across the field before the players do- the introduction to the players running out. So, it just gets so many fans excited to see a live Buffalo at their football game. Normally you get up, start drinking with your friends and then head over to the game. If it’s a good game, you’ll stay for the whole thing. If it’s a bad game, you probably go home and drink and then watch it on TV. Everywhere on campus, you can hear what happens at the stadium. So you can be in the dorms and hear touchdowns. Like everyone cheering or everyone booing. So you don’t even have to be in the stadium. Then after the game most people will just go get food, take a nap and then go out and celebrate the win.

It’s the middle of April and we’ve already had one snowstorm this month. Right now, it’s about 70º and you never know- it could start snowing in an hour out in Boulder. The weather is unpredictable. It’ll go from blizzard to the snow melting within a couple of hours to being really nice to snowing again. So you never know what to expect out here.

I think the student that is coming to CU from a very sheltered environment and doesn’t realize that they’re going to see new things out here and they’re going to meet new people and if they’re coming to an environment where they’ve been in this little group their entire life and they don’t know how to branch out, it’s going to be very hard for them.