Un-Saint Patricks Day, Athlete Kings

Introduction
Unlike most of the people that go to school here, I am an out of stater. I wanted a big school with big sports. It is a beautiful campus and I fell in love with it when I came here.

Where I went to high school, it was a small town and small high school. I knew I wanted a big school. I graduated with only about 120 other kids. It is definitely a big change in the size of the school.

I am in the Orange Krush which is a student run organization and it raises money for charities. As a result, the students involved get to go to the basketball games for free and sit on the floor. It is a crazy atmosphere. We have crazy chants. We’re loud. It’s great.

I wanted a Big 10 school specifically because I wanted the sports aspect of it. I thought that was the part of the college experience I really needed. As far as during March Madness, it was absolutely insane. The school pride was at an all-time high. Everyone was wearing orange. Everywhere you looked, there was orange. The sports make school a lot more fun. You have something to look forward to on the weekends. It gives you a sense of school pride and gives you a chance to show off your school.

Campus Life and Social Life
The athletes are treated like kings. Whenever they go to the bars, they are swamped. They are asked for pictures and autographs. Everyone just loves them. As far as in classes, they are pretty quiet. They show up to class everyday, believe it or not. The teachers give them a little bit of leniency but they treat them pretty much like everyone else. They will congratulate them on a game or something the next day.
Honestly, you get as much attention as you want or as little as you want. It’s all up to the student. You can go to office hours and get to know your teacher on a more personal basis. You can ask them for help or have them look over your work. If you are just another face in the crowd and you just show up to class and don’t really say a word then the teachers won’t really be able to develop a relationship with you. I would say that it is up to the student more than anything. It is up to them to get to know their teachers and decide if they want to develop a relationship with them. Academics
My Major is considered one of the easier majors on campus. The workload isn’t too bad. It is definitely doable. The class sizes are pretty small within my major. That is a definitely an advantage. I love it. You can have class sizes ranging from 10 people. The 100 level classes are bigger. But as you go up in the course levels, the class size decreases. I am also a minor in philosophy. The course load there is a lot different. The coursework is more intense. The class size there is also pretty small.

Student Body
I was in a private dorm. It was definitely a different experience than I would have had at a public dorm. I actually wish I had gone to a public dorm instead. Coming from out of state, a lot of people in my dorm knew each other ahead of time. The set up was different. There were four people to a room with a common area and bathroom. You had your own kitchen. It wasn’t the freshman year experience I would have imagined. Whereas, in the public dorms, there is a small room, you don’t have your own bathroom or kitchen. In my dorm, people kept to themselves a lot and stayed with the people they already knew from high school. It was really nice. But if I had to do it all over again, I would have gone to the public dorms

In Closing...
The school definitely has a great social life to it. I would say there is probably more drinking than drugs. There are a lot of bars on campus. To get into the bars you only have to be 19. That doesn’t really stop people from drinking even though you have to be 21. Any night you go out, even Sundays and Mondays, people are always out. Before football games and other events, a lot of the bars open at 8 am. Some people need to do it because our football team has been so bad lately. You get a nice buzz before the games. Then there are other days we have at school that are just devoted to drinking. We have Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day here. You just walk down the streets and everyone is wearing green and is drunk by 10 am. It’s the most fun day on campus by far.