The Vandy Bubble

Introduction
It’s amazing living in the city because every band that ever comes here and we have a ticket master office right in Sarat so its really easy to get tickets on your Vandy card and that kind of thing, which is really nice and right here we have rights of Spring which is any old festival they hold the weekend before reading week, right before finals start and its 3 days of bands and food and just fun and all the undergraduates come out and its just kind of like a last Hurrah before finals and its really cool because everyone is out here and they get some really great bands to come out.

Campus Life and Social Life
Oh I love it. It’s right in the center of Nashville. It’s in the middle of a huge city but it’s kind of like a bubble. People joke about it, calling it the Vandy Bubble, but it really is – its this beautiful campus right smack in the middle of a city, you kind of forget that you're in this huge metropolis when you're on this campus but there are so many resources that are just 5 minutes away for you and there’s downtown, and its lots of fun and there’s so much history here – there’s just so much to do outside of campus. It’s pretty neat. It’s pretty neat to live in a city like this. When I was a freshman I lived in Barnard Hall. It’s a coed dorm, coed by floor, its half singles, half doubles, communal bathrooms at the end of each hall. I loved it. I had a double and I didn’t know my roommate coming in and it was one of the best experiences. I kind of want to go back there because I loved it so much – you really become kind of a family with the people that live on your hall. Dorm life is very unique and its something that I’ve grown to love. At first it was kind of hard – you know, you’re used to a big house and your own room and your own bathroom and that kind of thing. Living in a small space with someone else you know you really get close to them and you get close to the girls in your hall. There are a lot of dining options on campus – there’s tons and its an ever-expanding type thing. I feel like Vanderbilt’s always looking for new ways to Jazz up the food or give us more variety, that kind of thing. We have lunch on the lawn here and they do like, its called Taste of Nashville or something and they bring in area restaurants just to kind of get you a break from Rand, the cafeteria-style food, but there’s definitely a lot of variety. Advertisement
Academics
There’s the college of arts and sciences which I’m in, which is the biggest one and then its kind of for if you don’t really know what you want to do or that kind of thing, everyone just kind of goes to arts and sciences. There’s engineering school, there’s Blair, the Music School, its really small. And Peabody, which is the education. Everyone always says you know engineering is so rigorous and that kind of thing but I kind of figured that if someone wants to do engineering then they probably enjoy what they’re doing. That’s how I am with what I’ve chosen to do.

Student Body
I definitely don’t think you have to be involved in Greek life to be involved on campus at Vanderbilt. I think that all the parties are open and then that kind of thing so anybody can come and then my group of really good friends, some of us are Greek and some of us are not and it doesn’t really make any kind of difference. For me it just gave me a huge group of girls that otherwise I never would have met. And so it was a way for me to make friendships that I never would have and be involved in more philanthropy opportunities – that kind of thing.

In Closing...
I personally think it’s really safe. I’ve never had any problems – I haven’t known anybody to have any problems but I mean, I’m not naive enough to think that they don’t happen. We do live in a big city but they’re the Blue Light emergency phones all around and the dorms are really secure – you have to have a card to get into them and a key to get into your room and there’s RA’s around all the time. I feel perfectly comfortable walking around this campus at nighttime. That’s just me though – other people may not. We also have Vandy Vans and they drive around campus, starting at like 5 o’clock until some odd hour of the evening and you can get rides from different points on campus so you don’t have to walk long distances in the dark. I use that a lot because I live on Peabody coming over to main campus. It’s really helpful.