A professor told me during my second year, "The U of C can be a cold and impersonal place." He was right. You can go into a classroom, and although you may know the people in the room, rarely will anyone talk. Mostly people will just sit there and wait quietly for the professor to arrive. Rarely do you see people greet each other on campus, except for maybe the occasional, "Hey" or "How's it going?" but no one stops to find out, really, how you're doing. I remember my friends and I speculated that the U of C consisted of every socially awkward person in high school all congregated at one University (ha, this included us, too!). Despite what the professor said, I came out of the school with a couple of best friends that I know I will have for life.

The students are highly intelligent and oftentimes, very witty. The professors are exceptional. Because of how the students view themselves, there is an elitist quality about the school. If someone transfers, people say, "She or he couldn't cut it." The school's rival is Harvard (okay, it's a one-sided rival), because no other school nearby is good enough to be a rival. There are some terrific T-shirts that you can buy. One in particular had a child's drawing in the front, as if drawn in crayon, that read, "Any fool knows about Harvard." On the back, in calligraphy and very sophisticated-looking, it read, "But only the Intelligent know about the University of Chicago." Funny (for a U of C-er, but demonstrates the mentality). The school is also known for being a "wet noodle" when it comes to sex and parties. It was ranked, when I was there, last in a listing of the top three hundred party schools in the U.S. (which spawned a T-shirt that read, "It's better on the bottom.") Another T-shirt I remember showed a sad gargoyle on the front that read, "Sex Kills." On the back: "Experience Immortality at the University of Chicago."

The school, however, offers a terrific education. It's rigorous. Students who go to the U of C must want to learn and know how to study. Because the school runs on a quarter system (classes are 10 weeks--by the 3rd week, you're taking mid-terms), a student needs to start off on the right foot immediately, because there is hardly any time to pull up a grade. Students who need constant activities and large circles of friends, might not do well at the school. Also, if a student doesn't know how to organize his/her time or know how to prioritize, she/he will definitely suffer.

What is great about the school is that the classes are small. Also, the size of the school makes it possible for a student to start new clubs, projects, activities, etc. and get the school to fund it. A student with initiative will find it possible to create and found new things that would otherwise be difficult at other schools.

A car is also very important. Because the school is located on the South Side of Chicago, without a car, you're limited to whatever is going on on campus. The buses that take students to downtown or the North Side, end early. The el is too dangerous to take at night from the South Side. I remember, my friends and I didn't have a car, and so we spent many Friday nights saying, "So, what are we going to do?" And if there were no parties or campus activities, there wasn't much else to do.

I did have the great luck of living in a dorm that used to be a hotel. The rooms were spacious and everyone had their own private bathrooms. A friend of mine, however, lived in a dorm that had tiny rooms and when the university was first founded, it was designed to ensure that a person was cut off from other people, so that he could spend all his time studying. Overall, however, I think the dorms at the school were comfortable.

I've come to the conclusion that the U of C is a place you either love or hate. I knew people who loved the school straight from the start. I think i was one of the people who didn't like it at first, but grew to like it. I find myself getting excited whenever I see someone with a University of Chicago bumper sticker (and I wear mine proudly on my car). I remember during my college interview, the interviewer was an alum who said to me, "When I first entered the U of C, I hated it. I thought everyone was weird. By my third year, I loved it. I don't know if that was because I really loved it, or because I became weird, too."

I think I became weird, too.







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