Reply to Is Williams College an Intense Place

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Is Williams College an Intense Place"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]
[quote]The combination of academic rigor and pressure to succeed in first-year fall often forces students to narrow their sights and forgo the work required to establish meaningful relationships. I felt this intensely during my first year. [b]When I arrived wide-eyed on the steps of Sage Hall in the fall of 2019, I was entirely unprepared for what was to come over the next few months. As a low-income student from a high school that had never sent a student to a NESCAC or Ivy League institution, I had no conception of what Williams would entail or the opportunities it could provide me. [/b]I knew the College was intense, but I had no way of fully grasping the difference in academic intensity or the challenge of social adaptation in an environment so fundamentally different from the southern, Evangelical culture of my hometown.

During the fall of my first year, I often felt insecure, both socially and academically. Lacking any substantive community, I latched onto the only thing comparable between myself and my peers: a GPA and transcript. These became proxies for my personal value, worthiness, and eventual job prospects. The hope of securing a job warped my internal calculus around what courses were worth taking and how much time I could devote to activities outside of the classroom. It felt irresponsible to explore a course that satisfied an academic interest but hindered my ability to secure a job. Joining my entry for snacks, team for game days, or WOOLF group for a weekend outing did not seem justified given the stakes. Any free time felt like it should be dedicated to studying in a last-ditch effort to diminish an 18-year academic deficit. After all, was taking an interesting course outside of my comfort zone or building a snowman in Frosh Quad worth the risk of jeopardizing my opportunity for socioeconomic mobility? ...

The struggle of the first year is no secret to the College. The College attempts to address the inherent difficulty of this experience through an extensive First Days program and expansive entry system. But both First Days and entries act more as treatment than cure for the pressures induced by life at the College. While providing resources and attempting to cultivate inorganic communities is a noble start, both are insufficient for treating the root cause: overwhelming academic stress at the expense of holistic self-cultivation. The College must broaden its horizons and consider curricular solutions that enable students to invest the requisite time and energy into establishing themselves on-campus. One such solution is universal Pass/Fail in the fall of students’ first year.[/quote]

Unfortunately, because of their academic background this student would have been overwhelmed and underprepared at many schools. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics