Bard College Simon's Rock

Date: Dec 15 2001
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
No better word describes Simon's Rock than unique. For better or worse, there are few places that could possible compare. A unified and motivating curriculum, a fragmented and dreary social scene, combined with ugly buildings, funky food, and a pastoral mountain landscape make the Simon's Rock education an uncanny and unforgettable experience.

I came here, like most students, after my Sophomore year of high school. And, like most students, I never looked back. Simon's Rock diverges from the traditional high school to an extreme. It's as if the entire campus has subtly, though forcibly, written an enormous "NO" over the institutions from which we've come.

And it's easy, from an academic standpoint, to see why. The professors are unmatched in their excellence—and understatement. Most of these teachers will never penetrate the elite ranks of academia. They won't have their names sprawled widely across a morass of published works. Nor will they ever have much popularity with anyone from, say, the Heritage Foundation. And yet, these are among the most devoted, inspiring, compassionate, brilliant, and engaged individuals I've ever met. They bring to their classes equal amounts of knowledge and passion, and never fail to inspire.

Academics alone are a reason to come to Simon's Rock. Unfortunately, they are, by most standards, the only reason. The social environment, by contrast, has little to offer, save alientation, insecurity, and a heightened propensity to cigarettes, sex, and body piercings. The students are fragmented into small, insulated cliques who rarely speak with each other. Many of them abound with arrogance, insecurity, and apathy, and as a whole, lack any appreciation of the community. Cigarettes divide the community almost into two, where friendships form and fall based on who bums the most Newports. And, of course, everyone is eager to assiduously assert opinions through loud, flawed arguments that accomplish little than occupy gaps of time.

Simon's Rock will change your life. It will give you a new perspective of yourself, the world, and the people around you. You'll go through a checklist: exitential crisis, political argument, same-sex relationship (or at least exposure to them), lonliness, dyed hair, piercing(s), marijuana, good food in town, bad food in the dining hall, all nighter(s), conversations lasting hours, sex. In the end you'll become a different person, and probably a better one. A little more realistic, a little more focused, perhaps even a little more assertive. Ultimately, you'll become like the thousands of graduates who climbed the Rock before you: a leftist, life-lovin' younger scholar.