Hampshire College

Date: Jan 24 2003
Major: Unknown (This Major's Salary over time)
Whoopsie,

After I posted my nice n' longwinded response below, I realized how crass some of that shit sounds (re my experience in high school).

The point I was trying to make (probably more easily made if I hadn't pulled an all-nighter recently-sorry for such goofiness), was that throughout high school it was a given—a belief shared by kids who had worked much, much harder at school and who had better grades than me—that college is a time when you buckle down and start reading and working like never before. Yet surprise, surprise, while I was a work-shirking, difficult asshole in high school, I seemed to be in the minority by actually turning work in on time at Hampshire, a regular paragon of virtue!

The last two weeks of school, most of the students were furiously trying to write all the work they'd procrastinated from doing. The worst part was listening to someone complain,

My professor is giving me an incomplete because I didn't turn all my papers before the end of the semester, but I'll get an eval once I turn them in,

and learning that they were even further behind in another class and waiting until after winter break or the summer to finish that class!

Only at Hampshire would it be out of the ordinary for someone to graduate in a straight four years. Of the 11 people in my orientation group, only two of us finished in four years, and only two others returned to Hampshire after time off. That was fairly typical.

I still think Hampshire is a great place for some students, but the level of cynicalism and anger a lot of the alumns I knew held (and hold) for the place was (and is) simply, staggering.