Bard College

Date: Jan 21 2004
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
There are some people that do not belong at Bard (I know a handful of students that would like to transfer to such schools like UC San Diego or a university in Chicago). For those that do belong at Bard, they are the ones that want to learn their own thing and are naturally curious and self-motivated. As a student body, they incidently conform to inconformity, trying to be different from everyone but end up like everyone else. Thus they are creative in the arts, but end up too avant-garde and then just ridiculous. Work, sports, and student-consideration are rejected, and parties, stupidity, and creativity is always accepted. And you would think that for a school with just a thousand students that other students would be considerate enough not to steal your bike or your laptop or your iPod. So if you lose something, it's lost.

Resident Life is not too good with dealing with students. For me, I was told that I was going to be in a triple with two other guys. I arrived at Bard to find out that I was in a room with a guy that doesn't talk to me (hasn't talked to me since the beginning of the school year), after establishing my relationships with the two roommates I thought I was going to room with. There has been a lot of room changes since I arrived at Bard also, either because of roommate disagreements or dorm conditions, i.e. non-smoking student in a smoking dorm, which only implies that Res-Life does a poor job of matching roommates together. As for the faculty, they encourage learning and understand if you cannot turn in a paper in time, and such things like that.

So Bard is a place to learn what you want to learn, it's hard to fit in if you're the wrong person, and there's no incentive to do well because you're allowed to slack-off and it is encouraged to slack-off, unless you're trying to get into a very popular creative writing class or trying to avoid academic probation.

Another note: If you like the cold weather, like I do, the autumns and winters are very nice. It snows a lot and the campus becomes very beautiful.