Franklin and Marshall College

Date: Jun 30 2004
Major: Physics (This Major's Salary over time)
I was surprised at how different my feelings were when I answered the academic questions based on my current major, rather than my original major. Tons of students start out science-y and then switch to the letters (for their own reasons…), but my case was just the opposite. I came looking for hardcore humanities excitement but man, man, man… Much ado about nothing… All sound and fury, signifying nothing… That's what I gotta say about the letters here—stay AWAY if you value your happiness! You'll mostly find students who can't take tests nor write papers, but eventually "learn how to" through the brain-drain first year seminar they have here. Seriously.

So I switched to Physics, which I'm not particularly good at, but is a non-stop mind-opener. Honestly, you have to admit that if you could, you sure would want to learn about quantum mechanics, relativity and all that delightly wacky shit. The fact that I won't go for a career into physics… doesn't worry me right now. Hell, I sure wouldn't mind being the only physics major in Law School, laughing my drunk ass off shooting rockets at the Political Science pundits… The physics department here is pretty small, since there are no engineering students (which is good; they think they're mathematicians when all they know is how to USE math, not think in it) and most of the sciences are devoted to pre-med. But if you browse through the physics faculty, they got their PhD's at UCLA, Stanford (Go California!)… Not too shabby I think. So they're a warm and fuzzy group, albeit a bit dry and geeky in the "so then you take lambda here" lingo sort of way, and they watch out for you, since they're not overflowing with majors to start with. One or two of them are incompetent but the person I have in mind isn't staying much longer I suspect. The only problem I had with the whole deal were the labs, but that's standard practice in most places and I'm just a bit too theoretical to sit in a room punching data all day. So yeah like I said, my choice of majors heavily influenced the high (mostly B+'s, A-'s and A's) rankings I gave for academics. Even though there were some good psychology/philosophy/gov't/economics /anthropology professors (really, lots of good ones), somehow the whole "social science/humanities" experience was a real bore and I would've signed a fat lot of F's and D's for them. Maybe it's because they take the fun out of beautiful fields that should best be left, like all other things cultural, to be enjoyed freely and independently. But if so, then most other schools in the country have the same problem. Well…

Ahem. There's not much to say about the campus except that I don't think whoever designed it gained much prominence from their job or went to more lucrative works. The food's average here (meaning that the quality's okay, the non-variety isn't) and sometimes they understaff the dining hall to cut costs. I've had bad luck with the dorms (missing/broken furniture) but they're also pretty standard.

As for the people, well, uhhh, it's a pretty homogenous student body and the minorities have a tough time I reckon. If you're a suburban WASP (or a Jew who's a suburban WASP clone/wannabe) and you want to stay that way… Come on in. I've met interesting people here, but most of them are gone or chose to drink/dope themselves silly. There was one guy whom the whole campus knew and was your classic gifted underachiever, but he got busted for drug dealing and thrown out. Tsk tsk or something. There was this other foo that my friends and I cheesily dubbed "the Weis minstrel" (that's a residence hall) cuz he was always playing sweet classical guitar tunes in the echo-amplified stairwell. Nobody knows what happened to HIM. And then the cute Eurasian girl who transferred to Tufts and bla bla bla. All of my friends and I are taking our junior abroad/elsewhere and that year's probably gonna be the highlight of our college careers! That should sum up the social life here. It stinks. Dominated by varsity teams with losing records (except the basketball and lacrosse teams) and yeah… Greek stuff dominates here… So if you want to pay people your own age to boss you around… Lame alternatives are movies/DVD's (yawn) or… um… Get fat by going out to restaurants every night?

I don't know man. Like that dude in American History X said, life's too short to be pissed off all the time. That line's one of the things that keeps me bright and cheery here, cuz seriously… Kaput you know?