Bryn Mawr College

Date: Dec 14 2008
Major: Language - French/Spanish/etc. (This Major's Salary over time)
I was always a good in h.s. with very little effort, with a B to B+ GPA. I was shocked that I got into BMC. When I got there I was dumbfounded at the amount of work it took just to stay afloat—it was a total paradigm shift in how to work and what to study. I worked SO hard and learned how to be uncompromising with myself—I had high standards already but had to push them to be sky-high. Ultimately it was very good for me because it trained me to have high standards for everything related to what I did, and that led to great career success and a reputation for uncompromising excellence. It also led to me overthinking things a lot. It wasn't until I was out for about 10 years that I realized I could relax the standards, not work so hard and still be WAY better than everyone around me. It took me too long to learn that and I wasted a lot of time acting as if I was still being graded.

Everyone's BMC experience is different, depending on their major, when they went there and what kind of background they have. I think that as students approach their senior year at BMC they should start to break away from the insular environment, do more in the community or in Philadelphia and in general coast back down to earth. I loved BMC but students should realize that it is not the real world. It is much, much harder than the real world and people at BMC are much more tolerant of quirkiness than they are in the real world. At BMC you are both coddled and slave-driven at the same time—coddled socially and slave-driven academically. The sooner students learn that and arrange their lives to adjust the balance to something more healthy, the better off they will be in the long run.

High school students should understand what they are getting themselves into. BMC is the ideal place to express yourself, especially if you felt out of the mainstream in high school, because nobody will judge you. Be as brilliant as you want to be. They will welcome eccentricity—wear those capes, play the strange music (the more obscure, the better), read poetry out loud at midnight. But know that there are few men around outside of your profs and unless you work at it, little opportunity to meet men. There were plenty of men in the heyday of bi-college cooperation with Haverford, back in my day (the early '80s were the height). Since Haverford went co-ed BMC is academically and socially isolated. Know this, love this, and you will do just fine there.