The
social life here leaves muuuuch to be desired. If
you're not into the Greek system, this is NOT the
school for you. Almost everyone I meet is part
of a sorority or a fraternity, both social and service.
People say there's a difference between the two but
they're all still exclusive and create loyalties to only those
in the organization - not in one? You might be
treated like a second-string friend by someone that is.
To compensate, all the people here who don't go Greek
are forced to join something else. These clubs are also
kind of exclusive, or at least in my experience.
My advice if you decide to come to SU is
to definitely join a club or two pretty soon; don't
wait. It will be veeery difficult to make friends
otherwise. As far as diversity goes, I'd say
we're about as diverse as any northeastern rural school gets,
but it's really really segregated. I see very little
mixing going on between races, and I heard somewhere we
were 8th to last on a list of schools for
how much races mix. It sickens me. I
don't come from the biggest town and the kids in
my high school mixed more. It's to a point
where it makes me uncomfortable.
People here have a
lot of money, and they (mostly the girls) make sure
you know it. Uggs are literally on every pair
of feet, even when it's 75 degrees outside. These
people have never held a summer job, never wanted anything
their daddy couldn't pay for, and don't understand when this
isn't the case for someone else. Maybe I'm just
not used to being surrounded by people with money because
I went to a public high school, but it just
bothers me sometimes.
Aaaand there's the weather. Gray most
of the time. Snow on the ground for the
last few weeks of fall semester, right up until about
April and a horrible windchill that made it feel like
20 below. I needed long underwear to get to
class. I did get used to it though, and
though it's the main reason I considered not coming here,
it bothered me a lot less later on. You
just get used to it; if you're having a good
time otherwise it's not really an issue.
Sports are huge
here, but a lot of fun. I had zero
interest in sports before coming and I ended up at
all but 2 basketball games. Definitely one positive aspect
to the school, but if you're not into sports you
won't have much else to do during game time.
Academics
I typically had no problem with. It's like at
any other school; if you want help you're going to
have to take the initiative to speak to the professor.
Most of them were pretty helpful, or at least
tried to be, and they all made themselves really available.
I had some good TA's too, don't knock them-
they might help you with recommendations in the future.
Watch where they place you freshman year, if you think
a class they put you in is too easy/too hard
tell your advisor.
Oh, and one more tip.
If you decide to come, do NOT join the
honors program, and if you do, get out early before
they make you write a thesis on something entirely unrelated
to your major. Their advisors are TERRIBLE and they're
all freaks who sit around and eat popcorn to forget
about the fact that they went nowhere in life and
now advise undeclared students. You'll never know the class
requirements because they don't either.
Wow, that was a lot
more long-winded than I intended. Bottom line, I made
a couple of good friends my first year, but if
I could do it over I would and I'm still
considering a transfer during my sophomore year. As negative as
that all sounded I hope it helped, at least with
the social life aspect.
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