Marist College

Date: Sep 12 2012
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
I've gone through mood swings with Marist. When I first got here, I loved it. After a month as an undeclared major taking random classes in Freshmen housing, I hated it. Now, as a soph living with friends and having a major, I love it again. There are lots of things to love and hate about this school. Our website loves to brag about the beautiful campus, river, buildings, etc, small class sizes and guaranteed housing and quantifiable stuff that looks good on paper. And that's all true; but what you end up getting out of this school is the stuff you can't find online. How, after joining a club or a sports team, you have an instant group of close friends. How the professors are all smart and talented, but not too smart and not too focused on research, so that being a teacher of students is really their #1 priority. How the school, in the best sense of the phrase, is a social network within itself.

There's bad stuff of course; sometimes it feels like a huge high school, with cliques and gossip and rumors; also, 3:00AM fire alarms and cold shitty winters and pompous campus security and Poughkeepsie itself, which is… not a nice or safe area. And there are some things that can swing both ways; cramped freshman housing can be a ton of fun, but drives you crazy if you don't like your living mates. The football team sucks, yeah, but the b-ball, volleyball, rowing, and soccer teams make up for it. Oh, and all the frikkin longislanders (sorry L.I.)

In the end, it's the little things that make Marist great. Like how in one day, you can see a sunrise on the Hudson, have your mind blown in a philosophy class, get in a great workout, see half your friends just by walking to classes, stuff your face in the dining hall, people-watch and flirt around in the library lounge while pretending to do HW, get hammered in the dorms with the other half of your friends, and go to a bar or house and party your face off. Marist will be what you make of it, but if you open yourself to what the community offers, you're gonna have a blast.