An answer to a question for an application I just wrote

The question was, “What is your least favorite thing about Northwestern?”  It gave me a good opportunity to put some of my thoughts on paper, so here it is.

It’s a little meta, but my biggest gripe about Northwestern is how much people gripe about Northwestern.  People are, in my estimation, way too down on our fine school.  Yeah, we’re not a state school and the weather sucks.  Yes, the admin is a little uptight and the buildings are a shade old.  Okay, the girls aren’t all 11’s and the guys can be a bit awkward.  I generally say “get over it.”  We are on an enclosed campus on a beautiful lake next to a huge, diverse city receiving a world-class education.  We have a vibrant social scene held in some part together by a strong Greek community.  The farthest walk possible is 15 minutes, and that’s uphill with a foot of snow.  And yet somehow people still talk about NU as if it’s some type of leper colony full of students who missed the east-coast cut.  Why?

I honestly think that much of people’s negative attitude is a bit of a placebo - you hear that the social scene here sucks so you believe it, even if you don’t have a great yardstick to judge it by.  You hear about your friends at some state school having a million-keg block party with topless mudfights, completely forgetting that we’re still having fun here.  It’s my sincere belief that if we all had just an ounce more pride in our school, an inch more perspective, and maybe a night or two more of cutting loose instead of burying ourselves in a book that we would have a different view on what it means to go to Northwestern.  We’re here because we’re nerds.  We’re here because we love getting an A on an exam as well as getting some T&A on the weekend.  You only have 4 years, so don’t spend them wanting to be anywhere else, because you’ll spend the rest of your life wishing you were back here.  It looks, sounds, feels, and yes, smells like college, so treat it as such and just enjoy it.