Academic Life

Incredible. My first visit to William and Mary was the Monroe scholar visitation day where I took two fake classes which were supposed to show prospectives what classes were like. One was about the Wallace and Gromit film Trousers and the other was about the environment. Neither impressed me very much, so I didn’t have great expectations for classes. To my surprise, my expectations were far exceeded, and they would have been had I had enormous expectations.

I’ve already talked about Christian Origins, in which we read nearly all of the New Testament, but instead of a burden, it was an enlightening window into the thoughts of early Christian figures. My freshman seminar, quantum world, was a great 15-person class that opened me up to crazy concepts of the universe, or even many universes. Our teacher brought us pizza and doughnuts sometimes, and it was just great to discuss physics on a conceptual basis. I didn’t expect Study of Language to be a linguistics class, but it’s been one of the most intriguing classes I’ve ever taken. I was always eager to come to class and learn about the development and intricacies of language, and even the homework, which was more like language logic puzzles, was fun.

This summer, I’m going to China on a service trip to teach migrant children English, and as a side project, I have a grant to do a linguistics study on their foreign language acquisition, which I hope to apply to help them learn more effectively.

Before I decided to come to William and Mary, I was afraid that a small school meant a dearth of opportunities, but that is just so false. I love the tight-knit community here. I love seeing ten or fifteen people I know on my way to class, and everyone here, including the professors, are so friendly and helpful! I sometimes send facebook messages to people I don’t know who are majors in departments I need help in, and they always go out of their way to help me. The professors all do research, and they are so willing to let students participate.

In deciding between Echols scholar at UVA and Monroe scholar at W&M, I thought that Echols would be cool because I wouldn’t have to do general education classes, but I’ve discovered that I love general education classes. Both my Christian Origins and linguistics classes were for general education requirements, but now I’m considering majoring in linguistics. Academics here really open up your eyes to so many possibilities!