Feeling unsure about my decision to attend Reed.

<p>So I am an international student currently enrolled at Reed College (class of 2018) and I am feeling pretty uneasy--bad-- about my decision. This is partly because I am getting nervous about the infamous workload at Reed but more significantly because I feel that I will miss out on certain things. When my friends post pictures of Trinity (CT), Union, Hamilton, Brown, Yale, Franklin & Marshall and the sorts, I see the typical, romantic college experience that I will miss out on. I enrolled at Reed for the most part because it offered the best financial aid, and because I thought was a pretty good fit and because of the <em>positive</em> things I heard about the workload (the campus looks pretty-ish too). My top choice schools were Vassar, Carleton, and Kenyon, and I was admitted to none of them. It was pretty sad because all three were beautiful schools that I thought would afford me the "romantic" experience that I'd wanted.</p>

<p>Is it normal for me to feel this way? For the record, I was admitted to about four schools in the northeast and the midwest that promised the kind of experience I wanted. But it just seemed silly to pay $7-$10k/year more for any of those schools (one of them was Swarthmore, but Swat fin aid was pretty ungenerous and unwilling to match Reed's offer) when I had an offer from Reed. But in retrospect I'm wondering if I chose a school that isn't really the best fit for me. Maybe I should have chosen an easier school (not Swarthmore, of course) so that I could have <em>savored</em> the college experience? Maybe I should have chosen a school that offered better balance of work and play? Maybe the extra $$ would have been worth it?</p>

<p>Is college really what you make of it? I just don't know if there is room to have a "romantic" experience at Reed with all that work...</p>

<p>My experience is that nearly every school complains that the work load is hard - it should be! Reed is a great school and has lots of charm on it’s own. I know there are some big Reed fans on this site and hopefully they’ll chime in. Stop obsessing - you made the choice for the right reasons and you’re probably going to love it at Reed if you go in with the right mindset. </p>

<p>You were accepted to Swarthmore but rejected from Kenyon?</p>

<p>Don’t be surprised. Competition for international student aid is extremely strong everywhere. I was really bummed by the rejection from Kenyon, though. I applied ED 1, was deferred and then denied.</p>

<p>I just don’t know what to expect from Reed. There is such a romantic charm at Kenyon – something that would inspire great artists and writers, I imagine. I could feel the energy of Vassar’s campus and its students. At Reed, I don’t know… I just feel that it’s really intense and there is little energy left to devote to ECs and the sort. I just feel as though Reedies talk a lot but don’t take their voices to the streets and stuff…</p>

<p>However, I’m probably more of the academic sort than I care to admit. Not very artsy even though I want to be, not very activist even though I want to be… I wanted a school that could help me become an artsy activist. A school that would inspire me. Although I’ve already made my peace with the rejections, I just don’t know what to expect from Reed. I just want a memorable college experience. Reedies, esp those in junior and senior years, didn’t exactly wax rhapsodic about their school, which was discouraging. Graduates say you learn to appreciate it after leaving Reed, but I want to appreciate Reed while I am at Reed. It would be sad to reach the top of a mountain and be so caught up by the exhaustion that you don’t take a moment to breathe and observe where you are. To descend and then appreciate the top … now that’s just sad.</p>

<p>You have articulated several different concerns here, of which some are valid, some are not, and some are outright bizarre to me.</p>

<p>I don’t know what you mean by ‘romantic,’ but the college experiences offered by Reed, Kenyon, Carleton, Vassar, Hamilton, etc., albeit variable, are all equidistant from the American ideal. What I’m saying is that these are all small liberal arts colleges and on a fundamental level they feel the same; you feel like you know everyone in your class, the campus is beautiful and green, you live in a social bubble circumscribed by the boundaries of the college.</p>

<p>Secondly, the workload is not going to kill you, so please chill out. Reed is hard, but it’s not as hard as people make it out to be. If it were, no one would graduate. Don’t let people’s dramatic descriptions of what is essentially a very mundane routine–go to class, study, hang out with friends, eat, sleep–fool you into thinking Reed is a place where only a select few can survive.</p>

<p>Thirdly, people do love Reed. “Love Reed,” and all that. There is, however, a culture of competitive whining and self-absorbed identity politicking entrenched in the place that can get quite negative at times. Most international students manage to avoid it. As a rising senior and a fellow international, I can say I’m as happy with Reed now as I was during my freshman orientation, and my only regrets about my college years have to do with my failure to take full advantage of the opportunities presented to me.</p>

<p>Students are less involved in extracurricular activities than they would be at F&M, Union, Hamilton or Trinity. Most Reedies would contend that at many other schools the academic workload is lighter because education is seen as more than just studying, and students have more free time to engage in alternative forms of learning. At Reed, on the other hand, people are perfectly happy to read more or less all the time. This is a valid comment on Reed’s student culture, in my opinion. However, it’s not universally applicable. I know many people at Reed who manage to make time for a number of activities that have nothing to do with their studies, and to excel in them. I’d say a more pertinent distinction between Reed and those other schools is that Reedies are more likely to pursue personal hobbies and interests individually, rather than in groups. Which should not in any way preclude you from working on your writing/art/music.</p>

<p>Students do talk a lot about politics without doing much at all, especially when it comes to political activism that goes beyond Reed. After spending a year at an English university, however, I’d say that sort of inertia is endemic to American student culture as a whole. I highly doubt Kenyon would be more politically active than Reed, though given its student body’s relatively moderate political profile you’d probably encounter more political heterodoxy there.</p>

<p>There are plenty of opportunities to be artsy at Reed.</p>

<hr>

<p>My overall impression from your posts is that you did not have your heart set on Reed and are now looking for reasons to be unhappy with it, while idealizing the schools that rejected you or did not offer you good aid. No offence, but that’s the wrong attitude. Of course Reed has its flaws (though I’m not sure all the things you believe about it are true). However, so does every other school you’ve mentioned here. Some of the issues you’ve identified with Reed are actually more prominent at other schools you applied to.</p>

<p>I realize summer is a long season, especially the summer between high school and university, and you probably have little to do apart from obsessing over what lies ahead, but please try not to spend the next two months speculating about Reed’s ‘romanticism’ relative to other schools in the States or whatever. You’ll see when you get here. (‘Here’ figuratively speaking, since I’m not in Portland either.) Personally, I think you’ll like Reed more than you think, purely because I think a lot of your concerns are completely off-base, but even if you don’t and it really isn’t the place for you, you can’t know that at the moment. Give it a chance.</p>

<p>For what it’s worth, I’d never pick Union, Franklin & Marshall, Kenyon, Trinity or Carleton over Reed. They’re all fine schools, but I simply can’t picture myself there. I think, and most Reedies, no matter how disillusioned with the place, will back me up on this, that the quality of education Reed offers is among the best in the States. It’s made me into a better thinker and a better person, and I can’t imagine swapping that for the chance to be in a frat, Model UN or whatever other ‘traditional’ college activity you feel you’ve missed out on.</p>

<p>Again, that’s just me. It’s true that Reed is not for everyone. I just don’t know whether it’s as idiosyncratic as you fear it is.</p>

<p>What I meant by romantic was that every once in a while, I want to just go and sit in the lawn and read a book and just absorb the nature. Magical. I know it doesn’t really make sense, but that’s what I want. Just to look around after finishing a book and thinking, “wow, let’s just take a moment to allow all of what is around me to sink in. Maybe I should write a poem about it.” There was a movie about Kenyon that I saw some time ago. I forgot what its name was, but I was just totally wowed by the college culture that it portrayed (connecting the beauty of music to the intellect, reading lots and lots and lots, living in a world removed from the “real world” etc). It’s just that when it comes to Reed, I’ve heard the campus may smell like <em>smoke</em> because lots of people smoke and I wonder if that, and the proximity to the city, could potentially detract from the “romanticism” at Reed.</p>

<p>You’re right, Reed wasn’t my top choice. But it was certainly in my top 5. The only school that I had no concerns about was Vassar, and I very much understand that there is no school that is perfect. I am not trying to find reasons to be unhappy with Reed. I am just wondering if it was the right choice… I made a decision using my head (financial aid, weather etc), not my gut (no school I was admitted to was particularly attractive. Grinnell seemed flat, Swarthmore seemed tame, Bates just didn’t do anything for me, etc etc), and I’m just trying to see if I can find some of the things that I identified in Kenyon and Vassar at Reed.</p>

<p>I have, as you may have inferred from my posts, no interest in frats. But it would be nice to get involved in campus, beyond the on-campus job. I just hope there are people interested in that sort of stuff.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, Reed has a beautiful front lawn and a nature preserve that people go to and read books. They don’t smell of smoke, though the more secluded parts of the Reed Canyon may sometimes smell of weed. Honestly, I think the fear that Reed doesn’t have trees under which you can sit and read and listen to the sounds of nature is completely misplaced and the weirdest worry I’ve heard from an incoming student, maybe ever. Have you checked out Reed’s Facebook and Instagram pages? They’re full of pictures of the cherry trees in Eliot Circle, the front lawn, the library across the front lawn, the canyon, etc. That’s one of Reed’s major selling points.</p>

<p>It is definitely possible to get involved in stuff other than homework and your job.</p>

<p>I’ve seen that movie (Liberal Arts), and I understand why you were attracted to Kenyon. Kenyon was one of my top choices too, but the only reason I applied ED 2 there was because Reed does not allow internationals to apply ED 2. As important as the beauty and the ‘romantic’ bits of a college may seem to you right now, this will fade with time. You will realize how much better Reed is, dare I compare schools, than schools like Kenyon in many respects. Kenyon, for instance, is really poor. Reed, on the other hand, has a healthy endowment. How can this make an impact on your life? An example: Reed has summer funding specifically for internationals! (there are other funding programs too). It would probably be much harder to get funding to do cool stuff during the summer at Kenyon – you would probably end up working a campus job and staying in campus with the “romantic” bits. ALL ALONE!</p>

<p>What’s done is done. You’ve chosen Reed, for the right reasons (none of those schools are worth ~$30k more than Reed), and you should get excited for the fall. I feel a bit uneasy about the work load every once in a while too, but that’s okay. Every good college is hard, and Grinnell, Swarthmore, Bates, all of which with I have second hand experience, are as hard as Reed. </p>

<p>Comrade99,
First, I love Kenyon. My dad went there, I live less than an hour away, and I manage to get on campus at least once or twice a year. I love Kenyon and its little village of Gambier. However, those students are very much nerds in their own way. They work hard, and I seriously doubt that they absorb nature any more than do Reedies (especially in winter). Being truly artsy is hard work, and faking artsiness is a waste of time.</p>

<p>Second, every school that you have listed has much worse winter weather than Portland, Oregon where Reed is located. It is really, really hard to “go and sit in the lawn and read a book and just absorb the nature…” at any of them, but especially at Kenyon where January and February are totally devoted to sub-freezing temperatures and snow. Plus, no college really allows sufficient time to let things sink in. If you were at a school which allowed that sort of pace, it would not demand anything from you and your education would be nearly wretched.</p>

<p>Much as I love Kenyon, if I had to choose between it and Reed, I almost certainly would choose Reed.</p>

<p>Come January, when you are walking across the Reed campus in a lightweight jacket, just remember that Kenyon students are trying to figure out how to avoid going outside.</p>

<p>I love the posts from Ghostt and NROTCgrad. Kiddo, they are giving you very, very good advice. I am willing to bet that it will not take a month for you to be totally in love with Reed and wondering why you could have ever questioned your decision (assuming you’re not so busy that you won’t even remember this post). Portland is a beautiful town, and Reed is as romantic/charming a campus as you will find. </p>

<p>OP: I was going through videos of Reed (of which there are surprisingly few), and stumbled upon this - <a href=“Reed College B-Roll Sizzle Reel on Vimeo”>http://vimeo.com/68662899&lt;/a&gt; If this isn’t romantic, I don’t know what is.</p>

<p>I also think that Reed’s romanticism is in its history (check out the centennial archives if you haven’t) and its commitment to the “life of the mind” and intellectual inquiry.</p>

<p>Seriously, I have never before seen a video where physics seemed romantic. Physics was BRUTAL for me in high school – and yet, I can appreciate why people love it.</p>

<p>@Comrade99: You will have plenty of opportunities to read a book while you are at Reed (many, many books), and there’s nothing stopping you from doing that outside. The campus is quite lovely with old buildings that have hidden nooks and crannies, and beautiful grounds with mature trees and a lakey-river running through it. Reed has a lot of history, traditions, and lore, which could be an interesting summer research project that might refocus your anxiety. <a href=“http://comradesofthequest.org”>http://comradesofthequest.org</a> <a href=“http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/reedhisttxt/”>http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/reedhisttxt/&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>There are opportunities to make art, to write, to exercise your creative gifts (with fellow students or by yourself), but it’s ultimately up to you to pursue those. Reedies DEFINITELY have a variety of outside interests, and it’s always interesting to find out what they are. What might prevent you from discovering the ‘romantic side’ of Reed and having a fulfilling college experience is getting a bad attitude about it, suffering from grass-is-greener syndrome, and never really giving Reed a fair chance. It sounds like you made the best decision you could with the options you had, so no use playing shoulda-coulda-woulda. Dive in headfirst and make the most of it. </p>

<p>In my experience, Reed definitely challenged me in numerous ways that made me a better person. And I don’t know many people who would say a Reed education wasn’t memorable! But a lot of what you’re seeking is under your control-- it is what you make of it and how you choose to engage. </p>

<p>If you’re worried about finding balance between work and play, check out some of Cal Newton’s books on college and pay attention to his time management strategies. Commit to at least one extracurricular activity early on and learn how to juggle your schoolwork around it, rather than waiting for when you “have enough time” (no one ever has enough time-- they just need to prioritize what it is important and figure out how to make that work for them). Seek out other students that share your interests, take advantage of the wealth of opportunities this school offers, and create your own opportunities if they don’t already exist. There are a lot of resources available to you-- professors, staff, academic support services, career services, student activities office, advisors, RAs, peer mentorship, etc-- that would be more than willing to help you identify and achieve your goals.</p>