Tips for Incoming Freshmen?

[dchow08]

<p>Do any of you guys who are at Swarthmore or who have already graduated from Swarthmore want to share some tips, or other information, that entering freshmen might find useful? I know there's a thread on this in the College Life section, but any advice pertaining specifically to Swarthmore?</p>

<p>A side note: I was at the bookstore yesterday and I looked through a guidebook that was sort of harsh on Swarthmore. It said that there are so many liberals there that people don't get a broad perspective. Furthermore, the English department picks out a lot of works with a leftist leaning and perspective, making it worse. Any thoughts on that?</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>You obviously read The Right Guide to Colleges. It’s published by an ultra right wing organization called ISI, which also sponsors right wing student groups. They’ve had burr under their saddle for Swarthmore for years because the head of the Swarthmore conservative students group they sponsored told them to jump in a lake for their ham-fisted methods.</p>

<p>These are the same idiots that put one of Tim Burke’s courses on the “worst courses in the world” because the title of the course was “The Whole Enchilada”. They didn’t even bother to read the syllabus and see it probably had the heaviest workload of any course at Swarthmore and was a great course dealing with the history of comprehensive world history books over the centuries, (i.e. the most famous books since the invention of the printing press that attempt to cover “The Whole Enchilada”).</p>

<p>ISI believes that unless a course is exactly the same as it was taught in the 1950s, it shouldn’t be offered and that any course on Africa, South America, or Asia is automatically suspect. Honestly, these people should stick to Dartmouth and Hillsdale where they belong.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>As for three tips:</p>

<p>Learn about the entire range of student support services at Swarthmore and use them as a matter of routine (Writing Associates, study groups, Professor office hours, etc.) or as appropriate (RAs, Deans, CAPS, etc.)</p>

<p>Go to class. And, think about a question or comment from the reading in advance so that it becomes routine to contribute to the discussion at least once per class.</p>

<p>Make yourself get off campus - into Philly or somewhere - for an evening or afternoon or weekend away at least once a month. College students need to breath real-world air every so often.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>On Choosing the Right College:</p>

<p>Here’s a sample, illustrating their dislike for the fact that Swarthmore offers so many courses on China and has the ultra-liberal nerve to actually count them:</p>

<p>

In history, a first-year seminar titled “Women, Family, and the State in China” would do the trick. So would “The Formation of the Islamic Near East.” There are more traditional options, too, including courses on medieval and modern Europe and—why not?—the history of the good ol’ U.S. of A. In the humanities division, “Substance, Shadow, and Spirit in Chinese Literature and Culture” would meet the primary distribution course requirement (one can learn a lot about China—or at least about what American academics think about China—at Swarthmore).

</p>

<p>The continue on to skewer Swarthmore for not guaranteeing single-sex housing for all four years, when it fact Swarthmore is unusual (by elite LAC standards) in even offering single sex housing for all four years and even more unusual in having only single-sex bathrooms in the vast majority of dorms, including virtually all first-year dorms.</p>

<p>When they quote a student, it is a student who attends one of ISI’s right wing college student conventions:</p>

<p>[Collegiate</a> Network](<a href=“http://www.isi.org/cn/]Collegiate”>Home - Intercollegiate Studies Institute)</p>

<p>Here is the editorial published by Hillary Thompson ('99) when she resigned as the editor of the Swarthmore conservative newspaper Common Sense, funded by ISI:</p>

<p>

I always knew I was more moderate than my ISI benefactors. At first, I was prepared to deal with that. I tried to leave certain issues off the table during my conversations with their staff. I did this not because they would have stopped funding me but because the tactics they supported often angered and offended me. An ISI-supported conservative campus newspaper at another college, in response to the gay and lesbian group’s “wear-jeans-if-you-support-homosexual-rights day,” posted signs announcing “wear-shoes-if-you-support-the-agenda-of-the-Ku-Klux-Klan day.” Their goal was to show the absurdity of linking a common item of clothing to a political position–but their response implicitly associated them with the KKK. To make matters worse, a division of ISI sent Common Sense several editorial cartoons to run in the paper. One of them was a split box with the KKK on one side and an abortion doctor on the other with a caption reading: “Which one kills more blacks?”</p>

<p>After a while, I didn’t blame liberal students for hating conservatives. I hated them myself. I had hoped that I could take ISI’s money and perks and ignore their tactics. I rationalized that Swarthmore students would listen to me, one of their own, with consideration and seriousness, even if they could not accord the same respect to people from certain outside organizations. I wanted to have it both ways: to be a rational, thinking conservative and still have access to ISI’s resources. However, by my senior year, I realized that I could no longer associate myself with a group whose tactics were keeping me from achieving my own goals and, on a more fundamental level, were counter to the community values of respectful dialogue. I still believe that the conservative viewpoint is valid and that it should be expressed on this campus, but by working with the ISI to promote conservative views, I sold out my own principles.</p>

<p>It’s not easy being a conservative activist at Swarthmore. I have faced many hostile liberals, and I understand why a few other conservative students continue to accept the support of ISI, but I think there is a better way. For my views to really be a part of campus dialogue, I have to be a member of the community, not attack it from the outside. This has meant building relationships and trust with liberal students–even though this trust is initially frightening. Because I do this, I think I have been able to offer crucial balance to both academic and community discussions.</p>

<p>Going it almost alone has taken some personal strength, but good rebels have always needed strength to buck the status quo. What I don’t need is the support of conservative crusaders who want to change Swarthmore for their own purposes–purposes that are not what this college is about, or what I want to be about.

</p>

<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/archive/99/june99/collection.html]Collection[/url”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/archive/99/june99/collection.html]Collection[/url</a>]</p>

[dchow08]

<p>I get what you’re saying. I wonder why that professor wanted all her assigned readings to have a liberal slant.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>Probably for the same reason that Professor James Kurth, who routine writes for conservative magazines on foreign policy and military affairs picks his readings. He thinks they are the best readings to provoke thoughtful learning and discourse.</p>

<p>Remember the prism here. ISI believes that courses on China and Islam are **bad **because they aren’t courses on *European History *and Western Civilization.</p>

<p>Are there some nutty professors at Swarthmore? Sure. There are at all colleges. Students know who they are.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>BTW, what exactly is a “liberal slant” in college readings?</p>

[dchow08]

<p>I guess it would be having a bunch of readings by liberal authors–reading stuff all by liberals and not getting enough of a conservative viewpoint.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>OK, here ya go. The syllabus for as hotly political a course as you could ever get: religious ethics as applied to every current hot button political issue.</p>

<p>Take a look at the readings and decide for yourself. I sent this syllabus to a buddy of mine who publishes right-wing books (and a big fan of Hillsdale College). He pronounced it “fair and balanced”. By the time any student finishes this course, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” will be nothing but superficial buzzwords. Every one of these issues is far more complex and nuanced.</p>

<p>Enjoy:</p>

<hr>

<p>**Religious Ethics in the Modern World: **
Love, Law, and Justice</p>

<p>Religion 55
Spring Semester 2007
Trotter Room 301 11:30-12:20
Instructor: Elliot Ratzman</p>

<p>Office Hours: Wednesdays 2-4pm Pearson 205 and always by appointment.<br>
Contact me at my cel phone: 609-240-6699</p>

<p>The Purpose of this Course:
This course will introduce you to a limited number of debates within contemporary Christian (and Jewish) ethics. It is my hope that you will leave the course with a sense of the rich intellectual tradition of Christian and Jewish moral reasoning and a sense of how it has (or does) translate into political action. </p>

<p>Goals:
By the end of this course, you should be conversant in the major themes, figures, and language of contemporary Christian (and some Jewish) ethics. You should be able to rehearse some major arguments and identify the positions of the major players. You should also be able to write a good letter to the editor, and an insightful op-ed piece.</p>

<p>Ideology:
Religious commitment is not a prerequisite for this course, and is not required to succeed. We will be listening in on debates within contemporary religious ethics. The field is huge, so I have narrowed it down to a taste of mostly American and Christian positions. I have chosen materials that are interesting and off-beat. With such a short semester, I couldn’t fit everything in. If there is an issue you want to learn about I will help provide materials, even lead an extra session. My position on the material is not relevant for your grade. My positions on the issues, if you can figure them out, will not serve as an ideological measuring stick for grading. I do, however, expect that the language of the assignments be responsible. The life and work of Paul Farmer will serve as our backdrop and we will be referring to him throughout the semester. </p>

<p>Writing:
This will be an exercise in public writing. Most of the assigned readings are primary sources, academic articles, or religious academics writing about ethics. Your writing, however, should be geared towards a public. It should aim for clarity, accuracy, insight, wit, and brevity. Your letters to the editor will be addressed to the various articles, chapters, and books we are reading. Letters should be posted, with name, on the Blackboard site by the assigned day and time. Within the next few class sessions, I will provide more information on writing op-eds, letters to the editor, etc.</p>

<p>** Letters to the editor should be posted on blackboard by Thursday evening, giving everyone a chance to view the letters and comment on them by Friday’s class. **</p>

<p>Classroom Experience:
This course will also be an exercise in civil discourse. The instructor will be taking on a variety of voices, playing the ventriloquist, in order to provoke learning. This means that “offense” should be expected, greeted as a challenge, and worked with creatively. Between students, however, you will be expected to speak with the highest forms of civility and grace to each other and with each other. This may mean saying things like “well, if one holds that abortion is murder, than one etc. etc.” Though these issues should provoke your passionate engagement, your flesh-and-blood fellow students and fellow citizens deserve civility and respect. </p>

<p>Class time will be partially lecture – I will discuss some of the intellectual and historical background that I didn’t have you read – and partially discussion and debate. These issues are hot so I expect lively discussions. </p>

<p>Extra
For Those students who are up for the challenge, I will be offering an optional reading session of Jeffrey Stout’s Democracy and Tradition. This is a difficult, but rewarding book by a secular commentator on Christian ethics and culture. Sometime near the end of the semester, we will have a session with Stout on his book. </p>

<p>Grading:
Participation/Attendance: 15%<br>
Weekly “letters to the editor”: 20%
First Op-Ed (750 words): 20%
Second Op-Ed (750 words): 20%
Final Comprehensive Exam: 25%</p>

<p>Required Texts</p>

<p>Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics.
Dionne, Elshtain, Drogosz (eds), Is the Market Moral? A Dialogue on Religion, Economics, and Justice.
Michael Walzer (ed) Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism.
Wiegel, The Cube and the Cathedral.
Dionne, Elshtain, Drogosz (eds) Liberty and Power: A Dialogue on Religion US Foreign Policy in an Unjust World.
Portmann (ed) In Defense of Sin.</p>

<p>SCHEDULE OF READINGS</p>

<p>Readings subject to change. Topics of the last sessions will be announced mid-way through the course to accommodate students’ interests.</p>

<p>Week 1 Introduction: Christian and Jewish Ethics</p>

<p>Jan 22 Introduction MLK “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (excerpt), Op-ed on Clarence Thomas. Randy Cohen The Ethicist “Question about Orthodox Jews” </p>

<p>Jan 24 “Making Moral Decisions” Rowan Williams, Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, 3-15; Ron Green “Christian Ethics: A Jewish Perspective” Cambridge Companion. 138-153; Cover, Stone in Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism. </p>

<p>Jan 26 “Religion” Gertrude Himmelfarb Two Cultures, One Nation. Richard John Neuhaus, “Can Atheists be Good Citizens?” ; Stephen L. Carter. “Liberalism’s Religion Problem” Mario Cuomo, “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective”</p>

<p>Week 2 Paul Farmer, A Case Study in Moral Excellence? </p>

<p>Jan 29 Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
Jan 31 Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
Feb 2 Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains; Orwell “Reflections on Gandhi”</p>

<p>Recommended: Susan Wolf’s “Moral Saints”; Robert Adams’ rejoinder, “Saints.” </p>

<p>Week 3 Abortion</p>

<p>Feb 5 Jonathan Glover “Abortion” in Causing Deaths and Saving Lives.
Phillipa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”;
JJ Thomson “A Defense of Abortion”</p>

<p>Feb 7 Sidney Callahan, “Abortion and the Sexual Agenda: A Case for Prolife Feminism”; Hauerwas “Abortion: Why the Arguments Fail”</p>

<p>Feb 9 (TBA); “In Defense of Murder” in In Defense of Sin</p>

<p>Week 4 Medical Ethics and Method: Euthanasia, Stem Cells and Abomination</p>

<p>Feb 12 Euthanasia; “In Defense of Euthanasia” in In Defense of Sin
Feb 14 Stem Cells
Feb 15 Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance”; “Preventing a Brave New World” The New Republic. Jeff Stout “Moral Abominations”.</p>

<p>**Week 5 Just War and Pacifism **</p>

<p>Feb 21 Elizabeth Anscombe, “The Justice of the Present War Examined”, “War and Murder” Ethics, Religion, and Politics; Paul Ramsey “Ethics and War” in The Essential Paul Ramsey. H. Richard Niebuhr and Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Grace of Doing Nothing” </p>

<p>Feb 23 George Weigel “Moral Clarity in a Time of War” First Things 128 (January 2003): 20-27; “War & Statecraft: An Exchange.” Rowan Williams, George Weigel, First Things 141 (March 2004): 14-22.</p>

<p>Feb 25 Walzer, “Exodus 32 the history of a citation”, Walzer, Ravitzsky, and Levey in Law, Politics and Morality in Judaism. Reuven Firestone, “Holy War in Modern Judaism?”</p>

<p>Week 6 International Politics</p>

<p>Feb 26 Liberty and Power
Feb 28 Liberty and Power
March 2 Liberty and Power; Irving Greenberg, “The Ethics of Jewish Power” </p>

<p>Week 7 Nature and the Environment/Natural Law</p>

<p>March 5 Wendell Berry, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation”; Lynn White “The Theological Roots of the Ecological Crisis”;
March 7 Schwarzschild, “An Unnatural Jew”, Wyschogrod “Judaism and the Sanctification of Nature”
March 9 Stout “Truth, Natural Law, and Ethical Theory”<br>
March 9 First op-ed due</p>

<p>March 12 spring break
March 14 xx
March 16 xx</p>

<p>**Week 8 Gender and Sexuality ** </p>

<p>March 19 Rowan Williams, “The Body’s Grace”; Jeffrey Stout, “How Charity Transcends the Culture War: Eugene Rogers and Others on Same-Sex Marriage” Rudy, “Towards a Progressive Sexual Ethic” Sex and the Church, 108-130. “In Defense of Promiscuity”; “In Defense of Prostitution” in In Defense of Sin.</p>

<p>March 21 Statement by the Ramsey Colloquium First Things (on-line) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mark Jordan, Andrew Sullivan in Theology and Sexuality 249-289. Hauerwas, “Why Gays (as a group) are Morally Superior to Christians (as a group)”Dispatches from the Front.153-155.</p>

<p>March 23 Case Study: The Anglican Church Controversy, the Conservative Jewish Movement</p>

<p>Week 9 Pluralism and Secularism
March 26 Wiegel, The Cube and the Cathedral
March 28 Wiegel, The Cube and the Cathedral
March 30 Wiegel, The Cube and the Cathedral</p>

<p>Week 10 Capitalism and the Market
April 2 Is the Market Moral?; “In Defense of Greed” In Defense of Sin
April 4 Is the Market Moral?
April 6 Is the Market Moral?; “In Defense of Breaking the Golden Rule” In Defense of Sin</p>

<p>Week 11 Universalism and Particularism
April 9 Schwarzschild, “The Question of Jewish Ethics”; Wyschogrod “The Particularism of Jewish Ethics”
April 11 Novak (5) and Zohar in Law Politics and Morality in Judaism
April 13 Fisch, Seligman and Novak (9) in Law Politics and Morality in Judaism</p>

<p>**Week 12 The Culture Wars: Religion and Secularism **
April 16 “In Defense of Blasphemy”; “In Defense of Idolatry” in In Defense of Sin
April 18 Mark Souder, “A Conservative Christian’s View on Public Life”; Michael Kazin “The Fate of the Christian Left”
April 20 David Brooks “How Niebuhr Helps us Kick the Secularist Habit”; Susannah Heschel “Protecting Religion from Politics”; Stout “Thoughts on Politics and Religion”</p>

<p>Week 13 (TBA)
April 23
April 25
April 27
April 27 Second op-ed due</p>

<p>Week 14 (TBA)
April 30
May 2
May 4</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>Ratzman is a phenomenal teacher.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>I also take offense at ISI’s poorly-researched claim that little can be learned about Asian cultures from “western academics” at Swarthmore. Perhaps ISI should spend a semester (or even a Baccalaureate Speech) with Professor Bakirathi Mani of the much-maligned English Department.</p>

<p>Prof. Mani was born in Bombay/Mumbai to Indian parents, grew up in Tokyo where she attended Catholic school, earned her BA at Georgetown, her M.A. at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Dehli, and her PhD. at Stanford. I can’t imagine anyone more qualified to teach on variety of topics including Asian American literature, the literature of globalization, and transnational women’s issues (although ISI, being exclusively focused on white, male, and non-international would surely dismiss all of the above).</p>

<p>Here is a link to Prof Mani’s profile:</p>

<p>[Bakirathi</a> Mani: Curriculum Vitae](<a href=“Bakirathi Mani – Swarthmore College”>Bakirathi Mani – Swarthmore College)</p>

<p>And courses (with syllabi) which Swarthmore students rave about:</p>

<p>[Bakirathi</a> Mani: Courses](<a href=“Bakirathi Mani – Swarthmore College”>Bakirathi Mani – Swarthmore College)</p>

<p>And her Baccalaureate Speech:</p>

<p>[Swarthmore</a> College :: Commencement 2008 :: Last Collection: Bakirathi Mani](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/x19144.xml]Swarthmore”>Last Collection: Bakirathi Mani :: Past Commencements :: Swarthmore College)</p>

<p>

Those of you who’ve known me in my classes at Swarthmore also know that I don’t generally share my personal life with you. That is an inventory that I’ve kept fairly private, even though it has informed my most public interactions. So I thought I could end my talk today by sharing with you an inventory of myself, in the hope that my own narrative of travel can help you make your way after Swarthmore.</p>

<p>As most of you know, I was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), and when I was a year old I moved with my parents to Tokyo. That is where my brother and I grew up, and that is where my parents continue to live, over 30 years later. I went to an international school that was administered by an Irish Catholic nun, and I was also one of the very few children in my class whose parents came from the same country. Most of my friends were of multiracial parentage, and so many of them could claim Japan as one of their homes. In contrast, as a child I was always taught to say that I was Indian, from Bombay. It wasn’t until I came to the United States that I met others like myself, the second-generation children of (largely professional) immigrants who migrated from South Asia. During my first year in college, I met many young men and women of South Asian origin. When I asked them where they were from, they responded that they were from Pennsylvania; from Connecticut; from California; from Dubai; from Hong Kong - they were from places in the world so far from India. For me, those conversations were far richer than anything I was hearing in my large lecture classes: those 3 a.m. conversations fueled by caffeine helped me to realize that a brown-skinned, curly-haired, tall girl like me could claim to be Japanese, even if only in name and not in citizenship.</p>

<p>So yes, in my view globalization is a personal experience: an experience of displacement and dislocation, of ambivalence and unsettledness. I couldn’t quite figure out where I belonged, or to whom I belonged. When I finished college that became all the more true because I didn’t have a job, or a partner, or plans for further study. Through a friend of my family’s I had an internship at the United Nations in New York but (like most interns) I wasn’t paid for that work. So two months after I graduated from college, I made what was probably my most random life decision: I decided to move to New Delhi, which is a city I had never lived in. In New Delhi, I enrolled in a master’s degree program at a public institution where the dormitories had no air conditioning, no phone, and only sporadic electricity; we had running water for four hours a day (on the other hand, my tuition fees were only $35 per semester). A far cry from my cushy undergraduate dorm, and I even found myself becoming nostalgic for the campus cafeteria. But it turns out that the two years I spent in Delhi were the most transformative years of my life. I met people who came from small towns and cities in remote regions of India; who were of every religious faith and linguistic group; who were students, journalists, actors, airline stewardesses, and Communist party workers. My time in Delhi was important not least because I learnt that although I had an Indian passport, in many ways the only home I knew was in Tokyo. Eventually, I left India to do my doctoral research in California, and so my personal and intellectual travels have taken me across two continents, if not three. At no point in those years after graduation did I ever think I was going to end up teaching literature at Swarthmore. In fact, I had been waitlisted at Swarthmore when I applied as a high school senior (so teaching here has been my own form of payback!) The point is that in some ways the choices I’ve made have been a matter of chance, and luck, as well.</p>

<p>Teaching at Swarthmore for the past six years is the longest time that I’ve spent in one city in the United States. Strangely enough, the college has begun to feel like home for me as well. Four years ago, when you were first-year students, I met my partner at the Quaker Matchbox. That man, Mario Ruiz, is also here with me today. For someone so invested in studies of globalization, I surprised myself: I fell in love with a Chicano man who speaks Arabic and teaches Middle East History. Both of us now carry in our lives our chequered pasts: our nomadic forays across Asia and the Americas, around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and far beyond. We have families who live across the country and halfway around the world. But most importantly, with Mario I have learnt to engage with difference. The differences that shape us are personal and political. But in learning to confront and converse across these differences, I have built a partnership with Mario that has reshaped my life in the most unexpected ways. This is my inventory of the self, to which I constantly add. And since I have had the pleasure of knowing so many of you, adding your stories to my inventory, I constantly rewrite my own narrative.</p>

<p>As I said at the beginning of my talk, I have no advice to give you. You are light years ahead of where I was when I was graduated from college: many of you have jobs (or leads to jobs), you have graduate school admissions, and some of you even have leases on apartments. I had very little: I knew only that my parents had come from afar for my graduation ceremony, that I wanted to make them proud, that my future was uncertain, and that, despite my overwhelming fear, I had to try to meet it with confidence. So the only thing I can say is: be open to your engagement with the world. Be open to the people you’ll meet, the places you’ll go, to the decisions that you’ll have to make. This is a difficult time to be open: in this country, at least, there is a culture of fear that shelters us from engaging with the world. But whether you plan to travel far away or just as far as Philadelphia, I ask you to be aware of new possibilities. Surround yourself with friends who are both empathetic and critical: who remind you that you can always, within limits, rewrite your narrative of your self. Be open, too, to the prospect of falling in love. If like me you watch reality dating shows - my current favourite is A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila - you know that as much you deride all the contestants on T.V., part of you wishes that it were so easy to fall in love! So be open to the joy in your own life and perhaps in the life of another. There is no difference in the world that cannot be negotiated through mutual respect, admiration, and affection.</p>

<p>This is a fabulous, amazing - and dare I say it, a splendid - part of your life. You deserve all the love and laughter that comes with it. Bring that sense of joy to your encounters - bring that intelligence to your reading and writing of the world. You have a capacious ability to shape the world around you, and you have an unparalled education that gives you the tools to do so.</p>

<p>Congratulations, graduates. The world is yours.

</p>

<p>Is Prof Mani liberal? Conservative? Beats me. I don’t even know what those terms mean to an Indian growing up in Tokyo, studying in Washington, New Delhi, and Palo Alto, and teaching in Pennsylvania. I do know that she brings an incredible perspective on being Indian/Japanese/American in globalized world. And, while literature for ISI begins with the Greeks and ends with Shakespeare, I think most bright young college students preparing for life in the 21st century, would enjoy a semester’s worth of what Prof. Mani has to offer.</p>

[A.E]

<p>

Is Prof Mani liberal? Conservative? Beats me.

I’m going to guess liberal.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>Tip #4 for incoming freshmen:</p>

<p>Make dinner reservations at **Morimoto’s **downtown. Or the suburban equivalent opened by long-time Morimoto executive chef and sous chef on 40 Iron Chef battles, **Azie **in Media.</p>

[Forgetmenots]

<p>Haha, as if most college students have the budget for Morimoto’s. Better off exploring Chinatown - so much delicious food for so little. :D</p>

<p>My biggest advice, like everyone else’s I know at Swat, is to take advantage of pass/fail. Unless you’re a pre-med, those grades will never be seen by anyone, so explore in your classes and outside of them, as much as you can. You’ll never have more freedom than in first semester freshman year - use it!</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>Absolutely take advantage of pass/fail - it’s a great system and a huge boon to new students adjusting to college life. Forgetmenots has that absolutely right.</p>

<p>It’s worth noting, though, that pre-meds are not the only ones who will need to save their shadow grades and eventually show them to others. Students applying to most study abroad programs will need to produce them, and so will applicants to some (probably most) grad schools. That’s not said to scare anybody, just to clarify the picture a little.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>

Haha, as if most college students have the budget for Morimoto’s.

</p>

<p>No, make reservations for when your **parents **are there to pick up the tab!</p>

[A.E]

<p>

It’s worth noting, though, that pre-meds are not the only ones who will need to save their shadow grades and eventually show them to others. Students applying to most study abroad programs will need to produce them, and so will applicants to some (probably most) grad schools. That’s not said to scare anybody, just to clarify the picture a little.

</p>

<p>So then… pass/fail is largely pointless these days?</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>So then . . . pass/fail is exactly the same as it’s been for at least thirty years. Hugely helpful to new students. </p>

<p>The registrar’s office will clarify this for new students anyway, with a reminder to save their shadow grades, as they always have.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>

Students applying to most study abroad programs will need to produce them..

</p>

<p>I’d like to see some support for that. My daughter did not supply shadow grades for study abroad in a very competitive program and I would be very surprised if “most” study abroad programs require them. Most of the better study abroad programs are eager to enroll Swarthmore students because a) they are good students and b) cost is no object.</p>

<p>If any programs require shadow grades, I’m guessing it might be the Oxford/Cambridge programs which are GPA-focused.</p>

[A.E]

<p>

So then . . . pass/fail is exactly the same as it’s been for at least thirty years. Hugely helpful to new students.

I didn’t have to supply any shadow grades for my grad school apps. Obviously this is going to vary by school, but it’s not something I was aware was widespread outside of pre-med.</p>

<p>

The registrar’s office will clarify this for new students anyway, with a reminder to save their shadow grades, as they always have.

This was never clarified this to me, except for the pre-med part, but I was never informed about grad schools or study abroad programs wanting a look at my shadow grades.</p>

<p>Anyway, this definitely lowers my opinion of pass/fail, especially in light of the high percentage of Swatties who go on to post-Swat schooling.</p>