<p>I am a current Reedie, willing to answer questions you kids may have as you make a College Decision.</p>
<p>Ask away, if you wish.</p>
<p>I visited Reed last week and felt very comfortable there. Are students able to adjust to the work load and are they generally happy about being Reedies? I am a math/science person, so the humanities & writing requirements are a bit intimidating. Will I survive?</p>
<p>Yes! </p>
<p>(And Yes.)</p>
<p>People tend to be happy about being Reedies (as one of my friends’ sister said, ‘you guys are sort of obsessed with being yourselves…’) and the workload is manageable, particularly freshman year. </p>
<p>Math and science are fantastic and the writing requirement will make you a stronger person without killing you, I promise. I hadn’t written an essay since sophomore year of high school before coming to Reed, and I managed Hum fine - enjoyed it, even. </p>
<p>The workload freshman year really is not that great. Of course, you should know that <em>eventually</em> (read: sophomore, junior) years you’re going to have a bit of a workload, but the related unpleasantness will be offset by the fact that your classes during those years will Be Incredible.</p>
<p>And you will have happy times.</p>
<p>Thanks for that answer about academics. Now…what is with all the cigarette smoking on campus? It seems like smart people would not smoke so much. (I am a bit of a health freak.) Is it seen as something cool to do? I was told at my overnite that people smoke in the dorms, esp. Old Dorm Block. True? And what is really the story on drugs at Reed? Is the culture changing (more or less?), are there dorms that are more <em>druggy</em> than others, and are the sub-free students thought of as different? Please don’t give me the standard line of “drugs are on every campus…” What is the real story?</p>
<p>Here is part of the real story:</p>
<p>[Pluralistic</a> Ignorance Project - Drugs & Alcohol](<a href=“http://academic.reed.edu/psychology/psy322/pluralisticignorance/drugsalcohol.html]Pluralistic”>http://academic.reed.edu/psychology/psy322/pluralisticignorance/drugsalcohol.html)</p>
<p>What is the Music department like?</p>
<p>The cigarette smoke here tends to bother me a lot. Particularly because chances are extremely high that you’ll have to walk through some smoke in order to get to the Library or into Vollum, which I feel is unacceptable. There is now that 10 foot rule in Oregon, but it is not obeyed.</p>
<p>People smoke things in the dorms, usually those things are not cigarettes. If you smell something you don’t want to smell, it’s perfectly acceptable to talk to the smoker / your HA about it. Nobody will think less or strangely of you.</p>
<p>Drugs are more prevalent on this campus than others that I am familiar with. How that impacts your life is completely up to you. Certainly nobody here thinks ill of the sub-free kids or any such nonsense. The only trouble you may run into is if you take it upon yourself to tell other people what they should and should not do, when it doesn’t directly effect you. If you don’t want to do drugs, people will respect you as long as you respect them back.</p>
<p>what about the economics department?</p>