<p>As a current student here, and somebody who is prone to many doubts, I've been asking myself this question over and over again and I've never come to a satisfying answer, until earlier today:</p>
<p>I was thinking back to my junior year, when I was touring colleges by storm. I made a point of going on tours, even though all the tours began to sound like each other, and I went to all the information sessions, and there, too, it seemed like all the parents who asked dumb questions in the first info session traveled with me to ask the same dumb questions in the next one. I ate lunch in the school cafeterias; I walked around campus to get "feels" and "vibes," though I have to be honest and say that I didn't really get any "feels" or "vibes." I liked every school I saw, more or less, and I thought that I could make each one work for me.</p>
<p>At one school, I even went so far as to sit in on a class, because I had been told that the school was a good "fit" for somebody like me, who was both outgoing and nerdy, and who wanted both a campus and a city. (I would probably be better off keeping this school nameless, but for amusement's sake it was actually Northwestern). Northwestern prided itself on having strong professors and a committed student body, and certainly what I saw in the classroom was a strong professor and students committed to learning. I was even impressed by the way that different students had bonded with each other-- one girl, who looked like a supermodel, was chatting casually with an obese and greasy-haired guy, and the whole class seemed to like each other, the professor, and being there. It was cool.</p>
<p>This was a class on fiction, and the teacher offhandedly mentioned an Edith Wharton novel. She couldn't remember the name of it, but she started to describe it. As soon as she started to describe it, I heard myself mutter:</p>
<p>"Ethan Frome."</p>
<p>And with that, all the students in the class turned around to glare at me. It was clear to me that in this "relaxed" and "engaging" environment, I had broken at least four of the unwritten Rules of Academic Conduct. </p>
<p>1) Pretend you don't know any more than anybody else
2) This applies doubly if you're a visitor; triply if you haven't done the readings for class
3) If you're going to know something, make sure that it's important and relevant to class, not "random trivia" that's external to class (Ethan Frome wasn't assigned for the class, I had only known about the book because I had read it on my own).
4) Don't say anything that may be perceived as contradicting the professor</p>
<p>How "academic" was this environment, I wondered, if students were dumb about things that happened outside of class? How "open" was it if there was a standard of conformity and an agree-upon level of how much and how deeply students could contribute to discussion? This experience left me with such a bad taste in my mouth, that went I went to Chicago and saw students over-participating and over-arguing, it came as a total relief, unnerving as it was and unnerving as it can sometimes be, to suffer through a class with a "that kid," who uses big words for the sake of using big words and brings up points that are irrelevant and books and ideas that nobody else is familiar with.</p>
<p>I can't say that Chicago is the most wonderful place in the world or that everybody should come here; I can't say that all Chicagoans are blindingly smart or that all professors are shiny and engaging. What I can say, though, is that there is no Code whatsoever determining what contributions are and are not socially acceptable in a classroom. There's nothing wrong with talking about Karl Marx when you're drunk. This isn't to say that Chicagoans ALWAYS talk about intellectual things, but it's to say that they ALWAYS CAN. It's never a wrong time to bring academics up; it's never wrong to help a professor out by supplying the title to a book.</p>
<p>And I think it's that, that freedom, that warmth, that acceptance, that really has me drooling over being at Chicago.</p>