by Zee
Much. But there are good scholarships. Some of the work-study jobs are fun, too. I get to be an observatory assistant.
I don't know what the people in general are like. I guess it's the kind of place where anyone can fit in. Not too cliquey, and always a little odd, with just enough normal people to let the odd people be proud of being odd. I like it. Also there is BSFFA, the Beloit Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. A whole special interest house full of gamers and trekkies. It's great. A lot of people drink and some people smoke, but not every weekend and only to the point of vomiting on special occasions. At least the people I know.
The foreign students chase the squirrels. Sometimes the squirrels chase the foreign students. Their tails are brown-centered with a gray corona.
There is always a vegetarian "option" at Commons, and the grill on the other side of campus generally has bagels or hummus wraps. I used to regret limiting what I could eat. Then I realized the meat was just as yucky. If you like pasta you're okay though. There's SO MUCH pasta. Everything is overpriced, and the meal plan is mandatory for everyone but seniors.
I'm something of a luddite, so I don't know a lot about this section. There're enough ethernet jacks in each room for the number of people who're supposed to live there. Fine if you're living in your single and everything, but bring a hub if you want to escape a smelly roommate and live with your boyfriend. There're 24 hour computer labs all over. Most students have their own computers so if you need one you can find one.
The lounge on each floor/section of dorm has some sort of furniture. Don't sit on the sofas until you've been properly instructed. Most of them will eat you. On the other hand, you can get new furniture and carpet for your floor by having a water balloon fight and then blaming the mess on leaky pipes or something. Oh, and the chairs in the dorm rooms come in two varieties: normal with armrests, and built to lean back like your mother always told you not to do without armrests. The second kind is always preferable. Who wants armrests? I'm tipping back and forth as I type.
Sanskrit is more work than a language in the Religious Studies department has any right to be. There is a theory that the "Beloit Plan" is actually a subtle system for funnelling people into philosophy or creative writing majors. All the science classes are more hours per week plus more homework and the profs aren't as lenient. The soft sciences are for the sheep who wander on to campus because they didn't have anything better to do. It's all about the Div 3 (humanities) majors. Specifically philosophy. The creative writing department believes that all genre fiction is formula fiction. You can also major in rhetoric, the art of lying.
On the other hand, I'm going to be a physics minor... yech.
So anyway. Come to Beloit. We run our own annual gaming convention (KublaCon 2K3: themes suck so we don't have one this year... April 2003... look for it.)
Oh, and don't ever go to the BSFFA webpage. The guy who wrote it told me "perfect grammar is stuffy" when I offered to fix his for him. And I was polite and everything.