Now that I’m back from my winter term abroad in Egypt (you can read about my experiences here and here!), where we were being hosted by a pretty large university, I’ve found a new appreciation for so many day-to-day things I experience at Oberlin that are only possible at a small school.
One of the best feelings in the world is walking to class and having at least three people I can wave to on my way there every time. Getting an enthusiastic wave, a warm smile, a “Julia!” yelled from across campus, or even one of those easygoing nods of acknowledgment is a good 50% of the reason why I make the arduous trek from my dorm to the third floor of King in Ohio winter weather. (The other 50% is for the attendance grade.) It wasn’t always like that, though. I’m very much an introvert, while most of my friends are anything but, so walking around campus with a friend in my first year felt a lot like being the younger, less social, and much less cool sibling. But by nature of being at Oberlin for longer, I’ve met more and more people as I’ve taken more classes, gotten involved in on-campus organizations, and now, studied abroad. There’s nothing quite like navigating a foreign airport at 5 AM or the shared trauma of an incredibly stressful assignment to bring people together.
I recently discovered another wonderful aspect of small schools out of a not-so-wonderful predicament with my meal plan. Long story short, I wanted to join Oberlin’s Third World Co-Op because I thought it would be cool to get to cook during the school year, but by the time I realized I’d be too busy this term, I had already been removed from the standard meal plan and was left meal-swipe-less for about a week and a half. After my swipe embarrassingly declined at Stevie (our main dining hall), I was gearing up to go on a long-winded tangent explaining my whole debacle to one of the workers in hopes that they’d grant mercy on me and let me eat for free, but one look at the distress on my face and the woman I was speaking to said, “Don’t even worry about it, honey, just go eat.” Bless her!!!!
The next day, I had even prepared a monologue to use each time I needed to get into the dining hall, but thankfully, the same woman remembered my face and shooed me in before I could so much as utter an “I’m so sorry, this is so awkward, but…” And that’s how I’ve been getting food for the past week and a half. Only at a small school, I guess!
After talking to some of my friends who go to bigger schools, I realized I’ve also been taking my classroom experiences for granted. At the beginning of the term, my friend from home was expressing worries about the spring. “I always get distracted in class!” she said, which I found very relatable until I realized we had very different reasons for being distracted. For her, it was because there was no one to stop her from playing Hay Day during her 100+ person lectures, where people queue up after class in the first week in hopes that the teacher will remember their faces. (That sounds like my personal hell.) I just have ADHD.
But in all seriousness, you’d have to pry 15-to-20-person discussion-based classes from the clutches of my cold, stiff corpse before you’d see me willingly trade them for a lecture hall. The biggest class I’ve had at Oberlin was my 30-person Econ 101 class last term, which was also mostly lecture. I swear there is something magic about Professor Cheung, though, because I actually did quite well, and not everyone can write practice problems that are memorable 5 months later.
Still, there is something irreplaceably special about small classes. For example, as I was waiting for my 3 PM class to start, quite a few of my classmates this afternoon were talking about how nice the weather was today (60 degrees and sunny!). When the professor walked in, someone blurted out, “Can we have class outside today?” The professor gave it about four seconds of thought, and then all of a sudden, we were packing our bags to discuss international politics by the Arch in Tappan Square.
On the topic of small class sizes, after I finish writing this blog post, I’m going to do homework for my 7-person Chinese class tomorrow morning, counting me and another occasional student, who’s actually an Oberlin Psychology professor! This is my first time taking a language course at Oberlin, and I joined halfway through the year, so being in a small class has made the adjustment tremendously less intimidating.
