Nonfiction
The City is My Campus—no, for real.
After staying a month at Lehigh University, one word stands out to describe my experience with the campus: boring.
I told myself that it was summer break and most activities around campus are stalled, but I was less convinced of that every day. I tried seeking inspiration from a rising sophomore at Lehigh.
“What does one do around here for fun?” I asked.
“We drink,” he replied.
While I was lucky enough to be a part of a summer program that kept me on my toes and introduced me to people that made even the mundane a whole lot of fun, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of lives the “real” Lehigh students lived.
The Lehigh campus is huge, with many luxurious buildings and endless staircases that lead to them. With multiple libraries, competent sports teams, and countless clubs, it’s hard to imagine how anyone would run out of things to do.
However, the rose-colored glasses come off when you have to walk 10 minutes to the closest grocery store to grab a bag of chips and 20 minutes to chill at everyone’s favorite and closest bar (I do wonder if Lehigh students only call it their favorite bar because it is the closest).
This is a huge difference from Minerva, where you are most often placed in the heart of a bustling city. Last semester in Korea, I had a cafe, an overnight study cafe, and a restaurant within the building I lived in. The nearest bus stop was two steps from my residential entrance. The street I lived on had every possible building on it within a 5-minute radius, from multiple grocery stores, salons, post offices, banks, and even local markets and stalls.
This furthered my realization that Minerva’s tagline “the city is your campus”—while often the butt of jokes among Minervans with an undertone hinting at our wistfulness for a campus—is actually more than a tag-line. It’s the truth.
The longer I stayed at the Lehigh campus the more I realized how the students were not as connected to the local community as Minervans are. On a morning walk, I noticed that the area around Lehigh struggled with poverty and gentrification. Later in a conversation with a staff member, I was told the troubles with gentrification when uplifting the community and other obstacles but no ways around them. This was another huge difference from the Minerva educational experience where many of our assignments are based on solving the issues in the local communities that we live in. The idea of being a resident, not a tourist, and leaving places better than we find them is often discussed inside and outside of the classroom. We are often forced to empathize with the issues that the local populace deals with, even if they stand far outside the realm of our day-to-day lives.
My experiences are matched with the similar experiences other Minerva students had over the summer. My friend Yousef (M25) also talked about the numerous golf courses and fields surrounding the Stanford campus which make it impossible to get around without a car, and how the students at Berkeley, while within the city, are still secluded from it. He also highlighted the differing amount of stress the students go through. For a conventional student, the stress gets higher during exams and co-curricular competitions but stays fairly low otherwise.
At Minerva, the stress levels are at a constant high because each class counts towards your GPA, assignments are ceaseless, and on top of that, we have to look into every nook and cranny of the local issues and culture plus cooking for ourselves and exploring the city/country lets you take on a whole lot more responsibility than an average college student. This means that if you don’t have proper systems in place, it’s easy to get burned out.
Are Minervans missing out on a traditional college experience? Yes.
We don’t have huge libraries filled with 19th and 20th-century literature waiting to be read. We don’t have varsity sports teams that go on to compete in international competitions. We don’t get to live in a bubble of buildings with hallowed hallways and endless staircases. But at the end of the day, is that the college experience we really need?
Any student that decided to enroll at Minerva signed up for a very specific college experience. While that experience might be unconventional or even insane at times (cue going to Taiwan when China issues warnings of military action), the experience is still extremely exciting and fulfilling.
Will I miss the trimmed stretches of grass at Lehigh on which I stargazed with the people I love? Abso-fucking-lutely. Am I also excited to get back on the bumpy train ride that is Minerva education? You bet!
I told myself that it was summer break and most activities around campus are stalled, but I was less convinced of that every day. I tried seeking inspiration from a rising sophomore at Lehigh.
“What does one do around here for fun?” I asked.
“We drink,” he replied.
While I was lucky enough to be a part of a summer program that kept me on my toes and introduced me to people that made even the mundane a whole lot of fun, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of lives the “real” Lehigh students lived.
The Lehigh campus is huge, with many luxurious buildings and endless staircases that lead to them. With multiple libraries, competent sports teams, and countless clubs, it’s hard to imagine how anyone would run out of things to do.
However, the rose-colored glasses come off when you have to walk 10 minutes to the closest grocery store to grab a bag of chips and 20 minutes to chill at everyone’s favorite and closest bar (I do wonder if Lehigh students only call it their favorite bar because it is the closest).
This is a huge difference from Minerva, where you are most often placed in the heart of a bustling city. Last semester in Korea, I had a cafe, an overnight study cafe, and a restaurant within the building I lived in. The nearest bus stop was two steps from my residential entrance. The street I lived on had every possible building on it within a 5-minute radius, from multiple grocery stores, salons, post offices, banks, and even local markets and stalls.
This furthered my realization that Minerva’s tagline “the city is your campus”—while often the butt of jokes among Minervans with an undertone hinting at our wistfulness for a campus—is actually more than a tag-line. It’s the truth.
The longer I stayed at the Lehigh campus the more I realized how the students were not as connected to the local community as Minervans are. On a morning walk, I noticed that the area around Lehigh struggled with poverty and gentrification. Later in a conversation with a staff member, I was told the troubles with gentrification when uplifting the community and other obstacles but no ways around them. This was another huge difference from the Minerva educational experience where many of our assignments are based on solving the issues in the local communities that we live in. The idea of being a resident, not a tourist, and leaving places better than we find them is often discussed inside and outside of the classroom. We are often forced to empathize with the issues that the local populace deals with, even if they stand far outside the realm of our day-to-day lives.
My experiences are matched with the similar experiences other Minerva students had over the summer. My friend Yousef (M25) also talked about the numerous golf courses and fields surrounding the Stanford campus which make it impossible to get around without a car, and how the students at Berkeley, while within the city, are still secluded from it. He also highlighted the differing amount of stress the students go through. For a conventional student, the stress gets higher during exams and co-curricular competitions but stays fairly low otherwise.
At Minerva, the stress levels are at a constant high because each class counts towards your GPA, assignments are ceaseless, and on top of that, we have to look into every nook and cranny of the local issues and culture plus cooking for ourselves and exploring the city/country lets you take on a whole lot more responsibility than an average college student. This means that if you don’t have proper systems in place, it’s easy to get burned out.
Are Minervans missing out on a traditional college experience? Yes.
We don’t have huge libraries filled with 19th and 20th-century literature waiting to be read. We don’t have varsity sports teams that go on to compete in international competitions. We don’t get to live in a bubble of buildings with hallowed hallways and endless staircases. But at the end of the day, is that the college experience we really need?
Any student that decided to enroll at Minerva signed up for a very specific college experience. While that experience might be unconventional or even insane at times (cue going to Taiwan when China issues warnings of military action), the experience is still extremely exciting and fulfilling.
Will I miss the trimmed stretches of grass at Lehigh on which I stargazed with the people I love? Abso-fucking-lutely. Am I also excited to get back on the bumpy train ride that is Minerva education? You bet!