Ok, you asked for this...this is a page of

unabashed snootiness and self-depreciation so

if you don't want hear about SWAT than you'd better leave now

ARE YOU SURE?

You are sure.

OK THEN!

So...you haven't heard of Swarthmore College huh? That's ok, I'm not surprised. If you have, let me just clear up a few misconceptions. First of all, Swat is not an all girl's school in upstate New York! And no, Swat is not a community college! Good, now Swathmore is a small (appx. 1200 students) liberal arts college which has its own stop on the commuter rail system of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. Our campus is a national arboretum. This means that its very pretty and has lots of cool plants. It also means all the plants have little labels on them and we're not allowed to touch.

Ok...so to brag a little bit: Swat is the number one ranked college in the country. This is according to the US News and World Report annual report. Honestly, everyone here is a nerd of some type or another. Pretty much they all got great grades in high school applied to a few Ivy League schools and decided to go here. So there!

If you sense a little bit of bitterness here, you try going to a school that's supposed to be great but no one's ever heard of! Which brings me to my next point: add to this the fact that we have a reputation in college circles for being the hardest school in the country. Our well known motto and badge of pride/excuse is "Anywhere else it would have been an A." On average most people spend all there time doing schoolwork. Seminar classes can have thousands of pages of reading per week (really!) and the library shuts down early on Saturday nights so that people will go out and do something fun once in a while. Nevertheless, professors refuse to give out more than a couple of A's which leaves everyone at this no-name school with bad transcripts. Nevertheless we love it!

Why? Umm...that's a very good question which I think needs someone with a background in psycology to answer. Really, I think its because there is no better place to learn than here (and if there is don't tell me about it because I've got 4 years of tuition locked up already!). Plus, some people (we hope) do know about SWAT and graduating seniors with bad grades still go to good graduate schools or are very successful.

Lets see, we are loosly affiliated with Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. If you happen to be a high school student considering where to go to school than don't go to either of these...as long as you're going to be in this area for school, you might as well go to the best. : )

Our football team (yes there are big, muscular nerds in this world...) went 0-10 last season (...they're just not very good) but the former NFL commisioner is an alumnus. We just got tons of money from a bunch of alumni and the whole campus is currently under construction as new stuff is put in and old stuff is redone. The social life here is only good at certain key events (as well as at the party's that we DJ). The two formals every year get good attendance but the three major social events of the year are Screw Your Roomate, Sager and the ML Halloween Party. Screw Your Roomate is a whole campus affair in which your roomate sets you up with someone else's roomate. Its a blind date and your meeting occurs the weekend of the event in the school cafeteria (and social center) Sharples Dining Hall. This weekend is of course a crazy occurance in which the whole place is a madhouse of wild setup schemes. The Sager party is something that just needs to be experienced. Males attending are expected to go in drag while females are expected to dress down...about as dressed down as they're willing to go! Suffice it to say that last year there was a professional drag show from New York which featured putting on condoms on bannanas with nothing but one's mouth. The ML Halloween Party is what halloween partys should have been back in high school but never could be. Most of the school shows up and...come on, everyone likes to dress up.

To wrap this up is the most important part. The people here are really friendly (maybe too much so), very fun, a little weird, very smart, often very intense and usually do all kinds of crazy stuff ranging from fire-fighting to track, to singing, to acting, to speaking Russian to well...just about everything. Maybe that's why students like it here...the people. Its a great school, even if no one's heard of it...and thank you for reading this far!! : )

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Sean's Website - 06/28/97 09:33 PM