Juliana

Carleton is usually thought of as a really nerdy school with "quirky" students. It's accurate if you think that means Carls enjoy learning and are interested in diverse subject matters.

I absolutely love Carleton. I love that every class pushes me, without being overwhelming. Professors are there to help me when I get stuck and push me when I need to be pushed. All of your classmates are there with you, working toward the same goal as you. There isn't competition, so much as cooperation. It's the right size campus: big enough to have great professors and diverse courses, but small enough that there are friendly faces all over campus. People who know about Carleton are always excited or jealous that I go there. I spend my time all over campus, but because I'm involved in theater, I do spend most of my nights in the new Weitz Center for Creativity.

Carls are overall open-minded, accepting, and curious about people of different backgrounds, including race, gender, orientation, etc. There are groups on campus focused on bringing up religious, racial, etc issues.

Most students are pretty casual in class, a lot of jeans, some sweat pants, some skirts, a couple dresses. People wear what they're comfortable in. I've literally rolled out of bed and into my 8:30 class without a second look because it's more important to get to class on time than be late and cute.

Everyone interacts, especially in class.

If there were four tables in the dining hall, one would be a class group carrying on a discussion they started in class, one would be a group of friends and ra's from a floor, one would be a group (either a sports team, cast, or other club) and one would be a random mix of friends and friends of friends.

Most of Carleton students are left leaning politically

Students come from all over the country and from all different socio-economic backgrounds. When people talk about how much they'll make one day, it's usually theater/art kids who are joking about being starving artists.

Ultimate frisbee and Rugby are the two most popular sports, because those are our two champion sports right now.

We also have good soccer teams. And a bunch of other teams that are fun to play on or support.

I'm on the newspaper, I play women's ice hockey, I am involved in theater, I am also involved with the gender and sexuality center on campus, and me and my roommate have a radio show. I love being involved with very different groups because I get to meet more people. I've met my best friends through different groups on campus.

The dating scene is nice. There are a couple fun campus-wide mixers, like "screw date" where your roommate picks a blind date for you. A lot of people meet in classes or groups and start dating. There are a lot of long-term relationships at Carleton, but there are also as many one night stands. Parties happen every Friday and Saturday, and sometimes more. But not everyone parties, and not everyone parties every night. I enjoy quiet nights in with friends as much as loud nights out about campus.

If I'm awake on Tuesday, at 2am, me and my roommate would probably be in our room, watching anime with a couple of friends, eating domino's pizza, and claiming that we have, in fact, gotten some work done in the past couple of hours.

We don't have any Greek life on campus. I knew that I didn't want to be on a campus with Greek life because of the weird pressure and hierarchy it creates. Carleton doesn't have frats or sororities, but we do have interest houses. They're campus owned houses that students live in and run. Everyone who lives in the house has a shared interest, there's a culinary house where everyone enjoys cooking, there's a sci fi house that has movie marathons and episode screenings together, things like that which foster communities based around interests rather than popularity.