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The aspect of Williams that makes it so desirable and diverse is its defiance of stereotypes. What I have gathered from my time as a student at Williams is that our college community, through commitment to academic excellence and social responsibility, aims to defy judgment and stereotypes as an entity. Despite this attempt, the campus does have niches - ones that you would expect. Our school is the only school to have ever been ranked as the top academic and athletic institution in the same year. An accurate inference from this would be to say that we have a high number of student athletes...40% in fact. These kids do not fit the typical "jock" stereotype because they are also brilliant kids. And, sometimes, to many peoples' surprise, our student-athletes are multi-talented. I can offer myself as an example. I play varsity golf at Williams but also am involved musically as the teacher's assistant for the jazz ensemble. I also participate in that ensemble as the solo trumpet player and play in our most advanced jazz combo. I offer myself as an example to iterate that our campus doesn't like stereotypes. We try to eliminate them because we collectively recognize their potentially harmful effects. Yes, we have student-athletes; but they're not jocks. Yes, we have artsy students; but we don't call them hippies. We see people as equal because we don't value people differently based upon their stylistic choices.

Williams is different. Academically, we have one of the hardest curriculums in the nation. But people that matriculate here are well aware. People come here to work hard. They choose the mountains and not the busy city streets for a reason. We are a small school full of students that desire learning more than its signaling. We chose Williams, not Harvard. Most people have never heard of Williams and this is actually common discussion among our student body. We realize not a lot of people know about the school. You ask Joe Smith if he has heard of it, and he'll probably respond with a contemplative "no." We're fine with it. We don't need the public's spotlight or their recognition to be affirmed in our choice of school. We're humble, in that regard.

The college is very rural - I'll be the first to admit that. If you're a city dweller or one who wants to be, Williamstown will be bleak for you. It is not a shopping mall. It's nestled comfortably in the Berkshires. People are always on campus going to each other's concerts, sporting events ... etc. Off-campus life doesn't really exist. There is a nearby town that has some necessities and a McDonalds among other shops, but most people like to stay on campus. School pride is huge, as you'd expect. If you meet a Williams alum on the street (very unlikely), the bond will be immediate. There will be an instant understanding among both parties that doesn't require words to be felt.

All of my professors know my name. And I am not unique in this. Academics at Williams is the reason why our students attend. We have coffee with our profs on the weekends or after class and we'll e-mail them just because we have a question that we'd like their thoughts on. My math teacher is an awesome person who I've talked to multiple times outside of class about golf, calculus and graduate school. My economics teacher is a golfer and we're planning to play this Spring. I think I e-mailed him over 200 times this semester about course work and such. He responded every single time within 24 hours. My other professors are equally passionate about their subject areas as they are knowledgable. Put bluntly, the profs are experts in their areas and extremely intelligent in others.

Students are always studying. Always. We like to study because it leads to learning. And you bet we love to learn. We're always having intellectual discourses about random topics that appear in the news or on campus or whatever. It doesn't matter; we're always talking and sharing opinions, learning from each other because we each appreciate and value the other's opinion and knowledge. Students are not competitive, really. We're all going for the A, but we don't talk about grades because we're more interested in the information and the educational value than the grade professors assign for us.

The requirements among departments are lenient. You have to take a quantitative class and a class that endorses diversity, and one that is writing intensive. These requirements are not hard to fulfill. Most students do so without even recognizing it. The education at Williams cannot be consolidated as to say it is "job-gearing." We're not Wharton, a school designed for business and finance majors. Yet our school's reputation could place you in the same job that a Wharton graduate could. We are an institution geared towards learning. Our students graduate aware and knowledgeable. Because of this, we ARE ready for the working world, not because we have been told what to do. It is a consequence of our learning that results in our preparedness, not our one-tracked mind.

We are very diverse, truly. It is not a difficult endeavor to find friends at Williams. There are an infinite amount of resources designed to facilitate with friend-making and things of that nature. Because of our small student population, we may not have an excessive number of any one minority group, but we are home to myriad different types of people. You'd feel out of place here if you want a rowdy environment. We're not a party school even though our weekends are event-filled and very fun.

This being said, it is human nature to identify with similarities. There are four lunch tables in the dining hall .... one has all the hockey players having a team dinner, the other is seating a large group of first-year students from their "entry". The third table could be a student activity group and the fourth would probably be an eclectic group of students.

Generally, I'd say students align with a liberal-minded agenda. But that's only because of what's defined as "liberal." I'll leave it at that. Students aren't from a certain area in particular ... New York is the most represented state but I have multiple friends from an international area like Columbia, Canada or South Korea. All kids are interacting with one another. People are anxious to meet people from diverse backgrounds and friendships are often formed because of this curiosity.

The most popular student groups are the athletic teams, without a doubt. We draw a lot of athletes to our school because we're good at them. I play on the golf team, for example. Athletic events are pretty popular; it's awesome to see your friends participate in the NESCAC sports events.

My friends come from all different places. One friend group I made through the freshman entry system, another I made through the golf team. I made other friends through the jazz band/combo and another group in class. There are a lot of opportunities to make friends here. The dating scene at Williams is like anywhere else; it's what you make of it. The people here are not aliens; they're people too! If you like someone, go for it! People are accepting and encouraging for the most part.

If I'm awake on a Tuesday at 2am (by the way, I really like this question), I am undoubtedly working on something that's due soon. I happen to be a night person so I'm always up at 2am ... and I'm always working. This is the truth; Williams students work all the time. Sunday-Thursday is work time, and the weekends usually entail some sort of partying (not with frats/sororities because there are none). A Saturday night will certainly present its options of drinking venues, but the college is conscious of this and as such offers music concerts and other such events to compensate. There are always things unassociated with drinking transpiring on the campus. They're not hard to find either.

If students are complaining, they're doing so because of the work assigned. But, honestly, most people realized that they were going to get pounded with work and the complaints serve mostly as a medium for venting. In the end, everyone gets their work done and that's how the learning occurs: taking the complaints and turning them into a work product.

The day on campus I will never forget ....

It was late on a Friday night and we (the golf team) had the Williams Invitational Tournament the next morning at 11:00am sharp. I knew the night had to be cut short so I didn't do much this night and instead found myself trying to get a full night's sleep before the first round of the tournament. I slept from about 1am - 1:30am until the Williams Hall (the dorm in which I live) fire alarm went off.

This presented a problem. My entry gathered outside of our dorm as standard procedure requires, and we waited for the security officers to give us the okay to go back in. But that affirmation never came.

What happened was not only a fire alarm fault, but actually a bursting of the pipes in Williams Hall. This pipe problem rendered 125 freshmen without a place to sleep at night. And all I could think about was my lack of sleep before the tournament.

Fast forward about 3 hours and I find myself roaming the campus at 4am for some place to sleep and FINALLY the dorms opened back up at like 5am. So, I slept from 5am-10am and then made my way over to the tournament to shoot a sleep-deprived round in the 80's.

The most pleasant experience at Williams? That's a "no". But the fact that we - a sleep-deprived Williams Hall - all laughed about it the next day made it a memorable experience. Could I have written about an awesome day of classes where I felt the world had changed around me? Yes, but that's not as personal as this story.

Plus...who doesn't love to read about fire alarms and bursted pipes?

Dorms are ... very "college". Like any other place, our dorms are relatively small. Some are bigger than others, but the standard dorm room is rather petite. It provides incentive for students to study in the library or do things outside of their rooms.

If you're interested in Williams, you're probably aware that we're good at sports. Athletics tend to occupy most of the social scene at Williams in terms of parties and what not. But this isn't to say that a non-sporting culture doesn't exist. In fact, there are more students who don't play a sport than who actually do (40%--60%). In the end, our athletes are division three STUDENT-athletes and are most concerned with academics rather than athletics. As a golfer, I know my schoolwork comes before my golf game. And I also know I am not unique in this feeling of academic priority.