Wake English Major

The girls at wake forest are all skinny. Those who are not blond dye their hair so that they can be. Those who are pale go to tanning beds until their skin looks like orange leather. Everyone wears lily pullitzer, vineyard vines, and pearls. Everyone owns a designer purse, with designer shoes and sunglasses to match. The quality of the items obviously doesn't matter, only that the designer name is plastered across the front to show off.
The guys at wake forest wear short shorts and rainbows or sperry's. Guys who join fraternities think they're "so fratty" and guys who don't are outcasts.

From my experience (if it wasn't obvious from my description), this is 100% true.

The best thing about Wake is the accessability of my teachers. With my small class sizes, my teachers always know my name. Unfortunately, one thing that I would change about this, though, is that sometimes in an effort to maintain small class sizes, it's hard to get into the classes you want because they cap them off so low. I think the size of Wake is just right. It seems like there are two categories of school sizes, 1000-3000, and 6000-8000 (small school and large school). It is not often that you find a school of 4000-5000 students. I spend most of my time either in my room or in the library because of the amount of hours I need to spend studying. There is no "college-town" per say, although the city of winston-salem has some great restaurants if you can get off campus to explore. Wake's administration is pretty controversial. There has been a lot of controversy lately over the use of faculty housing to house the surpluss of students that have been accepted into the upcoming class. The administration gave faculty until the end of the semester to find new housing, without giving appropriate compensation for the eviction. I am sure that I do not know the details of this problem, but the adminstration is not very helpful in informing the students of their actions. As far as school pride goes, it's pretty divided. Screamin' Deamons have a lot of pride in Wake's teams, but those who are not screamin' deamons tend to only go to the games against big rivals.

All of my professors know my name, as well as how I'm doing in their class. If they feel as though I need a little extra help before a test, they will come to me to ask if I'd like to meet. I feel as though my teachers truly care about my success in their class. My favorite class is my english class. We have been able to choose between different books to read so that the class is always enjoying what we are reading. The class is also only about 11 students, so it is a very discussion based environment. The amount that students study varies from person to person. Some people are the type that seem to be naturally smart. They can read their notes over once and memorize it. Other students, such as myself, need to study at least 4 or 5 hours a day to keep up with my work. Students are very competetive here. In fraternities and sororities, everyone wants to keep the sorority's overall gpa up, so they tend to help each other out. Other than that, though, it's all about getting a better grade than the kid next to you so that you can be helped by the curve. The most unique class I have taken at Wake was my anthropology class. Most of my other divisional classes were ones that I had already taken in high school (math, science, english, foreign language). My anthropology class was so interesting because it pertained to cultures that I had never learned about before. Aside from office hours, students tend to stay separate from their professors. I think Wake's academic requirements are way too much. I will be taking divisional classes until I graduate because I don't have enough time to focus on both my major and my divisionals. There is also a great deal of grade deflation making it nearly impossible to get A's. Education at Wake is geared toward getting a job, by means of "weeding out" the students who can not achieve the highest grades.

Wake forest has no diversity whatsoever. Most people are either Catholic or babtist, but religion is not highly stressed. Most students are of middle or upper-class background, caucasian background. A student of a lower class background, with any other ethnicity other than white American would probably feel out of place (unless they are an athlete). Most students dress nicely to class. No one looks sloppy when the come to class except the athletes (they usually wear their athletic gear). Politics are not typically discussed on campus due to the equal amount of conservative southern republicans and liberal northerners.

The most popular groups on campus are fraternities and sororities. I am in a sorority (pi beta phi). Students usually leave their doors open and welcome visitors. Athletic events are well attended given the small size of the school. Guest speakers and theater performances are not very well attended by students, but are relatively well attended by the winston-salem community. The dating scene is pretty much non-existant. I have a boyfriend but I am in a minority. I met my closest friends through my classes, surprisingly, and not my sorority. At 2 am on a Tuesday, I am absolutely sleeping and have been sleeping for a while. The main tradition at Wake is "rolling the quad" after athletic wins. After any win in basketball or football, students run out to the quad and throw toilet paper over the magnolia trees. People party pretty often (Friday, Saturday, and "wake wednesday"). Fraternities and sororities are very important because they are pretty much the only source of parties on campus. They rent out bars and have house parties. There isn't much that you can do on a Saturday nigth that doesn't involve drinking, except maybe going to a party and choosing not to drink.