Professors know my name, phone number, and e-mail address. My academic adviser is a big exit pollster, and when he is formatting his blogs on political websites, he often IMs me and asks me to check out the formatting with my browser. In other words: don't go to Bard if you're looking for anonymity.
My favorite class is Spanish 110 (Accelerated Spanish). We meet five times a week for an hour each time. I love learning new languages, and the class is a lot of fun. Today, we did an oral activity designed to help us learn the cases in which we are supposed to use the preterite and imperfect (two different past tenses). We went around the room telling a story in Spanish line by line about a smurf who was a Bard student, who encountered a lion, who poisoned the lion, who fell asleep and dreamed that the dead lion was in fact a Bard student that had long hair.
My least favorite class is Biology 415 (Restoration Ecology). I don't hate the class -- to the contrary, the material is very interesting. Unfortunately, the work load is very heavy (hence, 400-level biology class), so it's getting put at the bottom of the list this semester.
Students work hard and play hard. We definitely don't study all the time. There's a lot of work -- mostly essay writing, if you're a social science major. Aside from the large quantities of reading and writing that most classes assign, there isn't much studying to do unless you're a science, math, or language major. Usually the work load starts of light at the beginning of the semester, where students can spend several nights a week just hanging out with friends. Towards midterms, the workload becomes very heavy, and people are working on papers around the clock. The workload is very light for the week following midterms, then starts up again, requiring a few hours of reading/writing each night until finals. As a social science major who takes mostly 300 level seminar classes, I can report that finals is quite the adventure. We don't have a reading week at Bard, so you have to go to classes while writing your final exams. Finals week last semester was particularly hellish. In addition to my classes, I had a 10 page final paper due on Monday, a 20 page final paper due on Tuesday, a 20 page final paper due on Wednesday, and a 20 page final paper due on Thursday. Friday, I drank myself silly.
Bard students have intellectual conversations outside of class ALL THE TIME, particularly conversations about politics. Yesterday, I sat in the dining hall for two hours debating the possibility of sustainable environmental development with a friend of mine.
Students really aren't competitive, unless you're a part of the film and photo department. The emphasis really is on personal growth and development. Since most classes are essay-based rather than test based, it's difficult to be competitive due to the diversity of responses and ideas to each essay question.
The most unique class I have taken is one I've got this semester, called the Cultural Politics of Animals. I'm also taking an amazing class this semester called Reading and Writing the Hudson. Some favorite classes from past semesters include: American Religion and Politics, American Environmental History, American Environmental Politics, Population Economics and Demography, The 19th Century Continental Novel, Historical Archaeology, and Field Methods in Archaeology.
Outside of class, I often visit the professors I like in their offices, either to ask questions or chat. If I see a professor in Kline or the campus center, I'll walk up and say hi. there are several professors who live on campus who I run into a lot. Often the language tutors (who are foreign post-grad students employed by the college) come to our parties.
The academic requirements are numerous and strict, but I really like them. It's nice to have to take classes in every academic discipline, simply because, through those requirements, I have really expanded my interests and learned a lot about subjects I never would have otherwise encountered.
The education at Bard is geared towards learning for its own sake. Once you pump out an 80-120 page senior project, you should have the motivation, organization, and ability to go out and promote yourself to a potential employer. In getting prestigious internships, I've found that my ability to communicate my ideas verbally and in writing, in conjunction with my academic record, speaks for itself.