All in all, I am very happy with all that Skidmore has offered me so far. after having spent my first semester abroad in England, as a participant of Skidmore's FYE London program, I was so nervous to get back to Skidmore as a January freshman. My first semester at Skidmore was awful and even though I did well academically, I was miserable because I really had trouble making friends and getting involved in a community that seemed to already be set in stone. When I tell people that I go to Skidmore their first reaction is always, "Oh, great school...is it still all women?" I find this amusing because the school has been co-ed for a while. Anyways, people usually assume that I am relatively smart, because I go to Skidmore. The reality is, i'm average. While my grades are admirable, I would say that I work a lot harder than my friends do. A lot of times students at Skidmroe tend to be very intellectual and book smart, but do not always appear hard working. I would stress that I am the complete opposite which sometimes creates frustration in my mind. It gets to be be pretty hard sometimes when I realize that I have to spend 2 weeks studying what would take my friends a few hours to memorize.
One thing I am incredibly grateful to Skidmore for though, is providing me a real glimpse into the real world, not just the typical small-school college bubble. i came to Skidmore because I wanted to be a Studio art/ art history major. After I took my first art class at the school, I decided I was no longer interested in pursuing art as a career. I ended up taking an Exercise Science class to fulfill a math/science requirement to the core-curriculum; Now, I'm an exercise science MAJOR! Exercise Science is a a relatively new major that other colleges and universities are just starting to acknowledge, but I have absolutely fallen in love with the classes, the faculty and the resources that the college has. Also, because Skidmore has just recently joined the network for the National Student Exchange program (NSE), I can now go abroad for the semester in HAWAII to study Exercise Science and still get my credits acknowledged by the school. It's hard enough being any kind of a science major to go abroad, as you probably already know, and the fact that Skidmore has found way around this makes me commend them even more for accommodating those of us that have chosen to declare our majors late, or have chosen majors that are difficult to complete.