All my professors except my biology professors know my name. We have four biology professors in Introduction to Biology, each one specializing in a different section of biology. My favorite class is probably Linear Algebra honors seminar, which is a first-year seminar (FYS). A first-year seminar is a seminar specifically for first-year students, and it's meant to give freshmen a sense of what upper-level seminar courses will feel like. It's really a great opportunity to take a class other than lecture. FYS's are capped at 12 students, and my math seminar (28S) has only 11 students, and it's great because we all (11 students and the professor) really get to know each other much better. We sit around a giant table and we basically discuss math problems, and the classroom walls are all made up of just blackboard, which is cool. It's great to have that close interaction--I think it makes class much more special than just going to a lecture and taking notes. The math seminar lasts twice as long as other classes--6 hours a week instead of 3. Every Wednesday we meet for those 3 additional hours, and our professor always brings snacks. He actually invited the whole class to his house for dinner, and the dinner will be held in a few weeks, during finals, so that'll be awesome.
My least favorite class is Intro to Biology. I'm really not that interested in the subject material--I was mainly looking for a general background in biology, and I suppose I did get that, but it is a big lecture course (over 100 students) and quite frankly, I find it to be pretty boring. Also, the quality of the professor matters--we have 4 profs in Bio 1, and the boring professors make the lectures boring, and the lively professors who have almost a tangible excitement about the subject make the lectures lively. It's also a very big time commitment, and assignments in Bio 1 take much longer to complete than assigments in my other classes.
Swatties really do have intellectual discussions outside of class, but they're not ubiquitous, I don't think, and I think a lot of people don't want intellectual discussions outside of class to be ubiquitous. Some people (including me) just want a break from academics during meals, and they prefer to talk about their day, and how class has been, and stuff like that. But most of my friends make some kind of intellectual reference at some point during the day.
Students aren't competitive--in fact, it's quite the opposite. You see a lot of collaboration here. Example: students get together to do math homework. Another example: students get together in study group meetings for biology. Students here are very friendly, and they're generally willing to help struggling students. None of my classes so far curve grades, so it really doesn't help your grade if others do worse (which may be the case in classes where exam grades are curved). Students here keep their grades to themselves, and in fact grades are almost never mentioned--I've barely mentioned grades at all here. The unwillingness of students to discuss grades (it's not because they have bad grades, but more because it's a personal thing, and quite frankly, nobody here really cares about your grade) is a welcome improvement in maturity level from high school.
Education here is definitely geared to learning for its own sake. You don't learn things that are really practical for jobs, necessarily. It's important to try to get work experience outside of class, and to seek internships and externships. Career Services helps you with that, but you need to really work to find good work experience. Many Swatties end up going to graduate school. I think many people here are just afraid of going off into the work world and "abandoning" school--I am. I don't want to work a boring 9-5 job, where I won't really be contributing that much to the world. I think many people enjoy learning so much that they really don't want to leave it behind.