Sometimes it feels too large, but sometimes anonymity is nice, and there are always ways to make the largeness feel smaller - by talking to your professors outside of class, forming really close-knit groups with the people you live with, joining clubs or starting them, or any other number of things. (Some of my hallmates have combine two of these, for example, by learning that they get along really well together here in the dorm they've randomly found themselves in together and also by joining a humor magazine together.) People don't really say anything when I tell them I go to Michigan, although sometimes I get an appreciative sound. I spend most of my time in my room, lamely, but there are really beautiful places around here to go to, indoors or out. Michigan's administration is pretty AMAZING - I've found unfailingly nice people here, whether financial aid advisors, health counseling services, or instrucors, who are always willing to set confused students straight or give them extra time to write their essays if they really need them. This is a life lesson you can learn anywhere, but there also seems to be no such thing as a stupid question at Michigan - ask it, and someone somewhere will allay your anxiety without delay. The biggest recent controversy on campus was undoubtedly the administration's decision to move this year's graduation ceremony to a non-university building because the main university graduation building is undergoing repairs, although last year's state decision to end affirmative action is still a significant controversy. There is a LOT of school pride, although people show it in different ways. (We seem to try to make sure that there is not an obnoxious amount of it, though, which is nice: before every away game during football season, the provost sends us emails reminding us not to overstep it if we travel to other college towns to watch our team play.) Unusual things about Michigan: I've never spent a lot of time at other universities, so I don't know how much of everything here is wholly unique to Michigan, except obviously the stuff with the words "MICHIGAN" engraved on it, but I've found the Michigan Union, the Graduate Library, the Michigan League, the Law Quadrangle, and the Diag to be unlike any other places I have ever visited. One of the other things I love to pieces about this campus are the microscopic lines of graffiti that years of students have written into the air vents and onto the doors of the Grad, and there's an amazing corner bathroom stall in one of the main school buildings that I like to think of as one of the school's best-kept secrets. This sounds really weird, I know, but inside it is an entire wall of graffiti confessions overlapping each other and answering each other and inking out the funniest, most painful, and most outrageous things - I go there whenever I feel down and need to be reminded how awesome people are, and yet how fraught with the same existential questions that I am. (Someone broke the lock on the door though, so it's no good trying to use the stall.) One experience that I'll always remember is any one of the many occasions that I've spent wandering around the city - under harvest moons, over autumn leaves, through a foot-high layer of unbroken snow, or while Ann Arbor's crazy flock of crows congregated in the sky. Just a few days ago there was a full lunar eclipse that people stopped to watch in little clusters around the university everywhere there was open space, some of them for an hour. I stood on the side of the Diag and watched the sky, too, and way behind me were two people spinning in their sneakers on the frozen ice field covering the grass, falling down a lot but undoubtedly having the time of their lives. It was totally a Moment.
I guess that if I have any complaints, it's that the academic environment is so exacting, or feels like it's exacting even when it's not, just because of the precedents that students and professors have set over time, that I've had a really intimidated time of it here, and have often felt like I don't have what it takes to make it in life. Also, people leave the public restrooms in seriously crappy conditions sometimes.