5 Things About Kenyon That Have Surprised Me

As a first-year at a Kenyon, I knew that I would be in for some totally new and different experiences.  Having visited a few times before deciding to go here, however, I thought I basically knew what to expect.  And yet there are still quite a few things that have surprised me.

1. How Small Kenyon Can Really Feel

I thought I knew what I was getting into coming to Gambier, AKA the middle of nowhere. All summer I dreamed about the secluded little campus where I would become such a studious, cliché college student. Sometimes, the isolation can be a bit much, and I find myself craving the city in a way that I didn’t foresee. 

2. How Consistently Good Peirce Food Is: While my friends at other colleges complain about their schools’ cafeterias or rotten meal plans, I get to revel in the wonderfulness that is Peirce’s unlimited and delicious food.  From the abundance of yummy local produce to the variety of options, Peirce has yet to disappoint me.

3. How Much Homework College Students Get: This one really shouldn’t have surprised me, and I was expecting more work in college (and I know any upperclassmen are probably laughing at what we freshman consider a lot of work), but it still startled me just how much reading I get assigned in each of my classes.

4. How Short Classes Are: The flip side to how much time I now spend on homework is how little time I spend in class compared to high school.  In high school, I was in school for seven hours straight each day.  Here, I’m only in class for a total of two or three hours each day, and I get to pick when my classes are.  It’s weird and different, but I’m certainly no less busy here!

5. How Much I Miss Everyone Back Home: It’s the little things that I find myself missing from home that I never expected I would: making dinner with my mom, walking my dog at night, meeting up with my high school friends at the end of each day of school.  Kenyon is great, and often I’m so busy here that I don’t even have the time to stop and feel homesick, but sometimes you just have those moments where you yearn for what’s familiar and for those who’ve known you the longest.      

I’m sure that there will be much more to surprise me over the next four years, and I look forward to continuing to discover more about my new home.

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