Evergreen State College

Date: Mar 12 2002
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
Evergreen requires you to be strongly self-motivated. There is no hand-holding here. It is not high school, and this is a Good Thing, in my opinion. For this reason, though, many people don't get through all four years.

You will do a lot of writing in most Evergreen programs, and most of all, you will participate in seminars—small discussion groups with faculty and other students. You come out of TESC with a strong ability to present and defend your ideas—and, probably, an enjoyment of arguing for the fun of it.

Evergreen has NO GRADES. This does not, however, mean that it is easy. Instead of letter grades, you get lengthy narrative evaluations of your work. I have a thick portfolio full of these evaluations now. I did get into graduate school (in the humanities, though I know of many who went on to graduate work in the sciences as well), even with the narrative transcript and no GPA.

When I was first at Evergreen, an older student told me that the first thing to learn at TESC is this—Never take no for an answer. That is definitely a good skill to know. At Evergreen, you may need it when you are told that no professor will sponsor your individual contract, or there are no openings in the program you MUST take.

About the environment of the campus—it is in a forested area, very peaceful and beautiful. Olympia is not the most exciting city in the world, but it is only 75 miles from Seattle, which is much more fun. TESC is also very much a "hippie" school, which can be annoying sometimes if you're not into the Dead. But there are plenty of non-hippies around too, and lots of activities on campus. However, there is NO Greek system (good riddance!).

One final note—all classes are taught by faculty. There are no TAs teaching classes at TESC. I think the largest class I ever had was 60 students, but it was team taught, and 15-20 of us met with one faculty member for seminar. So there are no warehouses full of freshmen being taught by flustered TAs.

Enjoy Evergreen. It's a different sort of place. :)