Evergreen State College

Date: Feb 26 2004
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
Everything about evergreen is a double-edged sword. You think no grades, no required general ed credits or major requirements. The no grades thing, combined with Evergreen being ranked the "#1 cannabis school" last year is bringing in the students who don't give a shit. Not having any order to the credits you're earning makes transferring tricky, as you might need just one or two certain credits that you can't get without taking a 16 credit program you can't stand.

The faculty are a mixed bag too. You get the few that truly believe in the philosophies of the college and don't slack. But you also get a lot of really flaky people. Sometimes I wonder how these types got through graduate school. With them, you can turn a paper in weeks late and it won't even matter. This really makes those of us who have our act together feel like we're wasting our time.

Something that goes hand-in-hand with this flakiness is the bullshit you'll find in your narrative evals. A lot of programs here are fluff, and it's easy to see that just reading the catalog. You really do need to be incredibly self-motivated to come here, but if you're not..you'll get by anyway. There are entire 16-credit programs dedicated to puppet theatre; photography; printingmaking; etc.

The social life sucks. Nothing starts happening till 10, and everything is shut down by 1a.m. due to the campus-wide sound curfew. There's usually only one, sometimes two, big parties on campus on any given weekend. Despite almost everyone having friday's off class, nothing happens till friday or saturday night, and usually only one of those.

The music people are into is almost exclusively indie hip hop or modest mouse. You make the call if that's a good thing, personally dancing to the same atmosphere song every weekend gets old.

It's a small enough school that you can meet someone and see them around again. My problem with being at such a small college is everyone knows everyone, I really wanted to get away from that aftr leaving a small town.

Olympia sucks. No bands come here, the only decent theater is a 20 minute drive from campus or a 45 minute busride. Oh, the buses? Yeah, they stop running around 6 on weekends. Good luck seeing a movie or eating dinner or doing anything.

Also, the rain? I'm from the northwest, but the rain here is just sinister. It's out to get you, no doubt about it. Olympia is in a special pocket of geography that sucks all the shitty weather into it.

And how could I forget the food. Freshman are required to buy a (minimum) $500 meal plan. The food fucking blows, and it costs a fortune. It's run by Bon Appetit, a massive corporation that makes food for prisons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is if you have dreadlocks, like talking about Phish shows or trading Modest Mouse bootlegs and want to get a B.S. in BS, come to Evergreen.