How I Envisioned College Versus Reality

When growing up as a kid, one imagines what college is going to be like and a plethora of factors weigh into the decision-making process as to where one will end up for the next four-ish years of their life (depending on transferring and/or Van Wilder-ing). One imagines the wild Greek life ragers, the poppin’ basketball and football games against rivals with school spirit surrounding the stadium, and the large lecture halls where you are just a number to the professor (and his teacher’s assisant) attempting to grade 300+ papers.

But then, you look at Fort Lewis College nestled snuggly on top of a mesa in Durango, Colorado. This is not your typical college experience. First of all, those aforementioned “Greek life ragers”, simply do not exist at Fort Lewis because, well, we simply do not have Greek life. Instead, people here would rather have intimate “kickbacks”, or go backpacking in the wilderness for a wild, ragin’ weekend with some close friends. Also, those “poppin’ basketball and football games” are not an every game occasion as they would be at some Division-I schools. Although some of our varsity sports teams are quite good (our basketball team went to the NCAA Division-II tournament last year! and our Cycling team wins Division-I national championships like every year!) the attendance and school spirit of those in attendance just isn’t quite there (all game, every game). Instead, once again, the FLC students would much rather go outdoors than get rowdy at a basketball game or yell chants at a football game.

Now, all that has been said aside, these aren’t inherently bad things of Fort Lewis College. Fort Lewis College is just different. That’s why we all chose it. Some people transfer away because the party scene wasn’t for them or the town was boring, but there is so much else to do rather than what you see depicted in the media about college. Instead of raging at party, we rage down hills on our mountain bikes. Instead of getting rowdy at sporting events, we get rowdy at kickbacks with close homies or go explore the expansive wilderness surrounding us.

FORT LEWIS COLLEGE: Where kids care more about psychedelics and experiencing neature than watching a ball be used for different purposes.
(***Neature = “Nature” and “Neat” combined***)