Going to…SUNY Stony BrookFiled Under: Announcements, Life

After a rather long and hard process of narrowing a list down of colleges, I have finally arrived at my decision…SUNY Stony Brook!

I was undecided for quite awhile, choosing between SUNY Binghamton or SUNY Stony Brook, and location was the ultimate decider. I currently live about 4 hours away from BU, while I live about 20-25 mins away from SBU (depending on traffic). The academic system between the two schools is awfully similar as well, considering they both under the “SUNY” network of schools. Apparently this makes me a “SeaWolf” as supposed to a “Bearcat” if I went to BU.

I have already put my deposit down (which is a bit expensive if you ask me) so basically the decision is final, since the deposit is non-refundable :). I wanted a university that focused largely on academics, and everything else came secondary. That is what I found with SBU. Another determing factor was visiting the campus of SBU. A few days ago, I went to SBU for the entire day with my sister (she is already enrolled there as well), and sat in on a couple classes as well as walked around the campus. I really loved the atmosphere of the school, it was well designed architecture wise, the campus seemed relatively quiet and one of the major things I noticed was the freedom given to the students. This is obviously common knowledge, but the difference between the High School setting and a University setting is quite dramatic. In a High School, there is essentially no freedom, everyone must follow the rules, or face some sort of discipline. The teachers are paid to be more than simply educators, but baby-sitters as well. They walk students through every lesson, holding their hand, making sure they know certain miscellaneous unimportant facts that will show up on the extremely easy tests given out every couple weeks or so. There is no room for intellectuals in such a setting, rather a High School building is positively a harmful enviroment both physically and mentally for any intellectual. The work is often nothing more than time consuming nonsense that is redundant.

That all changes when it comes to the University. The students are no longer regarded as “children” but rather, adults. The professors don’t care if a student arrives late to class, doesn’t pay attention or don’t complete the work. Your performance just doesn’t matter to them. This removes that “baby-sitting” mentality of High School teachers, as those who put in the effort and get the work done will succeed, and it is entirely dependant on the particular student. I am aware that most reading this will say, “well obviously,” but, that runs the danger of underestimating the change.

Change is what most people want these days, from politics to social life, change has become a term of “cliche-esque proportion.” But, there is no better word to describe the leap from High School to the University, it is the change that any intellectual will welcome with open arms, and hopefully an open mind.

Tags: sbu, stony, stonybrook, suny, sunystonybrook