Cardinal Preview Days
Early last week, I was asked to go to a question-and-answer session at Cardinal Preview Days to answer questions about my department (Computer Science) for prospective students. I decided to do it, despite the fact that I would have to go late because I had class right before I was to be there.
It wasn't quite what I expected, and I didn't get to say as much as I would have liked to. I was at the front of a large room with several other students answering questions from an audience of parents and potential students. There were two good questions that were asked that I didn't really get to jump in and answer, so I'll talk about them here.
The first was about the biggest difference between high school and college. A couple of the others answered that in college, nobody makes you go to class, which is a very good answer. Another answer was that a lot of the learning in college is self-directed, and class is just there to clarify things. In addition to that, there are some programs here (The Virginia Ball Center, for one) that are completely different not only from high school classes, but also from typical college courses. The learning is directed not just by the professor, but largely by the students. When I was at the VBC, the twelve of us made the vast majority of the decisions regarding our project for the semester. In my honors classes, we were given a lot of freedom over how to do our final projects for the class.
The other question was something along the lines of "what advice could you offer to those of us considering attending Ball State?" The first thing that comes to my mind is scholarships: Apply for every scholarship that you qualify for. My mom was constantly on me about filling out the forms and writing the essays. I hated it then, but it turned out to be worth it; my schooling is completely paid for because I managed to get a couple of good scholarships.
After the question-and-answer session, I went with two of the other students to the new dining area at Woodworth (one of the dorms). The place was renovated over the summer, but I hadn't been there yet. It's really nice and has about five different places to eat. There's an Italian place, an Asian place, a hamburger place, and a couple others that I don't remember. Unfortunately, it's on the south end of campus, so it's a bit out of my way to eat at regularly.