This past weekend for fall break, I traveled to the University of Maryland. As I headed there, I didn’t know what to expect. The school is very different than Middlebury, with over 22,000 students and being located only twenty minutes outside of Washington D.C. Surprisingly, I really liked the school and the atmosphere.The campus was very pretty with all brick buildings and I did not feel like it was too crowded. The sport’s facilities were huge and very nice. When I was younger, I always wanted to go to a school with D1 sport’s teams where the student section was huge and the teams were dominant. As I grew up, I realized that I liked smaller schools better, but it was still nice to be able to see what my old “ideal school” would have been like. One major difference between Maryland and here was the amount of diversity. Forty percent of the student population is non-white and there was a very noticeable difference from the population here at Middlebury. Also the food selection was very different. In the main food court there were places like McDonalds, Sbarro, Auntie Anne’s, Panda Express, and Chick-fil-A. If you took a ten minute walk away from campus, you came to a strip of restaurants and bars. The strip included pizza places, Chipotle, as well as my personal favorite ColdStone. Even though I really enjoyed switching it up a little and eating more mainstream, I am very thankful that Middlebury does not have these options. I enjoy being able to eat meals from the dining hall rather than pay for food and consume an enormous amount of calories every meal. Overall, I really enjoyed my trip and I would love to go back. However, I definitely made the right choice in coming to Middlebury.
http://theges.com/images/portfolio/UMCP%20Aerial.jpg