With sand under my feet, seawater around my legs, and gentle winds blowing, I took a stroll on the beach. As I walked further away from the beach house where I was staying, my friends’ laughter faded into the sound of crashing waves. The sun was setting, casting an orange glow over the landscape. I took a picture - a snapshot of the sun disappearing behind a calm horizon. I can hardly remember another time when I was this thoroughly happy. This is what the last eight months of my life has been like. This is Stanford.
That weekend, my residential assistants (upperclassman who lead and supervise my all-freshman dorm) had rented two beach houses to accommodate all 40 people in my dorm to mark the beginning of Spring Quarter. The camera I used was a Canon EOS 5D, an almost professional SLR camera that a class equipped me with.
This class is the Technical Aspects of Photography, taught by a physics Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Douglas Osheroff, who happens to be an avid photographer. There are countless professors like Dr. Osheroff in Stanford – professors who want to share their passions – professors willing to spend thousands of dollars on camera equipment for you, drive you to various scenic locations on photo excursions to “gain field experience,” then treat you to lunch simply because you happen to share the same interests as them.
Besides these interest-driven seminars, my regular classes are just as remarkable. To provide some perspective, my multivariable calculus class uses the same textbook as an equivalent class at MIT, but we went through the entire book much faster than the class at MIT did. Why? Because while most universities (including MIT) use a fifteen-week semester system, Stanford operates on a ten-week quarter system. The pace of classes is definitely faster at Stanford, but we also get to choose classes twelve times as an undergraduate, as opposed to only eight times in semester-system universities. Students here have more opportunities to explore their interests.
The atmosphere at Stanford is rather laid back. The cutthroat competition and snobby elitism commonly associated with top institutions simply don’t exist here. After all, Stanford’s campus used to be a large farm, and I suspect the landscape’s idyllic and pastoral past infects the spirit of whoever sets foot upon our beautiful campus.
My peers are the nicest, most caring, and most diverse group of people I have ever met; not to mention they are all extremely intelligent, talented, and passionate about what they do. From the Icelandic polyglot aspiring to be a neurosurgeon to the Massachusetts entrepreneur who already owns a multimillion dollar company; the Malaysian winner of the International Mathematics Olympiad to the Californian violin prodigy who worked at the White House, this is the essence of Stanford.
That weekend, my residential assistants (upperclassman who lead and supervise my all-freshman dorm) had rented two beach houses to accommodate all 40 people in my dorm to mark the beginning of Spring Quarter. The camera I used was a Canon EOS 5D, an almost professional SLR camera that a class equipped me with.
This class is the Technical Aspects of Photography, taught by a physics Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Douglas Osheroff, who happens to be an avid photographer. There are countless professors like Dr. Osheroff in Stanford – professors who want to share their passions – professors willing to spend thousands of dollars on camera equipment for you, drive you to various scenic locations on photo excursions to “gain field experience,” then treat you to lunch simply because you happen to share the same interests as them.
Besides these interest-driven seminars, my regular classes are just as remarkable. To provide some perspective, my multivariable calculus class uses the same textbook as an equivalent class at MIT, but we went through the entire book much faster than the class at MIT did. Why? Because while most universities (including MIT) use a fifteen-week semester system, Stanford operates on a ten-week quarter system. The pace of classes is definitely faster at Stanford, but we also get to choose classes twelve times as an undergraduate, as opposed to only eight times in semester-system universities. Students here have more opportunities to explore their interests.
The atmosphere at Stanford is rather laid back. The cutthroat competition and snobby elitism commonly associated with top institutions simply don’t exist here. After all, Stanford’s campus used to be a large farm, and I suspect the landscape’s idyllic and pastoral past infects the spirit of whoever sets foot upon our beautiful campus.
My peers are the nicest, most caring, and most diverse group of people I have ever met; not to mention they are all extremely intelligent, talented, and passionate about what they do. From the Icelandic polyglot aspiring to be a neurosurgeon to the Massachusetts entrepreneur who already owns a multimillion dollar company; the Malaysian winner of the International Mathematics Olympiad to the Californian violin prodigy who worked at the White House, this is the essence of Stanford.
Last edited by velindaliao on Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:41 am; edited 4 times in total