By Sam Smyth
2005-06 Gargoyle Senior Editor
Posted Monday, June 26, 2006, The OG, opinions

A friend of mine graduated this year from a good public school in Madison, Wis. Throughout his high school career he managed to be a top student in all of his classes with ease. In fact, his homework time would be considered a joke by Uni standards.

This allowed him to load on the extracurricular activities after school while maintaining a high status with his teachers. Thus, he developed an impressive résumé and attained acceptance into a large number of the elite colleges. Not that he didn't deserve his achievements — he is very smart and had impressive test scores — but it made me wonder if, given the opportunity to go to a regular school instead, would I do it?

No way.

While there is a solid chance I would have been able to perform as he did at a normal public school, Uni had unique qualities that I would not have traded — most importantly, my peers.

Over five years, I learned a deep respect for my fellow students. I remember from my one-year tenure at Urbana Middle School being one of maybe two or three students who would participate in class and answer questions. At Uni, on the other hand, every student in the classroom was capable of providing insight I had never considered on novels we read or helping me with an anti-derivative.
In the lounge, you were just as likely to find students playing chess or debating current events as sleeping or telling stories. There was a sense of trust and desire to help each other through the weeks. This was most clearly personified by lockers hanging open; if you needed to borrow a textbook from someone, no problem, just put it back.

More importantly, I appreciated my classmates' humor and wit. In other schools, humor is confined to “I did your mama last night.” While some crude humor still exists here, you'll find much longer and more intelligent stories. Also, I felt much more free to be myself — a little ridiculous and quirky at times — without fear of being judged or shunned.

I also found Uni to be the perfect size, small enough to allow you to really come to know people and to develop a schoolwide sense of humor that I am sure students from other schools would not understand. I have countless memories with my friends, with students from all of the classes I was in, and I am already missing many of them. The students really made my time here.

Of course, we also owed a lot to the teachers who work hard on demanding curricula with low pay compared to those of both public and private schools on par with Uni.

OK, now that I have been sufficiently cheesy, I had some issues with Uni and would like to offer some advice to my readers. I do not intend to come across as having a victim complex. Rather, many of these woes were brought on by my own actions, or I could have avoided them, and I intend to help my readers steer clear of the same mishaps.

You should ask yourself what your ultimate high school goal is. You have probably been told to work hard at what you enjoy, and eventually your ship will come to port. I have found this to be true to a limit.

In the end, colleges want uniqueness as much as anything else. In other words, something you've spent maybe 200 hours a year on, say a sport or piano, will probably only look as good as a 20-hour course you once took on Klingon language.

As much as it pains me to say it, in this modern day of college admissions where many families pay tens of thousands to hire private counselors to pad their children's résumés to gain them admittance into elite colleges, you should always ask yourself what you can do to improve your appeal or if something is really worth the time you are putting into it (if your main goal is to get into an elite school).

I once made the decision to stick with something because I felt I was garnering enough from it to justify hurting my chance of gaining acceptance into competitive colleges. I thought it was more important that I was learning, a decision I now regret.

This school also sent me a few curveballs. I had scheduling problems that should never have been an issue, and I was unable to take a class important for my desired field of study, to name one. An exceedingly few number of teachers, actually one, also caused me much anguish, and once again I recommend that you always evaluate your options critically — say, switching out of a class if need be.

Despite the tough academics and other bumps, however, I am sure I will be more prepared for college than most. My brother, who did very well at the U of I, told me it was no sweat stepping up from Uni. Ultimately, I am thankful for my experience at Uni and the invaluable acquaintances I have made.