Every Saturday morning, I execute the same routine. Wake up at 9 a.m., get ready, fill my backpack up with school books, block out the world with Spotify, and head out to Pierce for breakfast and a few hours of schoolwork – just a morning to myself.
Now, what I’m going to explain might seem weird, but I swear that every Saturday morning, the outside air is unbelievably different than it was the days before. Before you speculate if I’m feeling okay, let me say that this isn’t a joke, and I promise I don’t stay out late on Friday nights.
The moment I open the door to leave Humphreys, I can tell the difference. The air is crisper, cleaner, and clearer. The smell of freshness is so prominent that I can’t help but smile. Campus is so quiet and calm, contrary to bustling weekday mornings with students around. It’s as if the air has yet to be infiltrated by the many bodies of freshman students living in dorms on campus.
If I’m honest, I would like it if Stevens were bigger. But when I really think about what I’m used to, I wouldn’t know how to handle a bigger school. I grew up around the same 60 people in the same neighborhood from elementary school through my sophomore year of high school. Granted, things changed when I transferred for junior and senior year to a high school where there were around 200 people in each grade, but that’s still relatively small.
Stevens as a whole is much larger than just 200 people in each class, but on the scale of a higher education university it is considered small. And the fact that there are times when I step out of Humphreys and see virtually nobody around me proves just how small it really is here. And I feel especially lucky that I chose not only a major that mirrors the close-knit community of Stevens, but involvement in an organization that is genuinely a family. I can only speak for The Stute, but I see a lot of evidence that points towards the idea that a lot of Stevens organizations are communities. And not just communities, but welcoming communities.
There’s a difference between being a club that is cult-like and doesn’t welcome new members and being an organization that encourages new members at any time. And I think a really special part of Stevens is how great the student organizations are at welcoming people as a part of their community.
Lately, I’ve heard a lot of negative talk about Stevens. Whether it’s about the construction, the lack of communication between administration and students, or problems with registration, it’s all I’ve been hearing lately. And while I agree with a lot of complaints students are making, I think we also need to highlight a lot of the great things about Stevens. For me, it comes down to the sense of community Stevens offers even when I can look around me sometimes and see a vast, open campus of calmness.
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