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Hi, I'm Maisie, and today I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about how I came to choose Hampshire College and why I love it here. I'm from Olympia, Washington, which is about as far away so you can get from Massachusetts and still be in the continental U. S. And so, to any prospective students that are from out of state, whether it's New Jersey or Pennsylvania or Nebraska or Washington, it can be really scary to think about going to college in the States so far from home. If you feel ready, I could not recommend it more. I think it's an amazing experience to get to see another part of the United States and to get to know people from all over. I also took a gap year after my senior year of high school, I went and I lived abroad in Spain, with Spanish families and learned Spanish there, and did some volunteer work. And after that year, when I was looking at going back into college, I was really nervous that I would have difficulty connecting with people who were straight out of high school because I felt like I had done so much growth over that year. And so to any prospective students that have taken a gap year or are looking to take a gap year, I just want to share that. My experience has been that Hampshire is an exceptional place to enter into after having taken a gap year. I think that Hampshire, more than most colleges, recognizes that there are so many valuable ways of learning. And that belief is really reflected here in the academics and the classes and the evaluation based grades and the community in culture here in Hampshire College. All right, so now you know a little bit more about me. I'm going to answer four questions that I'll put right here. And then we'll go around and talk to some other Hampshire students about their experiences. Hi, I'm Robert Wasik and I'm from California. Hi, I'm Katharine, and I'm from Madelia, Minnesota. Uh, my name is John. I am from Walden in New York. Hi, I'm a Mickey. I also know this Naya on them from New York City. In high school, I personally was a pretty academically driven student. I took a lot of AP classes. I really enjoyed being in classes where the other students were motivated. To learn. But I didn't feel like my grades or the AP curriculum really showed my engagement with the material and rather showed more my ability to do busy work. I was a good student. I did my work, I took AP classes. And even though I wasn't really involved with student government, I still was in a lot of clubs. And yeah, I really enjoyed being in clubs. Um, I was very academically focused student, I uh, always did well on all of my various assessments and projects. That was it was a weird situation. It was like grades wise, like I was in advanced classes. But like I didn't always turn in my work a lot of the time. And it was just my history in school is very complicated, so it be too long to explain. But the long story short is I was inexplicably in Advanced Student despite barely doing anything. Um, in high school, I would say I was a mixture of between scholar and slightly unmotivated. I aim for high grades, but I did the bare minimum to get those. But what ultimately sealed the deal for me with Hampshire Was, a combination of a small size. It's evaluation based grading and the opportunity that I knew I would have here to really take responsibility for my own education and study things that I was interested and I was passionate about. And I knew I would do better in classes if I was learning the material for me and for my own betterment and growth as a person rather than a requirement for a major. I chose Hampshire because of its open curriculum like it's just totally different from the high school setting of like no grades. Get to. Take classes that you want really fun and liberating. Yeah, I came to visit the campus because I was in the area and it just felt like home. There's no better way to explain it. It was just the one, um, because I feel like I really hate traditional structures of education like, ah, lot like a lot of lot. And I chose Hampshire because my mentor, referred to me. She thought it was very fitting with my personality andthat I’d do well here. My favorite thing about Hampshire so far is definitely my classes there are really, really cool course options, and my classes this semester are great. I'm taking a philosophy class based around the trope of evil in philosophy and literature, a socio linguistics class, um called racism and language, and my first year pandemic seminar, which is taught by an ethnomusicologist and creative writing professor, a history professor and a biology professor. So it's a really, really interesting intersectional course on. I'm also taking a Spanish class at Amherst, which leads me to one of my other favorite things about Hampshire, which is the five college consortium resources is It's really amazing to be able to supplement my education here with Resource is from the other four colleges. My favorite thing about Hampshire is all the diversity. Like people. Every time someone talks, you're just like, Oh, I never thought of that topic before. It's just really insightful. I really like all the people here. Everybody is allowed to be unique and allowed to be themselves. Um, no matter who that is, you're allowed to be that. And it's not weird. Um, yeah, everybody's allowed to be themselves, I guess to like do whatever, like I mean, there's assignments and stuff but like at the end of the day, like it's like, Hey, you get to, develop, make a game or making animation instead of what is write a dissertation on Stalin's second toenail during the period of March 1918 March 1919. And how it relates to the Ukrainian starvation of 2077 felt the scenery is great. The people here are very open minded, Um, and there is no test scores I enjoy that.It allows me to be creative and myself. If I could give any advice to my high school self, I would tell her to remember that college is something that she wants to do and not something she has to do. The college application process can be so tiresome, and I definitely burnt out by the end of it. And I just wish I had remembered that I was really excited for college and that it was something that I was really, really looking forward to. And now that I'm here, I find that it's easier to motivate myself in my classes to remember that this is something I want to do or not something I have to do that I'm really here because I want to be, and so is everyone else. I would say Just don't worry. Like even though you're gonna spend four years in college just like you're going to get through it. It's okay if you make mistakes, don't give up. Wow. Don't stress up too much because you're gonna have half the year off. That's the advice. Um, I would tell myself to choose Hampshire. I would go back in time and tell myself, Choose