Bigger IS Better

I meant to post this a couple weeks ago. Between being busy and just not carving out the time to do it, it's languished in the back of my mind. But here it is - I'm finally turning it into reality. Words to the page, thoughts to pixels, keystrokes to the scree--man, I'm tired. WARNING: This could be really very quite rambly.

The point of the post, and what the title is hinting at, is that when I was looking for a college, I was incredibly wrong in what I was looking for. I maintained I wanted a small school - but after being at UMD, a campus swarming with around 25,000 undergraduates, for a length of time that seems longer than it has been I can see I had not a clue.

It's not just the different social mentality. I don't know about being anywhere else, although I have a feeling it's similar at most colleges, but with a place this big, you get the feeling that there's always someone out there who would be enjoyable to hang out with. There's so many people how could there not be someone who's going to share your interests? And if you make a complete fool of yourself with one person, you're probably never going to see them again - so who cares?

My guess is that feeling is present in most places - especially coming from a small high school. But what I feel is unique about the size of UMD is the opportunities the campus presents. I already wrote about my then upcoming trip to the Nats' game and meeting Bob Carpenter. Well on top of that, there's a host of other things going on...

On the Wednesday following my post, I went to the game. We sat between Carpenter and his color commentator as they called the game. We went down to the producers truck and saw how they queued up the instant replay, and how they warned the announcers ahead of time when they were putting a graphic on the screen. We even stopped in on the radio booth.

Earlier that morning I had attended a rally for Ben Cardin's campaign for Senate. Senator Barbara Mikulski and Senator Barack Obama came and spoke to a crowd of about 500-1,000. The next day I attended a lecture by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon. When I got back, I got an email that said there was something called the Sadat Lecture for Peace coming up. You could get tickets for free - the lecture would be given by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA (the international body that inspects countries' nuclear activities) and the winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

All that in the space of 2 days...and that's not to mention the opportunities I haven't been able to cash in on because of schedule conflicts - like attending a lecture by Dr. Maxine Singer, a winner of the National Medal of Science, who was talking about intelligent design vs. evolution, or attending another seminar entitled "Entrepreneurship in a Flat World."

The opportunities are coming faster than I can handle them, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Obviously a lot of the prestigious schools have similar opportunities, but not as many or as wide a range. All this is made possible because of the sheer size of the University of Maryland. And although I wasn't looking for this, I'm happy I ended up involved in it.