BY FLASHBOY HERO
Across the cemetery from 901 8th St. So., there is a dark and scary place.
It is a place where students wear sweatpants and leggings to every occasion, and Cobber beanies are looked at as trophies. It is a place where there is not constant singing in the hallways, and not many people hold doors open for one another.
That place is MSUM.
The three universities in the Fargo-Moorhead area offer this thing called ‘Tri-College’, basically meaning that any student attending MSUM, Concordia or NDSU can take classes at any of the other colleges. As a Cobber, I decided to take a couple classes at MSUM, mainly because they related directly to what I wanted to do after college, and Concordia didn’t offer the courses. I thought that they would be easy courses because in Cobberville we only study and are up until all hours of the night writing a 15 page paper for our second day of class – and that’s an EASY assignment.
I thought attending MSUM would be a breeze. It would be nice to get off campus and meet new people, and it would be nice to learn new material. Walking into my fi rst class at MSUM, I was surprised to see that no one was talking to one another, and no one seemed to know anyone. At Concordia everyone knows everyone, and it is rare for class to be silent. Students seemed afraid of one another and afraid of the material. It was super weird.
As the semester progressed, I learned that students at MSUM are different from Cobbers in many ways. For one, they actually know what a party is and don’t spend their entire weekend studying. I never knew what a party was until I attended MSUM, and I never knew about that awesome part of life. What’s college without alcohol? We are given four years to be irresponsible, and that’s never something I got at Concordia. How are we supposed to be responsible if we aren’t irresponsible for once? MSUM students know that.
Secondly, professors are incredibly chill. Students that only show up to class once a semester don’t get an evil glare once fi nals roll around. Instead, it’s a nice hello and conversation about life, and then the student goes on to ace their fi nal. How cool is that?
Maybe I made the wrong college choice initially. Maybe I should just transfer to the place that I can party every night and not go to class when I don’t feel like it. I could make memories that don’t involve getting a beanie stolen or agonizing over textbooks and music theory and a million other commitments over the weekend. Unfortunately, I can’t. I am graduating in a couple weeks and will have only studying memories and student loans for the rest of my life by which to remember my college career.