One of the best things about Scripps is taking small classes with professors who are really invested in our education. The professors here are really fantastic and very accessible. They hold office hours every week and can always make an appointment with you if you can’t make that time. Our average class size is 16 so you know your professors and they know you. None of our classes are taught by TAs, so you’re always learning directly from your professors and building relationships with them.
I go to a lot of office hours. It’s something I never really learned to do until later in my time at college, but it’s probably the best advice I could give someone coming into college. Going to office hours is not only a great way to get help when you need it, but a great way to get to know your professor. It can also help them cut you some slack, if they can see how hard you’ve been working at their class.
I’ve had professors who are incredibly generous with their time and patience. One professor I had this year held an extra class at night for Jewish students who had to miss our regular class due to holidays. She came in with dinner and snacks for us and spent two hours reteaching her lesson to three students. My advise to any student looking to build a relationship with their professors is to go to whatever extra time, study session, office hour they hold. They will remember that you came and they will appreciate it. Professors love it when you show that you’re as dedicated to learning as they are to teaching.
One of the reasons I chose Scripps was because of its focus on providing a liberal arts education. We spend a lot of our time on interdisciplinary learning and I love that about Scripps. There are so many ways to look at a problem, to look at history and the present, and it’s fascinating to address the same thing from many different disciplines.
The most important aspect of our library arts education is our General Education requirements. Scripps requires us to take at least one class in seven different disciplines, from math to writing, to gender and feminist studies. This makes sure that every student who graduates from Scripps has a broad understanding of academic pursuits as well as a deep understanding of their own field. This has opened me up to a lot of learning opportunities I may not have gotten other places. My geology class was probably the GE I enjoyed the most (you go on field trips and rocks are actually very interesting, I promise). I nervous to complete my Math GE in my second semester senior year. I hadn’t done math since high school. Now, I’m fulfilling it with a Stats for Political Science. I thought it was going to be a challenging, maybe boring, fulfillment of a requirement, but instead it’s one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken at college! I’m so glad I had this experience because I get to use my brain in a completely different way than I normally do. I only wish I had time to do more!