Lunches in Valentine dining hall with intense debates about the upcoming election and common room discussions about the new Hudson River Valley exhibit in Mead Art Museum. These and so much more were what I expected to encounter in my first year at the College. However, I soon found that these notions were nothing more than uninformed stereotypes surrounding the elite liberal arts education.

As a student coming from a rigorous all-girls high school, I came to Amherst expecting to be blown away by the intelligence and academic drive of the students. I was hoping for an environment that would foster academic growth without the competition and singular focus on admission into a prestigious college that surrounded my high school career. In fact, I was quite nervous about coming to the College believing that I would not be able to hold my own in class discussions or even in outside social interactions. I thought that students outside of the classroom would be discussing current events or having large philosophical debates that I would know nothing about.

However, I soon sadly found that a majority of our students are surprisingly complacent. Instead of being overly concerned with the upcoming math test it seems that playing Madden is a more pressing matter. While these thoughts were always in the back of my mind, I was never fully aware of them until a certain LJST professor brought them into view. He and many of the professors here are also in agreement about the lack of motivation that our students have. It seems to me that our professors are aware of this tendency, but they are not the ones who need to change it.

So where then does this attitude come from? With SAT scores, number of applicants, and the quality of the applicant pool at an all-time high, Amherst students should be trying to change the Frost Library into a dorm to make researching more convenient. Yet they seem to be more interested in what happened last weekend in the Penalty Box.

I have yet to determine if this is simply a freshman "burn out" phenomenon resulting from four years of intense preparation for admission to college or if it is a trend that will continue throughout my Amherst career. I am hoping that it is the former and maybe soon I will find the Amherst that I was so anxiously looking forward to.

Caitlin is a first-year living in Waldorf-Astoria Dormitory. Comments and conversation will reach her at cpatterson10@amherst.edu.