Taylor Caldwell - Mercer Island, WA
Pitzer is curious, inquisitive, and insatiable. Pitzer is
diverse, quirky, and unique. Pitzer is well-rounded, passionate, and involved.
Pitzer is community, friendly, and intimate. To define Pitzer College with just
one word, or even three, would be a crime of inadequate praise for a school
that has made me the person I am today. At this school I have battled and won a
war with depression, I have fallen in love and gotten my heart broken, I have
lost friends and made new ones, but above all I have never been happier or more
sure of who I am and what I want out of life. Pitzer has been a safety net, a vast
yet intimate community of students with their arms spread wide to any and all
newcomers. I knew this was the right place for me when I returned back to
campus after my first fall break, telling my friends that I was “so excited to
come home”. I even made the mistake a few times to invite people over to my
house when I was simply referring to my dorm room.
This place is especially
hard for me to define because I find it to be extremely fluid. Although this
school provides an overwhelming amount of resources and opportunities which
anxiously await students to take an interest (and they normally do), the Pitzer
experience is only what a person makes of it. There truly is a niche for
everyone, making the campus an adaptive and ever changing safe space for each
individual student to explore their passions, desires, and talents. From a
Balinese gamelan ensemble to queer burlesque, it is the uniquely curious and
adventurous nature of the Pitzer student body that allows this campus to
thrive. Though some may find the abundant number of cacti and succulents to be
oddly comforting, others may not love Pitzer as much as I do. The point is, the
way I define Pitzer College may be entirely different through someone else’s
eyes and that is not a bad thing, rather quite the opposite. The soul of this
school, comprised by the unbelievably benevolent facilities and dining hall
staff, the knowledgeable faculty, and the rest of Pitzer’s amazing employees
have created and fostered an environment conducive to a high degree of academic
rigor without the cut-throat pressures of an Ivy league, a flourishing social
scene without the exclusive cattiness of a Greek system, and most importantly a
place that any and all students can call their “home”.
