I love going to a small college. Stonehill College is smaller than my high school was by several hundred students, and I’ve only had one class so far that was bigger than my biggest class in high school. When I first went to college information sessions and heard the school mentioning its low student-to-instructor ratio, I didn’t understand why they kept making a point of this. Now, after a year and a half of classes, I get it.
Some of my friends go to huge universities. They have lecture classes with a few hundred students. The professors don’t take attendance in these classes, and I can’t imagine that they would actually notice if a student was absent. In some of these classes, attending the lectures is just a formality, and you can do perfectly fine without it.
This could not be any more different from the class sizes at Stonehill. Even now, only three semesters in, I have had multiple classes with a single-digit number of students. This semester, one of my classes has eight students and another one has four. Having such small classes has given me an opportunity that my friends at bigger schools do not always get. I’ve been able to get to know my professors pretty well, and can honestly say that I’ve yet to have a bad one.
All of my professors have had such contagious enthusiasm about their respective subjects. Whether it’s Latin, biology, history, or political science, the professors at Stonehill all show such genuine interests in what they’re teaching. Ultimately, this makes classes so much easier to sit through. If a person loves what he or she is talking about, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that you love it too, even if just for the duration of a class. When I go to class, I know that I won’t have to deal with monotonous lectures in which the professor repeats textbook chapters verbatim. Instead, I get to hear an incredibly intelligent professors talk about what they are passionate about and what they have basically dedicated their lives to researching.
The professors I’ve had so far have also always made connections between the course material and “real life.” To me at least, this makes content so much more understandable. Textbook definitions sometimes seem so abstract, and it’s difficult to understand what they mean without being given a concrete example and being able to say “an example of x is y.” Rather than prepare us to spit back definitions on a blank test form, Stonehill professors prepare students to engage with the world around them.
Further, every professor I’ve encountered at Stonehill so far has been incredibly available to students. All professors have set office hours each week, but there have been times when these do not work with my class schedules. In these cases, professors have been completely willing to accommodate my schedule, and we’ve been able to find a meeting time that works well for both of us. On the same note, my Latin professor has gone as far as to drive onto campus on Sundays to meet with students who have limited availability during the week, and to help us prepare for exams. Going above and beyond in this respect shows students that Stonehill professors want to help us as much as they can.
Lastly, my professors have always made their expectations very clear. Compared to what I expected before my freshman year, I’ve done relatively little wondering what specific assignment guidelines are. This was one of the most calming aspects of my freshman year. The workload was tough, but I didn’t have to waste time trying to decipher professors’ instructions.
I can’t say enough positive things about the professors at Stonehill. If any of you end up reading this, thank you, and please keep doing what you’re doing. Professors shape the future in the sense that they prepare the next generation of thinkers to take over. With the professors at Stonehill doing this work, I think that the future is going to be OK.
