This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1278, the typical American college experience.
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Are you curious about college life in the US?
Today, Michelle and Lindsay will share their stories from college and you'll find out how higher education is different in the US compared with your country.
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Hey, Michelle.
Happy mid-December.
How are you?
Hey, Lindsay.
I'm good.
I'm good.
How are you?
Excellent.
Feeling good.
Feeling good.
I've been reminiscing lately about college, the college days.
Have you really?
Oh, my gosh.
Did you have a good college experience?
Of course, I had an awesome experience.
Yeah, I especially remember my friends, you know, from freshman year.
That's the key.
The people you meet freshman year become your friends through all of university.
That's funny because that was my situation sophomore year.
Sophomore year.
Okay.
What happened freshman year?
I mean, like I made friends freshman year.
Definitely there was one friend that I kept for, you know, a very long time.
I haven't spoken to her in a while, though.
But I would say like the friends that stayed with me longest were the friends that I met in sophomore year.
I just had a great floor sophomore year, which is kind of interesting.
That's awesome.
I mean, we have to hang on to those friends.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, sometimes I really miss college.
But one thing I like is I like because I teach at colleges, universities and I get a little taste of college, but then it makes me feel so old.
I know.
Or they seem so young, the kids who are freshmen in college right now, right?
But we're old.
Yeah.
We're getting old.
Yeah.
So, Lindsay, today we actually have a fun question.
I'm so excited to get to this about college in the US, So we're going to read this question in just a second.
But first, Lindsay, what do our listeners have to do?
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Now guys awesome awesome, all right.
So lindsay, we got this awesome question from carmen, so do you want to start the question?
If you want, we can also switch off.
Yeah, let's do it.
So hey, this is from.
So my name is carmen and i'm from spain.
I'm a media consultant and writer.
Oh fancy fancy, all right.
First of all, I'd like to let you know that I've been listening to your podcast for almost a year and it's really helped me to become more fluent in English and to seek deeper connections.
I love that, Michelle.
That's awesome.
That's great.
Thank you for listening.
Yeah, at the moment I work remotely in a multicultural team and sometimes I struggle to understand native accents from Australia, England and the US.
You can't imagine how helpful your program is for me.
Okay, that's awesome.
Now, I have a great story to share with you.
I listened to today's episode, Are You Game?
I remember that episode.
Yep.
With all those great phrases that are likely to be used in job interviews.
Believe it or not, I had one today in the same organization.
And after expressing my interest and explaining my experience, I said, I'm up for the challenge.
We all laughed.
And from that point, we talked in a very relaxed way.
It looks like I almost got the job.
Keep your fingers crossed.
Right.
I hope you got it, Carmen.
I hope so, too.
You want to continue the question, Michelle?
Sure.
Here we go.
Also, may I ask you to explain your experience at university, courses, degrees, campus life? etc.
We learned a lot in music, TV series and books, but I'd be delighted to listen to your experience.
I'm very curious of the path you walked until your current job.
Once again, thank you.
You rock and really have a big impact on our lives.
Have a nice day, Carmen.
Wow.
Thank you so much, Carmen.
That's so cool, Michelle.
Doesn't it feel good to know that our listeners love the show and it actually helps them connect with English.
That to me makes it all worth it.
Oh my gosh.
That's why we're here, guys.
We're here for you and we're so happy to hear nice comments like this.
And yeah, we want to continue to help.
Definitely.
So I'm excited for today, Michelle.
Oh my gosh.
This is going to be cool.
Me too.
Yeah, this is a great chance.
You know Lindsay, we're going to share some of our stories about college and give you guys a taste of college life in the US.
So, you know, I'm sure that we could do a ton of episodes on Carmen's question.
So we're going to choose a few things to talk about today, but we'll continue talking about college in the future.
But yeah, we have done some really old episodes on college.
Yeah, we did one right, we did one with my original co-host before in 2013.
Oh my gosh, we've been podcasting for a long time.
Michelle here, Episode five.
Number five.
Is college in the U.S. worth the price?
My co-host and I had different opinions on that, actually.
So that was interesting.
You should go check that one out.
What else, Michelle?
Episode?
Episode six.
Episode six.
Four English vocab words to discuss college in the US.
So, guys, definitely... Oh, we can talk about college today.
And then...
We did also recently episode 117 D3.
I think maybe this was with Jessica.
You did throwback Thursday challenge on Instagram.
And you were talking about how to talk about the past.
And that would definitely really be helpful for today's episode.
Right.
Good point Michelle, because it's all about you.
Know, you have the stories, but how do you talk about them, right?
With the right grammar tenses and all that good stuff.
Remember, guys, it's really easy to find these episodes if you're in the iOS app.
So just type the episode number in the search bar inside the app.
Okay, cool.
Awesome.
All right.
So we're going to talk about college today.
Yeah, we are going to also give you some good phrases, some good words to go along with this episode.
So yeah, let's get into some questions.
Some questions, Lindsay.
So we're just going to talk through it.
And guys, you're going to get a taste of college.
So Lindsay, I'm going to ask you and then I can answer too.
So why did you choose the school you attended?
Where did you go?
Oh, my gosh.
So I went to Mary Washington College, which was in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
And I actually went back to visit it this past summer and it was so hot down there.
I forgot how hot Virginia can get in the summertime.
Oh my gosh.
But I chose it because of, honestly, because of tennis.
So I was a big tennis player in high school and I wanted to play college tennis.
I went down, I met the coach.
I also noticed that the weather was amazing.
I went down on like a beautiful April weekend and I got a taste of that.
I was like yes, that is for me and so, and so I chose.
But yeah, I ended up playing tennis for four years, except for my semester abroad in Paris, and that was like a that was a fundamental part of my college experience was college athletics, so that's why I went to Mary Washington.
What about you, Michelle?
Where'd you go?
Oh Yeah,
Well, I went to University of Maryland College Park.
And that is not sorry.
A big school, right?
Yes.
That's a state school.
Yeah.
What is a state school, Lindsay?
Yeah.
So we're going to talk about these vocabulary words a little bit in a little while, guys.
But a state school is basically a public college or university that's funded by taxpayer money from the state.
So usually it's a little bit cheaper for in-state people people if you, you know, if you grew up there, if you live there,
And it's often even cheaper out of Like it can be.
So it's a different price point for out-of-state students and in-state students.
Exactly.
So I went to a state school.
That was my state school.
So helped a little bit with the costs, but that doesn't mean it's cheap.
But yeah, I also... I went there because...
I had thought about going to a school like in the city city.
But then I realized walking around Maryland that I really wanted the typical college campus experience with the football team and the basketball team.
And I just I wanted to experience that life, because there's only really that time in your life when you can have that.
And so also my brother went there.
My, you know, other family members went there and I know people love it.
So it's a good school.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I also had those thoughts, you know, when I first went to Mary Washington and I thought it was a bubble.
So it was a very typical campus, like Jeffersonian, Southern architecture.
Everything is in one place, right?
Like, you know, you walk to the door.
There's no city life.
And at that time, I was hungering for city life.
And so I thought about transferring to GW or American University in Washington, or even like BU, like going to Boston.
Yeah.
But I'm glad I didn't because you're right.
That time period is super unique in the US.
We only have one time in which we can live in dorms.
Eat in the dining hall.
Make the best friends of our lives.
It's a very unique experience.
So I'm glad I didn't go to a city school and transfer out.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, me too.
Um so yeah um, and i mean so we were already talking about this a little bit, but you know so lindsey, you were saying that you think you went to kind of a typical school, so like the movies, like the campus, i mean.
So i mean, what is that typical experience?
Let's tell our listeners a little bit more about that.
What do we mean by that?
Yeah,
I mean, I think my school was typical in some ways and kind of atypical.
Good word today, right?
Atypical in other ways.
Guys, write that down.
So we definitely had that contained campus, beautiful campus, absolutely gorgeous, award-winning campus, right.
Yeah.
And we had a dining hall.
We lived on on campus in the dorms every year, except for my senior year.
We lived off campus in a house that we rented the four of us.
But in the sense of we didn't have the we had sports.
Obviously, I played tennis.
We had a rugby team but we didn't have like the big school typical experience, like the huge football games.
We didn't have that part of the typical American college.
But it sounds like you did, Michelle.
Yeah, sports was a big deal.
And, you know, in our in my freshman year, the women's basketball team won the championship.
Yeah.
And that was just like such a fun experience.
You know, going to the games and being on campus.
Yeah.
I don't know.
There's really nothing like that experience.
But in the beginning I was a little bit homesick, even though I went to school 45 minutes away from my parents.
I wasn't used to it.
It's hard to get used to it.
And also, you know, dorms, that's another typical thing, you know, gross dorms.
Hot dorms in the summer, like you said, Lindsay.
Oh, yeah.
There's no air conditioning in dorms.
There's no like central AC.
Yeah, there was like there were one or two dorms that had it, but I was not in those dorms.
And so that was really hard in the beginning.
Um so yeah, but what?
Go ahead no, go ahead uh no, it was just yeah, it was.
It was hard to adjust to in the beginning and uh, but after a couple months i was, i loved it and yeah, i never looked back.
So i'm glad i had that experience.
Yeah, I think this is the part that our listeners might find interesting how different it is.
I find it kind of interesting too, right?
We leave home at 18 for college and we're expected to be kind of an adult at that point.
I mean, not entirely, right?
Because often, I mean, many people's parents will help them pay for college.
So you may be still having your parents help you pay for meals and college and tuition.
But in some ways, you're on your own.
You're like, okay, I'm not living at home anymore.
And that can be really, yeah, that can cause a lot of homesickness.
I found out quickly that my school, unfortunately, was kind of a suitcase school a little bit.
Do you know that term?
Does that mean people leave on the weekends?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, it was.
And I, of course, was coming hard to.
I was from New Hampshire, my family, I wasn't gonna go home, right?
So I was all in on my experience.
And a lot of my friends freshman year would go home.
And I would be like, Oh, you're not going home again this weekend.
Sometimes they would take me home.
Because it was a state school also, but a Virginia state school.
So they lived in Virginia.
But so then that meant we got to have home cooked meals at their home sometimes.
But that created a bit of a lonely feeling sometimes.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I could definitely see that.
Oh, that's hard.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Did you?
Here's a funny question, Lindsay.
Yeah.
Did you put on the freshman 15?
Oh, my God, such a good question.
Even though I was running sprints in the tennis court pretty much every day.
Yes, I feel like I put on about 10 pounds.
Probably.
Yeah.
What about you?
Yeah, I definitely did.
I remember because I thought, oh, there's no way.
I didn't realize that it was happening because I would go to the gym.
There was a gym and I actually, I was really into going.
And so I thought there's no way that I've put on weight.
And then on winter break my mom was like she brought it up and i weighed myself and, sure enough, it had happened.
And oh no, that's so funny exactly.
And i remember looking like, what is it, what is it?
And i, and i knew what it was then because i would, I would eat on, you know because guys, another key word for today's meal plan.
You get kind of these meal plans where you can get, you know, go in and swipe a card.
Anyway, I would always eat these wraps um, it was, like you know, like on a tortilla wrap, like with like chicken fingers and ranch dressing and cheese, and i would eat that like every day and i would think, oh well, it's a sandwich, it's good for you, and i'm sure that it was that ranch dressing and the fried chicken.
Oh, that's so funny.
I mean, you can't get away from it.
This is also a good structure for you guys to remember for our listeners to put on the freshman 15 meaning to gain weight right.
The phrase is the freshman 15.
This is the expected amount of weight that most freshmen in college put on, right?
Just because you're not used to eating at a dining hall, where it's usually just a unlimited right, you can go up as many times as you want and you get into a habit of eating more than you're used to at home.
Yeah, it's true, your mom said something oh, my gosh geez.
Yeah, i didn't realize it.
I, i just did not realize it.
I love my mom.
So uh, it's okay, she was just trying to be helpful and she was right, and then i took it off.
I stopped eating the chick, the wraps.
That's the way to do it.
I love that.
Yeah.
But don't worry, you're not the only one.
That's okay.
Yeah.
So what about a funny memory?
I mean, everyone's got kind of a funny memory from college.
Did anything funny happen to you, Michelle, in college that you remember?
Well, I mean, this was kind of, I don't know, I had a weird assignment from a teacher.
The assignment was you had to write about something.
You had to do, something you had never done before.
Okay. then you have to do some sort of project with it.
Either write about it or talk about it.
I'm not sure why we had this project, but it was kind of interesting to think of doing something you've never done before.
And for me, even though I'm a night owl, I had never pulled an all-nighter yeah, my whole life, which meant guys, that's a key word i had never stayed up the entire night without going to sleep.
Okay, i would always go to sleep, at least for a little bit.
So i wanted to try and stay up all night.
So my friend agreed she, she didn't stay up all night, but i was staying up all night.
And then she agreed to uh, drive with me at like seven in the morning to my high school, like 45 minutes away and before class, like go meet everybody and see and see my old teachers and stuff.
And i and i was like i'm up all night, i haven't slept.
And so we, we went and we did that and um, Then I went back and I went to class and then I just totally crashed because I was exhausted.
I have some better stories that I'll have to think about, but that was just the first one that came to my mind.
Just this random staying up all night and running around and embarrassing myself in my old high school.
Oh, that's awesome.
I love that.
I love that.
Yeah, I'm sure I have some stories too.
I do remember once in my sociology class, similar thing, we had to break a social norm.
It was the assignment.
So I showed up and I bought like 100 oranges.
I filled my grocery cart with 100 oranges.
And just to see what that would feel like and just to do it and absorb how the person looked at you.
Typical weird college assignment, right?
Yes, right?
But they're kind of funny.
Yeah, you just fill the grocery cart with oranges.
So maybe we'll do a follow-up episode, Michelle, on our college stories.
That's a whole other thing.
Oh my gosh.
We could do a lot on this and we are barely scratching the surface today.
But just before we go, guys, we've learned a few terms today for college.
So we've done state school, right?
Meal plan and freshman 15 are some of the ones that we talked about today.
Yeah, perfect.
So guys write those down and use these as a springboard to ask your native speaking friends about their college experience, because you're going to see some similarities with all college students in the US.
And there may there may be some differences for them too.
So start the conversation, right?
Michelle, what's the takeaway today?
Yeah.
Well, people, I think, love talking about college because it brings about, you know, some nostalgia.
And Lindsay, I mean we just.
That's why we can't stop talking about it, because there's so much to say.
And that's why we could do a whole week's worth of episodes on college.
But this was a great question.
Try asking people some of the questions that we talked about today, you know.
Freshman 15, you got to use in a joking, lighthearted way.
You never know.
Talking about weight can always be a little touchy.
So I guess maybe be careful with that one and make sure you feel comfortable with the person.
But yeah, try these ones out today.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I just want to reiterate one thing you said, Michelle.
One key to connection is letting people go back into their own nostalgia and asking follow-up questions.
I
They'll actually enjoy your conversation more because they had a chance to indulge in their own memories, right.
Like this morning.
I was on the phone with a contractor, a professional that I'm going to be working with.
And we were talking about the topic of Colorado, the state of Colorado.
And he proposed to his wife in Colorado.
He had all these memories and he just went off and talked forever.
Five minutes about his memories in Colorado.
And I just asked follow-up questions and allowed him to do that.
That builds a connection that can become really strong, right?
Right, right, right.
Definitely.
Oh, I love it.
This has been so much fun.
Let's definitely continue this conversation another time.
Awesome.
I love it.
Michelle, I'll talk to you soon.
Have a good day.
All right.
Bye, Lindsay.
Have a good one.
Bye.
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