Radford Recap Episode 1 - The Realities of College

This episode of Radford Recap discusses the realities of college. Students share their experiences living on and off campus, the challenges of commuting, the importance of building a social network and friendships, and the pros and cons of meal plans and food options on campus. Overall, college is seen as a beneficial experience for personal growth and academic opportunities, but it may not be for everyone. Welcome to Radford Recap. I'm your host, Jessica, and today we're covering the realities of college. We'll be hearing from a few students at Radford University to talk about their experiences. We'll be hearing from a variety of students, including an on-campus student, an apartment student, a transfer student, and a commuter student. To start off, we're going to be talking about housing and what it's like to live on and off campus. News Hall. The reputation is correct. I actually probably wasn't even as bad as most people because I got lucky and I only was on the second floor. So I didn't really have to worry about the elevator usually. And fire alarms probably weren't as bad for me as they were for most people, but it smelled. I think the worst part is when you're with your very close quarters with a bunch of other freshmen, and not all freshmen, you know, care as much as you do about how to live a good life, and they can be really gross, and it was really bad. Draper Hall. I have had zero issues with anyone. It's great, and it smells nice. Or at least it doesn't smell bad. I honestly like living in Mews. I think people like hate on it a lot. It is like a really bad building, but I think having it there like with the community of people, I like the location. It was close to Starbucks, and it was close to the Strip with all the extra food. So I liked Mews, but it definitely could use some interior work, but yeah, I kept my same roommate. I think it was a pretty easy transition for us, especially since in the apartment you actually have like separate bedrooms rather than just living together. I mean, it was pretty easy. We had already lived together. It's definitely a different experience because we're on Darkside for one, so it's a lot more quiet than it was when we were at Mews. So that's definitely a positive aspect of it, and just like it is a better building than Mews was, and we have our own bathroom rather than sharing with suitemates. So that's definitely a good thing too. I attended a school called the UVA Wise, which is in Wise County, and they had transferred to Rockford halfway through. I transferred like with like 90 credits, 90 or 100 credits, something like that. My major was education, and then I switched it to business administration coming into Rockford, and then when I was going through like the college like West days, I actually changed it to media studies. I commute to campus. I know that my commute to and from is 45 minutes each. I only make it on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Unfortunately, when you're commuting, you don't really have the same opportunity as everybody else does in terms of clubs. I'm not really involved in anything. The only thing that I even have opportunities to be involved in are like online honor societies and things like that because I could do it from home. So I don't really get to do the whole club thing because most of the time the meetings are at night, and I need to be like at home. One of the other important and influential aspects of college is your social network and friends. Your college experience can be affected by your social network and who you hang out with. This is what students had to say about the importance of friends in college and building a network within your major as well. I definitely feel like I have a better network and like close friends here. I didn't have a lot of like friends at my previous college, and I feel like it's also like my previous college was very small, but I definitely feel like I've made a good network and good good friends here. I think it's definitely very important to have friends, especially friends apart from your roommate because I love my roommates. But sometimes you got to just like leave the room for a couple of hours and do something. Commuting obviously makes it harder, but I still think it's a really important part of the college experience. I mean you are able to make friends still, but like it's kind of how do you say, like you have to find like one friend, and then hopefully they'll introduce you to their group of friends, and then you'll have a group of friends. Like that's how you have to kind of navigate it. It's one of the most important factors of college, I believe, because that's really how you build like your trust system. Like who you can go to when you're like really going through it, and also just people to ask for help, like if you from an assignment to where a restaurant is, like it's just really essential to build those relationships. I'm a political science major, and I am really close with a lot of my faculty. I think it's really essential to be close with professors because for one, those relationships can get you internships and different opportunities that you wouldn't have before, and also if you ever like feel stuck in a class, you can always go to them, and they will help you in any way that they can. I know last year specifically, I had a lot of issues with my advisor, and I went through five, and I had to go to the chair of my department and say, hey, I really want to transfer if you don't fix this for me. And he did, and he was also my professor, and it was just a really great experience. So I definitely think it's a vital thing to form good relationships with your professors. I think it's a little hard in the psychology major because there is so many of us, and there's a lot of adjunct professors, but I have one professor that I really like that I talk to every now and then. I do think it's very important, though. I think it's a great way to make connections and all that, and other psych students as well. I like having friends in my classes, so I try to be, you know, friendly, and psych classes, like a lot of it can be like group work, so it's good to like at least be friendly with the people around you. The last topic we're going to touch on today is the meal plan and eating on campus. Meal plans and food options on campus have their pros and cons. Here is what our students had to say about eating on and off campus. I was really scared of running out, and so sometimes, you know, I would try to save it up for the end, and then it would get close at the end, and I would be scared I didn't have enough. I definitely did not eat twice a day with the old meal plan. I prefer the new one, because I get two food swipes a day, so that's at least twice a day I can eat or like get something from the university. So I had a different one this year than last year because I'm in an apartment, so I had to pick up a different plan. It works well for me while I'm in the apartment because I'm able to cook more and like buy my own groceries, so that helps a lot, but when I was in the dorm, I ran out of food money probably about two weeks before school was up, so they both worked pretty well for me, but this year I know it would be worse if I lived on campus. I have a certain amount of swipes and a set amount of food dollars. I think it was 300 in food dollars, and then 70 or 80 something swipes, and I still got a pretty good amount of both left. I don't think there's a lot of options, especially like for healthier foods. I try, you know, I gym a lot, so I try to fuel with the best I can, and I just don't think the campus has a lot to offer as far as healthier options. I mean Dalton, I think it's probably debatably the healthiest you can get just because they have like the produce bar, and they put out meats a lot. I actually normally pack like a lunch. I don't normally like eat on campus. Because it's like it's really expensive if you don't have a meal plan on campus to eat, so I normally just pack my lunch, but occasionally I'll get lunch with friends or whatever. College does have its own reputation, but it's important to remember that your college experience will be different than others. Thank you to the students who contributed their experiences to today's Radford recap podcast episode on the realities of college. Thank you for listening. I would definitely recommend college to people. I mean I like that my classes that I take, it's around stuff that I'm interested in 90% of the time, and I think that it's really good for networking and finding your way around the field and opportunities. And even if you're not a school person, because I wasn't a school person like in high school, middle school, elementary school, but college is so much different because of the freedom and again like the classes you're interested in, so I would recommend it to pretty much anybody. I definitely think college is not for everyone, and it's shown like I've seen it like people drop out, people not stay throughout the year here at Radford, but I truly think that if you want an education, the college experience is absolutely wonderful, and here at Radford for me it was such a good fit that I'm going to leave with just absolute like positivity and all positive things to say about here. But I really do think that college is beneficial, and you will definitely get positive experiences, especially if you have the social aspect of it, and you can go out there and make friends, and you actually apply yourself so you can learn something when you leave here at the end.