Over the past long weekend, I visited the University of South Carolina in the city of Columbia.  The city is extremely beautiful with large sidewalks and easy access to everything around.  As my tour guide said, “USC wouldn’t be what it is without the city of Columbia, and Columbia wouldn’t be the same without the university.”  

The campus isn’t just one central campus place.  The buildings are spread all over with the park called the “Horseshoe” being the central meeting place of students.  The “Horseshoe” is surrounded by student housing that is available to most incoming freshman students.  The dorm options are extremely extensive.  The tour brought us to a dorm room in what they call “apartment style” housing.  This style dorm room has a common living room and then two separate rooms with a single bed in them and a bathroom.  

Although the buildings look like the standard brick buildings from the exterior, most of the buildings offer modern technology to suit the program that is based at the site.  As I am interested in multimedia journalism as my major, I took a tour of the journalism and mass communication building.  When you walk into the building, you find yourself in a large lobby with multiple TV’s set to news channels, ergo the theme of journalism.  They offer state of the art cameras and other broadcasting supplies for the broadcast journalism major.  The most common classroom has the swivel chairs similar to those in Mr. McCrystal’s classroom.  They have Smart Boards that surround the room on each side to allow students in the back to view the board.  

One of the things that I worried about if I attended the school was a large class size.  Growing up, I have always been in smaller classes with my teacher knowing my name and being attentive to every person.  My tour guide said that she had the same worries.  Although that completely changed when she said she failed a test and asked the teacher how she could fix her grade.  The professor walked 15 minutes to her next class with her, explaining how his former students held solid grades and giving her advice on how to keep with her studies.  This comforted me in knowing that teachers are attentive and want to help students.  

Beyond the classes, arguably the most exciting events at USC is the home football games.  This past week was the rivalry game between Clemson University and the USC Gamecocks.  Although the game ended in a blowout loss for the Gamecocks, the most interesting aspect was the tailgating experience.  One thing I found out about was these places called cockabooses.  They are called this because they are all old train cars that were made so people can rent or buy them to basically party.  It was an amazing experience like none other.  

After all this, I have decided that based on this wonderful visit, I should apply and hope to become a student at the University of South Carolina.

Photo Credit: http://www.sc.edu/visit/campus_photo_gallery/