U Maryland: thousands upon thousands of Terps

Fear the Terp…

Yes it sounds strange to me too but we will get to that later.

The first thing you notice when visiting the College Park campus just outside D.C. is the students. a lot of students. Almost 40,000 students. Let me say that again FORTY THOUSAND!

That is a lot of kids, which is not even counting the number of faculty and staff required to educate that many kids. This means that UMD is big enough to swallow most Midwestern cities. It is absolutely the definition of a state flagship university.

They offer 100 undergraduate majors. 100!

When the average American, or human for that matter, imagines American colleges, odds are they are picturing one of two types; the elitist ivy league, or the University of Maryland.

It has a row of fraternity and sorority houses a mile long (figuratively), a football stadium bigger than the Colosseum, and a bazillion kids wandering around in tank tops and slippers.

The school can boast that it employs multiple Nobel laureates as faculty and the average incoming freshman GPA is 4.1.

Such statistics befuddle me just a little. 4.1 is better than a perfect 4.0, and there are 40,000 students at UMD. My high school self is feeling quite inadequate in comparison to the number of above perfect students in this equation.

And then I see this.

The terrapin mascot named Testudo sitting on a concrete perch in front of the library. My natural Philadelphia self assumed Testudo was surrounded by regular refuse but upon closer inspection I saw that these were offerings. Coffee, Red Bull, Coke, all offerings to the Gods of finals week. I assume they are left in hopes that a holy turtle will bless these above perfect students’ all night cram sessions.

Perhaps he will.