Eckerd College: More than just a university education.

I'm from Boston, Massachusetts, also known to many people as "the city of the best colleges in the USA". Maybe that's true, but that will never make me regret my choice to study at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. A lot of people have asked me why I decided to study in such a random, not well known school far from home, when I could have gone to Boston University, and maybe you're wondering the same thing. I hope this article answers your question.

Eckerd College, located in sunny St. Pete, is truly a one of a kind home, or camp, as some people like to call it, where you get your education. Some people have heard of Eckerd as one of the schools included in the book "Colleges that Change Lives". Consisting of only 1800 students (barely larger than my high school population), Eckerd's small size allows you to have close and personal relationships with your professors and mentors. I mustn't forget to mention that students' pets form a large, important part of the family.

How to arrive here

If you're flying in to Tampa and you don't have someone with a car to pick you up, there are the airport shuttle busses called the Super Shuttle that take you where you need to go which you can either pay for in person at the office in the airport, or you can make your reservation online. Likewise, if you need to go to the airport and don't want to ask anybody to drive you, you can schedule your pick up time online.

It's cheaper than taking a taxi (usually around $30 if I remember correctly) and it's quite efficient. It takes about 35 minutes to get to the airport with no traffic, so estimate 45 minutes or more to be safe. Using the Super Shuttle website is easy and fast to use.

The Waterfront

One of the most beautiful aspects of Eckerd is it's exclusive waterfront and south "beach".

This panoramic view of our South Beach is a glimpse of the beauty, uniqueness and excitement that Eckerd has to offer.

Eckerd is known to offer to all students the opportunity to learn and excel in a wide variety of water sports, and the school is particularly proud of its exceptional Division II sailing team.

Students can sail, wakeboard, paddle board and kayak, all for free! It's quite a privilege. If you're not the sporty type, you can still benefit from the floating rafts at the waterfront to lay on, or the hammocks and chairs at South beach.

I had an exchange student friend from Austria who was smart and took advantage of the free wakeboarding program: He did it every single week during his entire exchange year at Eckerd! I only went twice throughout my four years there, and I probably should have gone more times. Nonetheless, it was a lot of fun. This photo shows me on my first day of wakeboarding.

Sports

As I biefly mentioned, Eckerd is a Division II sports college, so it's not as competitive or demanding as a Division I school, but the students here definitely excel and many of them move on to play professionally. For example, Eckerd has an excellent basketball team, and I personally know many players who have graduated and are now playing professional basketball in different countries. The soccer team, baseball team and sailing team are other examples of the most popular and competitive sports at Eckerd.

The EC Sailing Team

I joined the sailing team for one semester as a Freshman. It was quite random actually. One day during the first week of school, I was at the waterfront and walked past the sailing coach who suddenly asked me if I wanted to join the team. I told him I had no experience whatsoever, but he insisted that I try it out and learn "on the job" because I had the right physical stature and I was athletic-looking, and he was looking to recruit new members. I reluctantly agreed, and it turned out to be the most difficult semester of my college career, yet I don't regret it one bit.

We had early-morning 6am one hour work-outs twice a week, and on-the-water sailing training for 3 hours per day, 4 days a week. Most weekends were reserved for regattas (races). Dedicating so much time and effort to a sport which I had never done before (and wasn't particularly passionate about) was a great challenge, but boy, I learned how to sail extremely quickly.

Being under so much pressure from competitive and dedicated teammates was probably the hardest thing for me to adjust to because they were screaming at me sailing jargon and demanding me to do things which I didn't understand, and I was expected to do what they wanted very quickly and efficiently. I was very clumsy and slow in the beginning, and many times I wanted to quit and give up. In any case, I stuck with it for the full semester and I learned so much in an intensive 4 months. On top of that, I got in really great shape. Not to mention I became a decent sailor for free (usually taking classes to learn how to sail are really expensive).

Despite the coach asking me to continue on the team for the second semester, I decided to focus my efforts on other things. I was more interested in playing club tennis (that's my sport), and I felt I needed to invest more time on my social life. Due to my limited free time during that semester on the sailing team (I had to study after sailing practice), I found myself declining too many social invitations. As a Freshman, it is important to have a healthy balance and establish your niche and friend groups, and to join clubs or sports that you are passionate about or just really enjoy. Once I could dedicate more time to the Tennis Club, I helped it grow in membership and in activity, and I was fortunate to have been able to serve as the club president.

Clubs

Something that I really love about Eckerd is the freedom and money the school gives you when you run a club. Whether it's a sport club (tennis, hockey, rugby, etc), or a social club (anime, chess, international students, pride, etc), the campus will help you finance the club's activities and expenses if you (ie: the club's main representative or president) properly and formally create and present to Campus Activities a well-planned budget sheet and if you can prove active club activity and membership.

Thanks to Campus Activities, the Tennis Club was able to provide to its members free tennis balls and rackets to use, a private coach, and we were able to go to fully paid for club tournaments in Orlando (hotel, meals, transport, and tournament fee all included), and we could also organize some club team dinners apart from that.

Once we could even go to watch a champions league tournament in Tampa where former tennis champions such as John McEnroe and Jimmy Conners were featured in the line up. I am extremely thankful to Campus Activities for financially allowing us to experience these amazing opportunities that otherwise would have been extremely difficult or even impossible.

Eckerd College Concert Choir

I am proud and lucky to have been part of the Eckerd College Choir for three years. It's easy to get into, and it's not necessary to have an amazing voice; you only need to get the notes right.

I'm going to be really honest and tell you that my main motivation to join the choir was to be able to travel and perform with the group for free in the spring semesters. Usually the way it works is that every year the group travels somewhere, alternating every other year somewhere international. For example, the year before I joined, the group went to Rome.

The year I joined, we went to South Carolina and Georgia. The next year we were supposed to go to Havana, Cuba, but the group was too small and not prepared enough. That was sad. The following year we performed at Carnegie Hall in New York. Great experience. Besides the free trips, I really enjoyed the music that we sang, and we were a nice, good group.

Twice per year, right before winter break and before summer break, the EC Concert Choir performs at the Wireman Chapel on campus. The Chapel can be seen across from the pond which is in front of the Eckerd Armacost Library.

This is a view of the Wireman Chapel, seen from the library.

Yellow Bikes

Eckerd doesn't have the biggest campus, but it can still cost you some time to walk from one side to the other. I'd say it's about a 20 minute walk. I don't have the patience to walk that long to get from one side to the other, however, fortunately Eckerd has an amazing communal yellow bike program. You see a yellow bike on campus, you can take it, use it to get to where you want, and you leave it for someone else to use after you. You can't take them off campus, but that makes sense because otherwise people will lose them. I love this program and it has saved me so many times from arriving late to class.

If you're not a bike person and you prefer skateboarding or longboarding, you are not alone! A huge population of Eckerd students use their own longboards all over campus. I think many students can agree that the longboard is one of Eckerd's unofficial signature symbols.

In my junior year I gifted to myself a beautiful longboard as my birthday present, and I regret not buying it earlier. That board saved me so many times from being late to class. From my dorm (my senior year I lived in Omega, which, of all the other dorms is one of the furthest away from where the classes are) I could get to class in around 5 minutes.

Marine biology

Eckerd is quite well known not only for its excellent liberal arts education, but also for it's top marine science program. I didn't study marine biology here, so I can't give you my personal opinion or advice on it, but I do know from friends and classmates who studied it that if you want to study marine biology at Eckerd, you should be serious about it and prepared for a lot of work.

Cafeterias

There are three on-campus cafeterias:

The main cafeteria

This cafeteria has the most variety of food to eat, but sometimes the quality varies. Well, my opinion isn't too critical because the truth is that I am not a picky eater and I am content with almost any kind of food that I am served. The main caf always has a selection of fruit, freshly made pizza, salad, and burgers, and every day there is a different main menu selection. Some days are better than others, but I never complain. There is always cereal, ice cream, and dessert. Also, the main caf is all you can eat, so I obviously took advantage of that.

The CEC cafeteria

This cafeteria is also an all you can eat style "restaurant", but it has less of a diverse selection every day because it's a smaller sized cafeteria. Even if the selection is less diverse, sometimes the food they make is really good, depending on the day. There is always salad, fruit, ice cream and dessert. Actually, I think the ice cream here at the CEC is a lot better than the one at the main caf. I would also like to mention that the CEC caf is located on the entrance edge of the campus, right within the ELS (English Language School) buildings, so if you're interested in meeting a lot of international students, this is a good cafeteria to go to. I made many of my international friends by frequenting this CEC cafeteria.

The Triton Pub

Of the three eateries at Eckerd, the pub is the most unique one. It is not all you can eat; rather, it's a sort of "fast food made in front of you" and you have a selection of choices to order from, like quesadilla, burger, fried chicken, tuna melt, turkey melt, chicken burger. You can also make your wraps or sandwiches to order, so you can choose your ingredients and the nice guys make them for you. I miss those so much.... The pub also offers special drinks like coffee, cappuccino, espresso, fruit smoothie, milkshake, beer, as well as a variety of snacks. One of my favourite parts of the Pub is the billiards room, where you can play on one of the two pool tables for free. You only have to leave your student ID at the counter where you take the billiard equipment.

Pizza Truck

Right outside the Main Cafeteria is the Pizza Truck, which opens at night and is the heaven spot for drunk students on Friday and Saturday nights. You can pay for your pizza either with cash or with your "flex bucks" from your meal plan. It was a genius idea.

Residences

Eckerd's dorm room residences are all named after Greek letters, which may mislead you to think that Eckerd College has fraternities and sororities, but it doesn't (thank goodness). The residences are as follows: Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Gamma, Iota, Kappa, Nu, Omega, Sigma, Zeta, and West Lodge (which is the exception that doesn't have a Greek letter name).

Here is the break down:

Traditional dorms

The traditional style, older dorm rooms are in Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Gamma, Kappa and Zeta. All of these have common bathrooms and showers (separated for males and females), and the rooms are shared between two people, unless you're a resident advisor and you get your own single room. Males and females are on separate floors (either upstairs or downstairs).

Each of these residences have their own common kitchen and lounge areas, which are nearly all renovated, beautiful, and modern-looking. When I was at Eckerd, the kitchens of Beta, Gamma, Zeta, and Delta were already renovated. Every year a new kitchen/lounge area gets renovated, so I don't know which one got it's make-over the last two years since I've graduated.

Other important points: Each of these dorms listed above have one apartment-style dorm to be shared between 4 or 5 students, and these dorms are usually reserved for upperclassmen. Also, since Eckerd is fond of its students' pets, there are special pet-friendly dorms in certain residence houses.

Iota

I lived in Iota for 3 years, so naturally I have more things to say about it. Iota is the most recently built residence dorm, so it looks aesthetically nicer inside and outside than the other traditional-looking ones listed above. Iota is also in better condition, overall.

Like the traditional residences, Iota dorms are also shared by two people per room (except for the resident advisors), but the rooms are a bit bigger (especially the corner rooms! ). Unlike the other dorms, Iota's windows cannot be opened because they are built to be hurricane-proof, however the advantage to Iota is that the heat and air conditioning can be controlled within each room. Another downside to Iota is that it does not have a fully-equipped common kitchen area (with ovens) like the others, but I think they are being built. Iota has simple kitchens (sink, microwave, toaster, etc) in each of its four buildings, and one of the buildings has a billiards table.

Also, one of the Iota buildings is an all-girls dorm, but guy friends/boyfriends are allowed to enter (unlike the all-girls residence which I stayed in during my study in France). One of Iota's advantages is that the clothes washing machines and dryers are included in the cost of the room (Iota is a bit more expensive than the others), which means that you don't have to save your quarters and pay every time you do the laundry. Another important point about Iota is that it is not a party dorm, so if you like peace and quiet, this is a good place to live.

Sigma and West Lodge

These are unique residences because the bathrooms are inside the individual rooms, meaning that you only have to share the toilet and shower with your roommate. The beds in these dorms are also significantly bigger than those in any of the other dorms. You can think of Sigma and West Lodge as two star hotel rooms. The main difference between them is that the West Lodge rooms are carpeted (which I personally think is kind of gross) and the Sigma rooms are tiled. They are both located near the ELS (English Language School) building and the CEC cafeteria, so usually many international students will live in West Lodge, and sometimes Sigma too.

The main downside to living here is that these dorms are located a bit farther away from the other residences, near the entrance edge of the campus, rather than in the center of the campus where the main action might be taking place. Of course, if you take a yellow bike, you can get to anywhere in minutes from Sigma and West Lodge, and if you're walking, it's around a 10 minute walk, depending on where you want to go.

Omega and Nu

Omega and Nu are upperclassman apartment residences, and can be shared between boys and girls.

Typically juniors and seniors live in Nu, and each apartment is shared by 8 people: four bedrooms, two people per room. Two bathrooms and a kitchen and common area are shared.

Similarly, Omega is apartment style, but it is a bit better in my opinion because you share the apartments with less people. Usually only seniors can live in Omega, (I lived here during the last semester of my senior year after returning from my study abroad) but sometimes there are exceptions for juniors. Omega is an oval-shaped building set by the waterfront, and each apartment has its own balcony, so if you are lucky, you can get a room facing the gorgeous view.

This is an example of an amazing view that you can have from your Omega balcony.

The apartments in Omega are shared by either 4 or 5 people, with two rooms shared by two people, and the 5th person has a single. There are two bathrooms. The apartments also have full kitchens and a common living room area. Once per week, cleaning ladies will come and clean the bathrooms (so try not to be a disgusting slob).

Also, the bedrooms in Omega are quite large with high ceilings, even if you do share your room with another person.

This is a photo of my side of the room when I lived in Omega. I had plenty of space for me and all my stuff. The flags you see were all gifts from international friends, and I've had the privilege to have been able to visit most of those countries since graduating from Eckerd: Morocco, France (I've also been there before going to college) and Portugal. The only one that I haven't visited is Saudi Arabia. It's a bit more complicated to travel there because you need a special visa. Ironically, my best friend and college roommate got an internship and is studying her master's degree in Saudi Arabia, so she got to go there before me! Maybe I'll find a job there....

Note: Main party residences are Kappa, Omega and Nu. Sometimes other residences will host parties, but that's not too common. Read more about Eckerd parties in my next article.

Mentors

Eckerd's relatively small student to professor ratio allows for each student to have their own mentor, which is a professor who is assigned to help guide their assigned mentees throughout the college experience. Your mentor would be a professor within the department of your major, although Freshmen mentors are random at first because usually in the beginning, students enter Eckerd with undeclared majors.

Is Eckerd easy or hard to do well?

I really think that the difficulty of your classes definitely depends on your major and I think it also depends on if you like what you are studying or not. You might have a ton of free time after classes, or you might have a tighter schedule. For example, biology courses have not only lecture, but also they have the laboratory hours to take into consideration. The difficulty and dedication that each class will require certainly varies, but regardless of what classes you take, you won't pass them if you study absolute nothing. You should also consider whether you want to do a sport or a club, which is great if you know how to efficiently juggle your studies, activities, socializing, and sleep. Eckerd is a fun and relaxed school environment, but you have to find your balance of work and play, and don't let your priorities slip away too much.

It might be easy to have too much fun and let things go, but try to keep your long term goals in sight and don't lose track of your real purpose in college: get an education and an unforgettable life experience!

As a double major in Biology and French and a minor in Human Development, I had to study quite a bit, but the truth is I don't have many memories of studying too hard. It's true that I spent a lot of time in the lab hours which accompany the lectures of the bio classes (those were pretty boring and time consuming), and I had to study hard for exams, but it's not too bad if you know how to spread out your time well and leave enough room in your schedule to do other things that you enjoy doing so you don't go crazy.

Do you need a car?

If you're living off campus, yes you do. If you're living on campus, my opinion is that a car isn't necessary (but having friends with cars totally helps). I spent my 4 years at Eckerd without a car, and it wasn't a real inconvenience to me. I Ubered to places when I needed to, or I took a bus. Most of the time, I was fortunate enough to have good friends with cars who would invite me to go places and we'd go all together. Or they'd do me a favor and give me a ride somewhere if the distance wasn't too far. Many times I rented my own car with the uHaul car rental program on campus; these cars can be rented by the half hour or hourly, and it's really easy to use and not too expensive.

Personally I think that renting the uHaul cars, Ubering, and using your friends who have cars is much better than buying your own car, paying for gas all the time, paying for the license to park on campus, and having to spend time looking for parking spots on campus.

Random fact

Every year, Eckerd has a renowned tradition called Jayzeaster. Around the time of Easter, students get ready to diligently and passionately decorate the school with photos and relics of Jay Z. I don't know how or why it started, but it's entertaining and well done.

This Jay Z float in the pond in front of the library and chapel is a sneak peak of some of the suprises you'll find during Jayzeaster.

In conclusion, Eckerd is an epic place to live and study at.

I've had the best moments of my life at Eckerd College, and I couldn't have asked for a better education and experience. If you decide to study here, I wish you the best! You'll probably be looking for things to do off campus, so you can read my articles all about what to do and what to expect in St. Petersburg and Tampa.