A field guide for identifying the native species Finding your way in the jungle of exotic creatures at Middlebury College

Author: Joe Bergan and Aylie Baker

As the fifth ranked liberal arts college in the nation, Middlebury once again reeled in a record number of applicants and selected a dynamic student body for the class of 2010. This years batch of state champs, valedictorians, child prodigies and galaxy defenders - welcome. Your world is about to get a whole lot bigger. Or is it smaller?

Let's be honest, orientation aside, you are likely still unfamiliar with the social scene here at Midd. Ask any upperclassman to rattle off a few descriptions of the different types of Middlebury students and you will find some remarkable similarities in their answers. So to ease the first years and perhaps the less perceptive upperclassmen into this world that exists within the Middlebury bubble, we have constructed a basic field guide to help make sense of the social strata. Use this guide to navigate the jungle as you interact with the following species in the next few years.



A Cautionary Note: To be fair, these caricatures have been taken to the absolute extreme. While a cursory glance may reveal some rather uncanny correlations between the student body and our outlandish social handbook, in reality, Middlebury is made up of far more than six groups of people. In fact, upon examining the student body, you will find that most Middlebury students cannot be pigeonholed into any one category, but that they likely straddle several. More likely the star linebacker who lives next door is also a concert violinist and spent the summer in Dubai volunteering for a child-literacy program. The young activist dressed in hemp was a nationally recognized basketball player whose father will give you your first interview. So venture out. Meet your contemporaries. Suddenly the campus will become much more three-dimensional.