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Football mania and school location win for being the two items that are both the
very best and worst thing about the Notre Dame education. These are not grey
areas by any means. We must start indeed by discussing football. There is a crazy
kind of passion for Notre Dame football. Ronald Reagan and Rudy helped to put ND
football on the American movie screen in films. I knew little about football
before ND. Little did I know that football would be so integral to my university
experience. I learned more football rules and regulations in my freshman year
than I care to delve into now. The 3 huge benefits of football mania: 1) Since
NBC had the sole right to Notre Dame home game TV emissions, money (millions $$$)
from this multi-year contract would be available to the university to use for
scholarships and other noteworthy causes. 2) Football is one of the primary
reasons the student body is such a close one. The Notre Dame family fluctuates
high and low in spirit with football triumphs or alternatively with sacks and
blunders. We learn to cheer and cry together. The lengthy 4-hour outdoor games
can be a true bonding ritual during the nippy month of November. 3) Since I
remained quite neutral to liking the game of football, even Notre Dame football,
I spent many home game weekends studying while the majority of the student
population was at the stadium or otherwise celebrating. It was so eerily quiet
during the 4-hour football games. Strangely enough, this I found to benefit my
studies! My adoration of Notre Dame football ends here. The negative aspects are
twofold: 1) For many students, to their detriment, football is the fulcrum of
their 4-year education at Notre Dame. This means less time to academically gain
invaluable insight and to philosophize about all matters non-football. 2)
Football team members are looked upon in high regards, but in what I perceive to
be an unhealthy celebrity kind of way. All too many students want to be the ones
to spend their extracurricular time painting football team helmuts in gold. In my
humble opinion, too many students tailgate before and after long games while they
should be studying or reading. The university is remotely located. The town of
Notre Dame, Indiana to be exact. The school is in a town of its own namesake and
has its own postal code but is better known for being part of the city
encompassing it--South Bend, Indiana. The towns claims to fame are the brief
reference made to it by Jimmy Stewart in a movie called Philadelphia and
playing home to the defunct Studebaker car make. I personally prefer big
cosmopolitan cities like Chicago. The bitter cold, artic-to- me-from-Florida type
winters and the vacuous city of South Bend is why ND gets my way thumbs down
rating for location. One could argue that Notre Dame is a kind of North American
mecca, but it is certainly no cultural mecca. The remote locale of the school
was turned out to be perfect for me after all. I would have been extremely
distracted from being studious had I studied in Chicago or Atlanta, as I almost
did. I was more than happy to matriculate in a university which had only
single-sex dorms on campus. I heard stories of female friends at other
universities who had to share bathrooms with males. To be rhetorical, doesnt it
take away all the glamour and mystique away from being a gal when you are seen in
rollers, braces, oversized pajamas and no make-up in the mornings? I loved dorm
life for being sorority-like but without any of the negative repercussions. There
are no rituals to go through to be a member. Most students live in on-campus
dorms for their entire ND stay. Even more surprising and different from many
universities is that most students stay in the same dorm for that time. I will
always be a Knott Angel. Marion Burke Knott Hall that is, even though it is now
a mens dormitory! This reminds me of one football weekend when a man peered into
my dorm room and said he lived there as a student. Back when it was a mens dorm!
An unexpected advantage of the single-sex dorm arrangement was the system of
dances. So there are thirty or so odd dorms on campus. As I recall, each dorm had
an informal dance held within the dorm and a formal dance held at a hired event
hall each semester on non-football weekends. If you halve the total amount of
dances, that is still 30 dances one could be asked to attend in one semester!
Sixty dances a year and 240 dances in 4 years. This is an exaggeration, but you
get the drift. Dances made for much merriment and social bonding. If there is
only one explanation for the many alumni marriages that result from simultaneous
attendance at Notre Dame, the dance scene is it. The importance of sport and
fitness is stressed on all levels at Notre Dame. I dont remember any official
school-endorsed message about fitness dealt out to the students en masse, but I
do have memories of an overall health-conscious and athletic student body.
Perhaps it was just in my mind but there were a lot of joggers on campus and
rollerbladers. Maybe I ran into Californians too many times. A better explanation
is that the university recruits a lot of sports-oriented students, as a majority
of admitted students were at some point varsity athletes in high school. Many
universities do not have the required semesters of sport or fitness classes. Mine
were swimming and tennis. By far the favorite fitness classes were social dance
(for understandable reasons), fencing and ice skating. By the way, Notre Dame
womens soccer and basketball teams have done stellar and won national college
championships. Since the so-called Renaissance Person is certainly of balanced
body, mind and soul, healthy endeavors are good ones!
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