[HN Gopher] My Visit to Deep Springs College (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
My Visit to Deep Springs College (2009)
Author : ricardobeat
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-02-12 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.harrisonbarnes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.harrisonbarnes.com)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| This is pretty surreal, and feels like the beginning of a script
| for a Hollywood movie.
| sdwr wrote:
| So weird, but so believable.
| b8 wrote:
| I'm a student at Berea College, which is like Deep Springs
| College (tuition free, everyone works etc.), but it's a bit
| bigger. It's a decent college and some work on the campus farm.
| Most of the faculty are from top tier colleges or are reputable
| scholars. A few students have transferred to top tier colleges as
| well. Anyway, the 60 minutes episode about Deep Springs is a good
| watch!
| itronitron wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _" My visit to Deep Springs College taught me, in no uncertain
| terms, to be extremely careful about trusting anyone. Whether
| it is trusting a leader, trusting the numbers an institution
| claims, or trusting someone who is making an argument to you
| about this or that. A substantial majority of the people,
| institutions, and others we encounter in our day-to-day lives
| are completely full of shit. Everything is a facade and you
| really do not know what is real and what is not."_
| mattficke wrote:
| I have a broom made by the student workshop at Berea and it's a
| delightful tool, never thought I would enjoy sweeping.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I drive past there semi-regularly since one of the experiments I
| work on is in the White Mountains (near Barcroft Station) and
| Deep Springs is on the way between Las Vegas and the experiment
| site. Would be fun to try to visit sometime...
| classichasclass wrote:
| Is that on highway 168? Beautiful drive. Always loved the
| Westgaard Pass.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Yes, the eastern segment, there is also a western
| discontiguous segment of CA 168.
|
| There is of course an interesting history about this road: ht
| tps://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd499744....
| aaronharnly wrote:
| I visited a friend who was attending Deep Springs back in 1995
| or 1996, when we were both first-year students.
|
| Because I was too young to rent a car, I had to take a bus out
| of Las Vegas, and get picked up by someone from Deep Springs
| coming over the pass in a pickup. This is the Lida Junction
| mentioned in the article.
|
| Very memorably, the "bus stop" was just an intersection with a
| dirt road, with (1) a phone booth (2) a brothel.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > Very memorably, the "bus stop" was just an intersection
| with a dirt road, with (1) a phone booth (2) a brothel.
|
| They mentioned that in the article a couple of times. I
| wonder if it's still that way? Sometimes Vegas seems like a
| different country.
| brindlejim wrote:
| The brothel (The Cotton Tail Ranch) closed many years ago.
|
| Another neat thing about the "bus stop" was that the phone
| booth gave you no way to dial. There was no number pad.
| You'd pick it up, and the call would go straight to the
| operator, because neither she nor you actually knew what
| was going on. That is, the phone was a very old one, built
| for a system that relied on operators to "put you through".
| I remember calling the school to tell them I had arrived,
| and having to wait for the operator to find the right
| instructions in the manual to do that. Even then, there
| were only a few of those phones left in the US.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > One of the most embarrassing moments came when they asked me a
| question about Carl Jung, whom I had quoted in one of my essays.
| I had included a few lines about how Carl Jung believed this or
| that.
|
| > "Have you ever actually read any books by Carl Jung?" one of
| the students asked me.
|
| > "No, I've never read a single thing by him," I answered
| truthfully.
|
| > "Then how can you possibly have a large quote from him in your
| essay, base an essay around his teachings and also lead us to
| believe that you know what you are talking about?"
|
| > It was a really good question and he had a point. The rest of
| the experience and all of the questions went basically like this:
| I would say one thing and they would contradict me and accuse me
| of not really understanding what I was talking about.
|
| This is a big paradox of modern society: most of what people
| believe is bullshit.
|
| But you can't go around saying people believe bullshit, because
| they are people, and worthy of respect.
|
| The best solution is to focus on contributing new knowledge, not
| destroying the bullshit.
|
| It would have been much more impressive if a student actually
| addressed the ideas attributed to Jung, or explained why the
| quote was misleading.
| mastercheph wrote:
| Why would you expect this character, the one who quotes Jung at
| length without ever having read anything he wrote, to remember
| and record if and what anyone said to him about Jung?
| xrd wrote:
| I recall having a conversation with one of the most brilliant
| people I ever knew in high school. This was the college he wanted
| to attend. I hadn't heard of it before and later in the
| conversation referred to it as Palm Springs and could see the
| frustration on his face. Not the same vibe. He wasn't long for
| this world, died jogging in Japan and his parents didn't find out
| a week later until he was already cremated. As they say in Blade
| Runner: "the light that burns twice as bright burns half as
| long."
| girzel wrote:
| I attended Deep Springs 1996/97. The school goes through semi-
| regular cultural oscillations between "mean" and "nice"; between
| what we'd now call toxic masculinity, and sort of a peace-and-
| love hippie friendliness. Students play a large role in admitting
| the incoming class, and tend to admit people like them, until the
| culture swings too far in one direction and they start
| correcting.
|
| It sounds like this guy visited during a "mean" period, which is
| too bad. I attended during an upswing into a "nice" period, and
| it felt well balanced. My application interview was one of the
| most memorable experiences of my life -- I'd never had anyone pay
| that kind of close attention to anything I'd written, or what I
| thought. It woke me all the way up, in a sense where I'd gone
| through most of my teenage years asleep, and was enormously
| bracing. When they finally let me out, I emerged into the main
| room, where some guy reading on a sofa looked up and asked, "How
| was it?" I don't remember exactly what I said, but it
| communicated something along the lines of "holy shit that was a
| thrill!". I still suspect he communicated my attitude back to the
| applications committee and that played a part in getting
| accepted.
|
| So far as I know, no one during my two years visited the
| Cottontail Ranch :)
| every wrote:
| Blackburn College is also a work college and was established in
| 1837. My dad was an alumnus back in the Great Depression. It was
| all he could afford...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_College_(Illinois)
| teachrdan wrote:
| Berea College is similar. I met a super smart student from
| there years ago. Interestingly, they were also early pioneers
| in being co-ed and racially integrated.
|
| "Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea,
| Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first college
| in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially
| integrated. It was integrated from as early as 1866 until 1904,
| and again after 1954... As a work college, Berea has a student
| work program in which all students work on campus 10 or more
| hours per week."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berea_College
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Some of the most interesting people I've ever met had gone to
| berea. One notable example was when I met him working as a
| farrier but had a MM piano performance from berklee and had
| published papers in a CS journal. Another was a chef, would
| give me a six stone handicap in go (I was playing 1-2 kyu at
| the time) and then tear me apart in between heroic bong rips.
| These just not common combinations of skill and interest at
| all.
| b8 wrote:
| I'm a current student at Berea, and yeah Berea has a unique
| history.
| dsctaway1234 wrote:
| Current resident of deep springs college, happy to answer any
| questions.
| warner25 wrote:
| Fascinating. As I read this, I was mostly wondering about how
| much time the students were spending on the admissions process
| for new students.
|
| This guy was just one applicant, and he spent a whole week
| there by himself, and _all_ of the students reportedly spent
| time dissecting and discussing his 50+ pages of essays and
| participating in his four-hour interview. How does that scale?
| It seems like this would be an all-consuming thing for a whole
| admissions cycle. Does the whole academic program just revolve
| around these essays? Or are the assigned essay topics directly
| related to what the students are studying?
| dsctaway1234 wrote:
| The application committee is a group of about 10 students and
| 2-4 staff and faculty. By the time of the interview, everyone
| will have read all parts of the applicants materials. Close
| reading and critique still characterizes much of the
| interview. But in my experience, someone can have major
| mistakes in the essays/tests/transcript and be admitted.
| Sometimes the application is deeply rooted in a specific
| intellectual tradition; sometimes it may ask questions like
| "which would win in a fight, a bear or a shark?" Usually
| there's a mix of both.
|
| Like other comments here and on the OP have said, Deep
| Springs has many different cultural moments because of the
| short turn over of the students in their elected positions
| (and as residents), the 2 year or so retention rate for
| staff, and new visiting professors 4 times a year.
|
| To your question of scale -- the college is actively against
| scaling. The founder hoped the school would inspire similar
| schools. And over the last decade or so, Outer Coast College,
| Tidelines Institute, Thoreau College, and Gull Island Project
| have all started programs based on Deep Springs. They're all
| coming out to the college next weekend for a summit.
|
| Because students are constantly balancing too-much work
| between academics, labor, or self-governance, each year, the
| application committee finds a new stable point of work load
| each year. Based on my experience, if the students only had
| to work on the application committee, their first impulse
| would be to spend more time on it. The stakes are higher for
| them than it is for us, since, as the OP notes, the student
| body retains the authority to regulate the conduct of its
| members.
|
| The academic program is relatively conventional, i.e. 4-10
| person seminars with most students taking 2-4 per semester or
| term. The difference is the collective striving for great
| academic performance (written and spoken in seminar) and the
| ability for professors (long-term and visiting) to pitch
| courses they wouldn't be able to teach elsewhere (for any
| reason, e.g. politics, student quality, etc.).
|
| These days, class is in the morning, labor in the afternoon,
| governance as schedules allow (though there are two regular
| meetings each week, committee meetings, such as applications,
| and the student body meeting). There is also a long-standing
| public speaking class each week during sept.-may; students
| give speeches on common prompts or speak on something
| important for the life of the community.
| warner25 wrote:
| So if only 10 students are on this committee[1], that makes
| more sense. Either this has changed since the time of the
| author's story, or he misremembered, or exaggerated (re:
| saying that all 25 students, the whole student body at the
| time, was at his interview plus talking about his essays
| for days leading up to his interview). I understand that
| the idea isn't meant to scale up to larger schools, but it
| sounded like it wouldn't even scale to the number of
| applications that Deep Springs would get in any given year.
|
| [1] Is this still 1/3 to 1/2 of the student body?
| solarkraft wrote:
| Are they accepting women now?
| dsctaway1234 wrote:
| Yes, 2018 was the first co-ed class.
| azmodeus wrote:
| What made you choose Deep Springs? How are the career
| prospects? What are the pros and cons of studying there for
| you?
| dsctaway1234 wrote:
| I am not a student at Deep Springs, but I can speak generally
| to different motivations of students and myself (staff).
|
| One of the more interesting things about Deep Springs is that
| the students are definitely counter cultural but also very
| competitive and generally academically (or at least
| intellectually) straight-laced/standouts. That's the zone of
| genius they were in before they came here, so afterwards,
| they go to schools you'd expect them to go. Until the 1960s,
| many (most?) students went to Cornell to the Telluride house
| (also founded by Nunn) to finish their undergrad.
|
| What they do next is usually more interesting. When accepting
| the scholarship to attend deep springs, students agree to
| commit themselves to a life of service to humanity. At the
| founding, becoming a titan of industry (emulating the
| founder) was definitely seen as such, but, as you can
| imagine, ideas have shifted with generations. Pursuing
| advanced degrees is pretty popular, and many alums have gone
| on to work in higher education.
|
| When I was getting driven in by a student for my interview as
| a staff member, they asked me why I wanted to work there.
| After I gave some answer, I asked her why she decided to
| study at deep springs. She told me that of her options
| (including top US schools), deep springs seemed to be the
| hardest and the only place where she would get real feedback.
| After listening to her answer and talking to her about it, I
| decided I wanted to work at deep springs because I prefer to
| work with that quality of student, and, if I can work with 24
| or so, even better.
|
| These guys all come in very talented academically and in some
| cases professionally, and, for my money, the education that
| they get -- especially in politics and common sense -- helps
| round them in a way which is very rare in other colleges or
| learning communities. That high-minded conversations flow
| from the seminar to the ditch digging crew is why I would
| suggest a place like deep springs (or something like the
| Thiel Fellowship) versus reading lots of books in your spare
| time and working on a farm if you are a bright but
| disenchanted student.
|
| Cons are a lifestyle which is very much out of sync with the
| rest of the world and expectations. Any resident is
| committing to live in a small village (mostly 18-24 y/os,
| usually <10 staff and faculty) on the northern boundary of
| death valley.
|
| And if you're a student, you are committing to participate in
| a democratic game in which your peers (and yourself) will
| regulate your actions, e.g. no wifi on personal devices, only
| shared desktop computers. But as you can imagine, it's hard
| to get such regulations passed.
|
| Depending on how you cope, the entire project might be a con,
| ha! That is, the program demands nearly all of the time of a
| student for 2 years. For some, that is too much of a burden.
| But for many it's their first introduction to working that
| hard that continuously. After their time, most deep springers
| would be great high-potential, low-experience start up
| employees, for example.
|
| An easy way of thinking about deep springs today is that it's
| a modern seminary or monastery.
|
| I like working on projects like deep springs because the
| marriage of mind and body. It has been rare for me to find
| good concentrations of folks who want to physically work
| until they're exhausted and who are also incredibly curious
| (and rigorous in their curiosity) about the world.
| JackFr wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to fly into Reno, NV and take the bus to
| Bishop, CA?
| dsctaway1234 wrote:
| The bus only goes to Beatty these days, so most people fly to
| Reno, LA, or Bishop.
| breaker-kind wrote:
| did you meet my friend Kel a few weeks ago?
| interiorchurch wrote:
| Question: TASP, a related summer program, has recently gone
| through some painful convolutions related to race and
| inequality[1]. How much if at all has Deep Springs been affected
| by currents like this?
|
| [1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-
| letters/articles/a-c...
| brindlejim wrote:
| TASP was renamed TASS a couple years ago, and it now offers
| only two seminars: Critical Black Studies and Anti-Oppressive
| Studies. The program has been taken over by woke radicals both
| on its board and in the administration, which is led by Amina
| Omari, someone with near-zero experience in education prior to
| her appointment. I receive desperate emails from them asking
| for volunteers and financial support, which suggest that they
| have lost some of their base due to their political choices.
|
| Deep Springs is on a different track, but not a totally
| dissimilar one. That is, the school has been attempting to
| feminize for decades, a process that culminated in its
| conversion to co-education in 2018 after a long legal battle. I
| get the school's newsletters and see occasional land
| acknowledgements penned by privileged people of color, which
| tracks with a known trend in US liberal arts colleges.
|
| But the real shift at DS, triggered by co-education, seems to
| be that it's less hard-core. One person called it
| "Benningtonization". The boys and girls all hive off into
| pairs, and the communal life of mind and labor and governance
| shrinks as it cedes ground to America's default version of life
| together, the romantic couple.
|
| But the school has gone through many phases. This is no doubt a
| temporary one.
| 23kfuhfsdf wrote:
| TASP -- Sad to hear!
| dsctaway1234 wrote:
| These conversations have been live on campus for some time
| (80s) and continue. Though we're isolated, most conversations
| happening elsewhere also happen here, but, because everyone's
| so weird, the conversations get turned on their head or don't
| present in the same way in other places. Mostly it just makes
| the environment less reactionary.
|
| That can be frustrating for some who want change now, but, at
| the end of the day, the students and community have the power
| to change most aspects of the program, and year to year
| different students or community members take on different
| projects in response to community needs. That agency helps
| diffuse many convolutions via compromise and practical action.
| Of course, convolutions still happen. Basically, this isn't a
| place that avoids conflict or disagreement, it's a container
| where students (and staff, ha!) learn how to disagree,
| conflict, resolve/forget, and get shit done.
| hscontinuity wrote:
| There is immutable self reflection in the author's account of his
| experience/s. That reflection also leads to immutable knowledge
| of self, in general. The lesson is hammering the nail not only on
| the head, but purely, intently, and straight.
|
| Be who you are, or who you want to be. Do not trust the images of
| conformity around you, for they wear a mask more often than not.
|
| Raise your own awareness - something often lacking our everyday
| experiences, for all of us.
| vonnik wrote:
| I attended DS in the mid-90s, slightly before @girzel (who does
| great work btw!).
|
| DS is essentially a transfer school that offers no tenure and
| whose small student body is on a two-year program. That is a
| recipe for rapid cultural change and little institutional memory
| inside the valley. Which is to say, Harrison got a snapshot of a
| very peculiar place, which is now peculiar in very different
| ways.
|
| The school went co-ed a few years ago (it had spent the previous
| century as an all-male school). That brought a sea change.
|
| Harrison is correct, I suppose, to say that every institution is
| deeply human and no one should be intimidated by them. But he is
| wrong to extrapolate too much about DS based on his visit there.
|
| Even people who spent years of their lives there would have
| trouble generalizing about it in ways that accurately encompass
| decades.
|
| If I could try to generalize about DS, I would say: it has
| traditionally been a place where excellent weirdos learn and work
| together, and which puts tremendous pressure on them, for good
| and bad. I have not experienced a more intense or sincere
| learning environment before or since.
| girzel wrote:
| Hi Chris!
|
| I also felt like the essay suffered a lot from generalization
| -- Harrison happened to talk to these three people, and
| extrapolated way too much from that.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Well, no, at the minimum he talked to all 25 students.[^1]
|
| Additionally, why would 1, 3, or 25 matter?
|
| The behavior Chris described requires attending the school
| and visiting it often enough to view multiple cohorts.
|
| [^1] When I went into the classroom at the appointed hour,
| the 25 students were all there ready to interview me.
|
| [^2] Man, I wish I went there if it means you could talk like
| this all the time. The older I get, the more suffocated I am
| by the damp blanket of adult communication. At 20 I would
| have said it was immoral and boring to withhold engaging
| deeply, at 35 I need a damn good reason to bother engaging
| rather than smiling and nodding.
| ipython wrote:
| Does the image https://d18pp9dg727fce.cloudfront.net/wp-
| content/uploads/200... from the article load for anyone? For me,
| from multiple browsers, it shows as a very broken JPG that's
| clearly had a few bit flips and as a result is just blocky
| garbage on my browsers. Curious if this is bitrot from AWS or
| what.
| jyunwai wrote:
| That image also didn't correctly load for me (just a slice at
| the top), also checking on multiple browsers.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Broken for me on Firefox Android.
|
| Looks kind of pretty though. Like a blocky sunset.
| deepsprings wrote:
| I'm a current student at Deep Springs College. I recently gave a
| Reddit AMA about the school, but I'm also happy to answer any
| questions here.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| THE LESSON
|
| You should neither trust outward appearances, nor let them
| intimidate you. There is always a discord between the appearance
| that a person or organization projects, and their actual nature.
| For this reason, always be careful about the people and
| organizations in whom you place your trust.
|
| .....
|
| About Harrison Barnes
|
| Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a
| successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely
| committed to and passionate about the profession of legal
| placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of
| attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to
| dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned
| in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has
| placed the leaders of the nation's top law firms, and countless
| associates who have gone on to lead the nation's top law firms.
| There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with.
| Harrison's writings about attorney careers and placements attract
| millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law
| firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and
| retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the
| Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison
| Barnes' bio.
|
| .....
|
| Also, guy is excessively obsessed with people's personal sex
| lives, and seems to try to match people to caricatures and
| archetypes. He seems to have problems appreciating complexity and
| things that aren't white and black.
|
| A lot of extremely smart people are like this with social
| aspects, because they become entrenched in proof/disproof and
| absolute right and wrong points from excessive academic
| achievement.
|
| No wonder the guy a) was fascinated with an extreme cult college
| where extreme academics with poor social skills seem to go, and
| b) is obsessed with Las Vegas.
|
| I recall reading a Catcher in the Rye which is popular precisely
| because of stunted/novice social development narrative
| perspective (protaganist is a teenager) identifying everyone as
| "phonies". Same vibe here.
| jyunwai wrote:
| This reminded me of another unconventional institution called St.
| John's College, though it does offer a four-year degree.
|
| Instead of offering a traditional undergraduate program that
| teaches largely from modern textbooks, students work through what
| the institution calls a "Great Books" curriculum of the
| "foundational texts of Western civilization" across a variety of
| subjects: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-
| programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
|
| I have, however, read some accounts online that the program has
| flaws with the way it teaches mathematics, where some students
| claim that an approach through historical texts is less effective
| than one with more current books. In any case, I think it's
| interesting that non-traditional institutions with largely
| respected reputations exist, like St. John's and the colleges in
| the article and the discussion so far.
| mastercheph wrote:
| It depends on what you want from a mathematics education and
| what you want from your education at St. John's. It is not a
| vocational school, and the mathematics we do won't strictly be
| aligned with any particular career path. And the other
| advantage/disadvantage is that almost all of the math you have
| learned before you start is not helpful, at least for the first
| two years. Neither of those things mean that the math we do is
| any less serious or important than the math education most
| undergraduates will receive. [1]
|
| Most people that are frustrated by one of the two things I
| mentioned above, either experience a shift in perspective, or
| do not complete their studies at St. John's.
|
| Afaik they have been trying to fudge these numbers over the
| past few years because admin thinks it makes the school look
| bad, but fewer than 50% of freshman that enroll in the college
| will graduate. And at least a third of those that leave don't
| make it past the first semester.
|
| [1] Just to paint a few broad strokes of the highlights of our
| math program: Freshman study Euclid's Elements and Optics,
| Archimedes, and Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest, Sophomores study
| Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler's Astronomia Nova, and Apollonius'
| Conics. Junior's study Newton, Maxwell, Oresme, Leibniz,
| Pascal, Descartes, and Dedekind. And Senior's work through
| Einstein, Lorentz, and Minkowski's relativity papers, before
| rounding the whole thing off with Lobochevsky, Bertrand
| Russell, and Godel.
| thsksbd wrote:
| This has all the trappings to be miserably boring. The story is
| long. In the middle of nowhere. Filled with weirdo boys
| cosplaying as yeoman intellectuals.
|
| I figured the story would take a dark turn, like a horror flick.
|
| Au contraire! This is a story about a bunch of self righteous
| pricks whose peckers get antibiotic resistant STDs.
|
| This was great, thank you. (The moral lesson is interesting too
| but I don't want to spoil it)
| w10-1 wrote:
| Much about this seems implausible. Classes are in the morning,
| not work. No applicant would be left alone to work - why? It's
| rare to have en-banc candidate interviews, and then only with the
| ~10-member applications committee. Also, the posting is 15 years
| out of date; after 7 student-generations, it can say little about
| Deep Springs today. But possibly it was true.
|
| Deep Springs gives the 24 2-year students all the responsibility:
| to pick faculty and students, to actually run the ranch, and to
| govern themselves.
|
| Part of that is ensuring each generation of students decides for
| themselves: practices survive only if the current generation
| adopts them.
|
| Another part is that people commit to taking you seriously; i.e.,
| you will be held responsible for your bullshit (er: taken at your
| word), e.g., "the people who read this essay at the school
| thought my idea was groundbreaking" means "The most interesting
| thing was this essay, so they went with it."
|
| Another part is the "isolation" policy: students don't leave
| during term, and more generally avoid outside influences (the
| internet has been a big issue, obviously). The goal is for you,
| together only with the people you have with you, to take full
| responsibility, and gain full authority, using what you have at
| hand.
|
| As a consequence, outside interest is Deep Springs, while
| necessary for the validation to recruit good students, is mostly
| discouraged -- to avoid influencing how the current students
| decide how to run things, and certainly to avoid visitors or
| internet conflagrations.
|
| It's extremely rare for students to have this combination of
| freedom and responsibility and feedback. It should be replicated.
| It's almost always life-changing. So if you know any brilliant,
| caring, and productive people about to start college, please ask
| them to consider Deep Springs.
|
| Otherwise, please forget about it :)
| S_Bear wrote:
| That was not the Harrison Barnes I was expecting. I spent a good
| few minutes figuring out why he'd be checking out a college with
| no D1 basketball program.
| 3523582908 wrote:
| I'm married to a Deep Springer. I've been lucky to go there once,
| during the Centennial.
|
| Yes, they are brilliant.
|
| Yes, they are hilariously weird and counter-cultural.
|
| The college is absolutely gorgeous. I would cherish the
| opportunity to go again.
| urstop wrote:
| There's another reunion around labor day this year.
| diracs_stache wrote:
| Several people from my high school went to Deep Springs. They
| were all incredibly bright, high potential students but
| definitely wanted "different". The ones I knew went on to
| UChicago, MIT, and (I think?) Harvard after their terms. I went
| to a Service Academy and couldn't help but think that their
| experience sounded much more challenging than what I went
| through.
| aqirax wrote:
| I made it to the final interview round in 2018 (1 of ~50). It was
| a delightful experience, though I was a little heartbroken when I
| didn't make it in. It was also the first year they were accepting
| women, which I suppose cut my odds in half. I believe their plan
| was half women this year, then all women next year, and then
| leave it up to the student body for future classes, but I'm not
| certain if they put that in place.
|
| Some anecdotes:
|
| The application process was intense. I wrote 4 essays for the
| first round, then four more for the second (and an extra one at
| the college), plus several other smaller prompts and questions.
| Each essay was 2-3 pages. The essay topics weren't easy either:
| "In what ways do your actions escape the boundaries of your
| intentions?" was one I remember in particular. They were
| enjoyable prompts, just difficult, but I think I did fairly well
| with them.
|
| They paid for my flights. It was the first time I had ever flown.
|
| At the airport I chatted with the other nervous applicants. We
| took a long, winding bus ride into Bishop. The driver took a good
| look at us and said "Ah, must be that time of year again" when we
| all climbed aboard. We were dropped off at a Walmart parking lot,
| and got picked up a couple hours later by a student in a large
| white pickup truck.
|
| The sun had set, so we couldn't see anything. We drove through a
| very narrow pass carved through some mountains, you could see the
| layers of rock in the truck's headlights. The student honked
| three times since it was only one car wide. When we arrived we
| were directed to a dusty attic to drop off our things, and then
| told to be ready to work at 6am. We all split up and wandered
| around aimlessly. The attic had a calendar with cowboy pinups on
| the wall, and was filled with musty old magazines and random bits
| and bobs. I loved their music room, with hundreds of old records
| and CDs and cassettes, as well as the smoking porch, which they
| endearingly called the "Smo'po' ". I was slightly surprised that
| so many students smoked. The conversations they had were
| interesting and rich. There was no small talk, only waxing poetic
| with a pack of marlboros. I wandered into the dining hall where
| students were cleaning up dinner. The kitchen was loud, two giant
| amps spewed Taylor Swift while somebody sprayed off plates with
| an industrial(?) washer.
|
| In the morning, I learned how to milk cows with another
| applicant, a girl who talked about Aristotle the whole time (just
| to impress the students, I think). Two buckets later and we
| watched the sun rise over the ranch. Again, we arrived in the
| dark, so this was the first time I was seeing everything. It was
| brilliant, like nectar pouring over the mountain sides. The whole
| valley opened up, much larger than I expected, almost swallowing
| me whole. The campus itself, just a handful of buildings, was now
| a small speck in the distance.
|
| I did very poorly in the interview. In the application they ask
| you to list every book you've read in the last year, and whether
| it was for class or personal enjoyment. I did dual enrollment and
| was about to receive my Associates in highschool, and pretty much
| only took math classes (I wanted to be/currently am an OR
| scientist), and I never read much outside of my lit classes. They
| asked why, claiming that reading was a particularly important
| skill for this school. I gave a mild response, but said that
| recently I had started reading a lot more, and pulled out a copy
| of Tristram Shandy. The president of the college was one of my
| interviewers, and his eyes lit up. He asked me why I was
| interested in the book, and I said something along the lines of
| "I heard it was incredibly boring." His face immediately turned
| sour, and said "Well, it's also incredibly funny." What I really
| meant was that it's about the monotony of everyday life, which
| seemed interesting given that most books I enjoyed were fantasy
| and sci-fi. But I was fairly nervous and starstruck at the
| moment, and didn't express myself very well. I never finished the
| book.
|
| Later in the day I helped a student load hay bales into a truck
| and distribute them around to various stables and pens. I had an
| interesting conversation him. He said that the biggest reason he
| came to Deep Springs was because he wanted to escape his drug and
| alcohol use. He was lean and tan, with short black hair, and wore
| a grimy white t-shirt and jeans. He was the "gopher hunter"
| (though I think it had a more prestigious name), and told me all
| about the ins and outs of the art of gopher hunting.
|
| During lunch I spoke with several other students. One, from India
| and had attended a famous international school (whose name I
| unfortunately don't remember, but apparently has had many alumni
| attend Deep Springs), was the most well-spoken person I've ever
| met. Everything he said was eloquent and precise, in a way I
| can't quite describe. He somehow chose the optimal words for
| every sentence, leaving his audience with no room (or need) for
| interpretation, you simply understood exactly what he meant in an
| unsettling vivid way. I wish I could remember something that he
| said. After lunch, I sat in on a philosophy class. They were
| discussing an Ayn Rand text they had read the previous week. I
| tried to ask questions and participate, though not having read
| the text made it difficult. If only it was a diffeq class!
|
| The next day I went on a hike with another applicant into the
| mountains. He was Bulgarian, with a thick beard and a puffy
| sweater, and spoke with a heavy accent. We made lots of jokes and
| talked a lot about what we'd imagine life would be like here.
|
| When I got back, I wrote another essay, though I don't remember
| the exact topic. A student brought me up to a nearby house on a
| hill, and gave me a printed prompt and several sheets of paper
| and a pen. I asked what this building was for, as it was rather
| empty, just a table and a few beds. He said that sometimes
| students sleep in this house, and I asked why. He had slept there
| last night, because he was sick. I said I hope he's feeling
| better, to with he replied "Yes, though it was more of an
| emotional sickness than physical one." I didn't ask any other
| questions, though I wish I did.
|
| We all took another winding bus ride through the mountains back
| to the airport, though we were rather silent this time. I flew
| back out and eagerly awaited to hear back from them. It was my
| first choice for school. I was crestfallen when I got rejected,
| and heavily considered reapplying next year. But the application
| process was so long and intense, and I was so busy with applying
| for internships and completing upper level courses, I couldn't
| muster the energy to do it. I regret it less each year.
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