What Students Really Say About Farmington


Tell me a bit about the classes you’ve taken in Community Health Education.
So far, I’ve taken some Nutrition classes and a Food and Culture class.

Have you had any class assignments or projects that have really stood out?
Yeah, we had a guest lecturer who came and talked with us about her experience having had a gastric bypass surgery, which was really interesting to me. And today we’re having another guest lecturer come to talk with our class, this time it’s with someone who suffered from Anorexia. Both are topics we’ve discussed in our Nutrition classes.

You seem excited about it.
Yeah, I really like the real-life, case studies approach. And it’s so wonderful these people have volunteered to come talk with us about their experiences.

So, what brought you to UMF?
It’s pretty close to home, an hour away, so I can go back whenever I need to. Plus, UMF is small and I liked the atmosphere.

What other colleges did you apply to?
I didn’t. I only applied to Farmington and prayed for the best.

How did you know Farmington was the one for you?
I don’t know, really. I read a lot about it. I’d been here before, so the decision was pretty easy for me.

What were your first impressions?
Well, I played varsity soccer my freshman year, so I arrived on campus a week earlier than the rest of the school — I thought that was really good. So I already had friends here, and orientation was fun. There were a lot of students who came back early because they played on the fall varsity sports teams.

Do you still play soccer?
No, I don’t. Now I play on the women’s rugby team.

Why did you switch from varsity soccer to rugby?
I played soccer in the fall and I liked it. It was a lot of fun. But I had a friend who played women’s rugby for UMF in the spring — rugby is a spring and fall sport here — so I played rugby that spring, and I did really well. I even made it onto the women’s All-New England Rugby Team. So I decided to play rugby again the following fall. I got more playing time than I did in soccer, too. I was better at rugby, I guess [laughs].

What is the rugby team like?
The girls on the team are really nice and it’s fun. Rugby is a lot more structured than a lot of people think. We have practice from 7:00 to 9:00 in the morning and again 8:00 to 9:30 at night. We practice and play home games here at UMF on our own rugby pitch, down by the varsity field hockey field on Prescott Field, and we play a lot of away tournaments all over New England. We’re pretty good, too! We won our last tournament and we made it to the semi-finals the tournament before that. It’s a big time commitment, but it’s good to be involved.

Now, confess … you’re the UMF Beaver mascot, right?
Yes, I am [laughs]. I wear the UMF Beaver costume! I work for the Athletic Department, at the basketball games, as … the UMF Beaver.

Do you like being the Beaver?
I like it a lot. It’s cool because nobody knows it’s me! They switch it around, so I was the Beaver most of the time, but sometimes it would be another person — nobody knew who the Beaver was. I had a couple cool signature moves, so they’d know when it was me! [laughs] But it was fun because you get to dress up and act crazy and you can do whatever you want. It’s a lot of fun. Except the costume is really hot! There’s a small fan in the head but it doesn’t always work. This is the first year we’ve had the new Beaver mascot costume.

What else do you do for the Varsity Athletic Department?
During the fall we have field hockey and soccer games and cross-country meets so we work the time clocks or work as a ball girl. For cross-country meets we go and direct the runners, telling them which way to go. There are varsity basketball games in the winter and you can keep stats, run the game clock minutes, be the Beaver or work at the concession stand. We also keep regular office hours at Dearborn Gym.

Do you do anything else on your off-time?
I also work on the campus switchboard. Plus, I was part of the UMF Tennis Club and on the weekends I work up at Sugarloaf Mountain as one of their Sugarloaf Ambassadors.

What’s a Sugarloaf Ambassador?
We work on-hill at the mountain to promote slope safety. We’re on the mountain to slow people down if they’re going too fast on family trails and stuff like that.

Do you ski?
Nope, I snowboard.

Did snowboarding play a big role in your decision to go to college at Farmington?
Yes, because it’s so close to Sugarloaf Mountain. But it wasn’t the deciding factor.

What do you do for fun with your friends?
Just hang out, watch movies, talk, go snowboarding, go to parties. We just hang out and have fun. Walk around, go downtown and shop.

Now that you’ve been here a while, what does Farmington do well?
I like that it’s small and that we have small classes and there’s a great student-to-faculty ratio. I feel I’m involved in a lot of things on campus and there are a lot of opportunities here to be involved in a club or play in sports. I like that. I think that there’s a good, positive feel among the students. I feel like I’m friends with everyone here and everyone knows everybody.

Is there anything you’d change about UMF?
I don’t know what I'd change.

Anything you’ve had a hard time with?
Sometimes I have a hard time motivating myself to do work but that’s just me personally, I procrastinate. But I don’t know if I would change anything my professors have done. I don’t know — that’s a hard question.

In a few words, how would you describe Farmington?
Down-to-earth, on campus. And it’s in a small, nice town. Pretty.

Do you have a favorite Farmington memory or experience?
Yeah. Last rugby season we went to a tournament and we all played really well and all felt really good after we played and that’s a good memory — all of us together celebrating and feeling good about how we played. I have a lot of good memories with my friends, hanging out, doing stuff.