I can not tell you why I love UW as a whole, however I can tell you why I love the UW Tacoma. I am the first of my immediate family to graduate college and I did so after an eleven year hiatus from school. I watched many of my friends struggle through college. However, their struggle was not work load induced, it was professors that did not care about the student factor of teaching, terrible mix ups and miscommunications about financial aid and scholarships, and an overall feeling of being "just a number." From the first day I stepped on the UW Tacoma campus I was treated with the respect and dignity of a responsible adult and given the care and guidance reserved for someone with the insecurities that come with the decision to change their life. Where many of my friends described their college experience as a warzone one must plow through, I described mine as falling into a feather bed. Anytime I had a question about an assignment, my professors could be reached...even at 2am by an immediately-responded-to email. I never had worries or concerns about whether my financial aid would come in on time or come in at all. And I never worried about whether I had taken the correct amount of classes in specific departments to graduate on time.

When I left the UW Tacoma to take on graduate school, I realized just how lucky I had been. All of those nightmares people had told me about during their undergraduate experience had caught up to me. However, I was not the inexperienced and insecure student that entered the UW Tacoma. I knew how it could be and refused to accept anything less.

I have successfully finished the required classes for my masters degree and I am working on my thesis. Whenever I find my current professors are unreachable for questions, I still find a few of my favorite UW Tacoma professors available to lend an ear. This time, they are available as friends. - Cecelia Thiel 2006

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