Field Trip Friday – University of Guam

Field Trip Friday this week was a visit to the University of Guam. We didn’t do an official tour, just spent the morning walking around campus and visited the library. It is a small University with the campus covering about 160 acres with roughly 3500 students. The University offers 34 undergraduate degree programs and 11 graduate degree programs.

The kids were surprised by how small the campus was. The only other University they have been to is Colorado State University in Fort Collins (Dave’s alma mater). That campus is massive in comparison at almost 4,800 acres and roughly 34,000 students. The campus was nice, with huge mature trees and a walking path, but I had to remind myself that it was a college. We were able to walk around the entire campus in about 20 minutes.

The only building we went into was the library. It was small but nice and the staff there were extremely friendly. One woman stopped us and asked where we were from, even offering to give us a private tour. She told Alexis when we were leaving “I hope you come to school here.”

We engaged in some good conversation as we walked around. The kids asked interesting questions about the requirements for college and talked about where they may want to go some day. We discussed the price differences between various colleges and whether it matters what college you attend. Dave and I reminisced about our own college days and talked about what a different experience it would be to go to a college as small as the University of Guam.

Something that we found extremely odd was the lack of people. We went at 10am on a Friday and the campus was unbelievably quiet. It felt almost creepy. We saw a few students in the library, and a few more in an open air courtyard, but that was about it.

This was a fun experience and opened up some good conversations, though the school itself wasn’t overly impressive. The view from campus, however, is pretty remarkable!