What makes Carolina Unique

Most of all, it’s about the way you feel when you are here. At Carolina, you are part of history – the university’s, North Carolina’s, and most especially, your own.

I had no idea that, when the door closed behind my parents before my first night ever in my dorm room that day in August, knowing that they would go back to their lives at home as I continued my education at Carolina, my life as I knew it was over. When that door closed behind them, a brand new door had opened, and I entered a whole other world with its own culture and way of life. I had entered the world of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Carolina, like many universities, has its own dictionary. Only at Carolina can you say, “Ho-Jo,” “Mo-town,” and “E-house” and not only get away with it, but also have everyone know exactly what you are talking about. When I started the next phase of my life at Carolina, I learned all about this wondrous place affectionately named, “The Pit.” Pit-sitting, tabling in the pit, the Pit Preacher…suddenly a three letter word becomes a very dominant part of your vocabulary. Every campus has its ‘quads,’ but, honestly, how many have a ‘pit?’

Bricked walkways, stone walls and benches, memorials and an arboretum, hundred-year-old trees that bloom in the spring and change color in the fall, an art museum, a bell tower that rings in every quarter hour; sure other universities have these, but does any have them all? Do they have a water fountain that is a good luck charm? Do they have a tree so important that it is has been filled with cement, rigged up to the closest tree, and two genetic multiples of it planted nearby just so that it will survive? Do they have a building that was the first ever public university, dorms and all?

In the end, it’s not just the classes you take, the professors you have, the degree you get, or even the sports; it’s the friends you make in those classes, the bonds you have with your professors years after the class is over, the memories you have as you are getting that degree, the way the campus floods with students between classes, and the way Franklin Street is one huge celebration after we win a big game.

Most of all, it’s about the way you feel when you are here. At Carolina, you are part of history – the university’s, North Carolina’s, and most especially, your own.

Best wishes in opening new doors.