A Great Learning and Growing Experience 1979

by Martha Brown Somers

Honestly, I really didn’t like Longwood very much my first two years I attended. I had reluctantly gone there because since I was a little girl and my mother had gone there (Class of 1951), All I heard about was Longwood from the time I was old enough to know what college was all about. I applied to at least 2 other schools my senior year of high school and I think my parents took me on a whirlwind tour of almost every private and public college and university in the Commonwealth of Virginia just so I would have something to compare to Longwood. My thoughts always came back to Longwood and ultimately it was my decision and I chose Longwood. It just always felt like home to me even when I didn’t like it so much or thought it was the best fit for me. I was dismayed that it was still an all girls college with a lot of tradition and legacy. Yet now, years later, I look back fondly with great memories of growing up, experiencing my first love, meeting some wonderful lifelong female friends and yet getting a great education at the same time. I am now proud to be a Longwood graduate and next fall my son, John will be an entering freshman at the same institution that I embarked on nearly 40 years earlier. I hope he has the same great memories when he is finished as I did. It is probably one of the most undervalued institutes of higher education in the state and I am proud to have gone there.