Southern Maine Community College

I’ve been a student at Southern Maine Community College for about a semester and a half now, in one of the Health Sciences programs.
The Good:
Fairly small class sizes, even in intro classes that bigger schools run as 100+ student lectures. One on one attention in these classes can make or break someone’s success as a first year student. For example I took a refresher math course where the instructor was a high school teacher who came in after his day of teaching and did two more classes at the College. He brought 30+ years of teaching Math, and an advanced mathematics degree. Excellent teacher and excellent experience.
Classes in my major tend to be a bit tougher and are much more specialized, with little wasted time or effort — everything we do is very clearly aimed at teaching skills to help in the workplace, which I appreciate.
The Campus is in a great location, and in warm weather there’s nothing better than spending your lunch on the beach. There are a lot of local residents who walk dogs on the campus, and I love dogs, so that was always a plus. The Willard Beach community seems to be open and friendly to college students.
The bad:
SMCC has a wide range of ages and experiences represented, and some of the students are there to goof off and disrupt. People talking in class over the lecture, texting, or using laptops to browse facebook or chat with other students is a regularly occurring interruption in many of the intro classes. The school is also incredibly diverse (for Maine) and there is some racial tension that is not addressed by the school. There are clubs active but due to the high commuter population there aren’t many. The Campus is small and geographically restricted from growing or expanding, so it can be difficult to find a place to study or even eat lunch, especially in the Winter or on rainy days. The school feels overcrowded, and the library and computer labs are small and somewhat out of date.
The ugly:
Parking is an absolute nightmare between 9:00 a.m. and noon Monday through Thursday. There is simply not enough parking for the amount of commuting students the college enrolls, and no plans to build a garage or invest in any sort of distant parking lot/​shuttle system. Most of the classes are offered either Monday — Wednesday or Tuesday — Thursday, making the campus a ghost town on Fridays.