This is the sort of post that pre-college me never would have guessed I’d be writing, but that’s the beauty of college: we change, and the sorts of things we get up to change, too.
I came into college considering the Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Latinx and Latin American Studies, Religion, and Political Science majors. My first semester, I took four reading and writing intensive courses, and swore to myself never again! It was far too much of the same type of work. I took some Environmental Studies courses in the spring because of the sort of interdisciplinarity the department offered, and decided that it was the major for me. Now, as a senior, I’ve taken courses in what feels like every department, partly because of my major and partly because of my own exploration, and that long list includes a good chunk of STEM or technically oriented courses.
While no tech expert, I am far less scared of computers than I was four years ago, and I give a lot of credit to the vast resources Amherst provides and the low barrier to entry to learning. I’ll give you a bit of an overview of the resources that have been helpful to me.
Software
Amherst is Google Suite-based, and we have (I’m pretty sure) unlimited Drive storage associated with our Amherst accounts.
Amherst gives students the entire Microsoft package, from which I mostly use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. My Environmental Science with Lab course gave me a lot of Excel knowledge that still comes in handy to this day.
We also have all of the Adobe Suite! This is one that can be very expensive, so it’s a privilege I’ll really miss when I graduate. I’ve used Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator for class projects and for advertising events for my extracurriculars. This semester, I’m learning Premiere Pro in my Video Production class.
The IT department runs a virtual machine called Citrix, which allows all students, staff, and faculty to connect to a PC desktop from their own computers. This allows us to access the ever-useful ArcGIS Pro, even from Mac computers. I’m taking Geospatial Inquiry this semester, a class entirely about learning how to use ArcGIS to answer geospatial questions, and I actually made my first complete map today!
Equipment
IT keeps an army of loaner computers ready for students who might need access to a reliable laptop. We can get in touch with them at anytime and borrow a computer to use as our own for two weeks.
The Film and Media Studies department has tons of photo, video, and audio equipment available for loan, which any student currently enrolled in a course can borrow. This is something that was hidden from me until I took a class this semester, and it’s truly an astonishing amount of equipment that I can access totally for free, once I’ve been trained on how to use it.
Space
There are a few different spaces on campus you can go to access big computers, keyboards, and mice. My favorite, and a haven for thesis writers, in particular, is A level in Frost Library. There are dozens of work stations there with big screens—some you connect to your laptop to expand your display, and others are autonomous machines you can log into using Amherst College credentials. I have spent countless hours there.
ArcGIS students have access to a lab room with tons more of these monitors (which also charge your laptop as you use them), and Economics students have access to a computer lab with econ-specific software pre-downloaded. I’m sure there are many other discipline-specific spaces I don’t even know about. My point is, you can always access a nice big monitor so you’re not just squinting at a little laptop screen.
This sort of tech and tech support is a real privilege that Amherst faculty and staff work hard to make sure students can access. There is certainly a stereotype that liberal arts students graduate without any hard skills, but I think most of us subvert that rule simply because of how many resources we have here to learn things we might have previously boxed ourselves out of.