“So why’d you come to Maryland?” If I had a nickel for every time someone’s asked me that during my four years here, I’d have enough money to by a ticket back to my home state of Hawaii and bring four of my best friends with me to see molten lava spewing out of Kilauea Volcano and swim among the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (our state fish) at Hapuna Beach.

The high today in my hometown of Hilo will be 76 degrees and the overnight low was a chilly 65 degrees. When people back home say it’s freezing outside, it’s exaggeration; here, it’s literal.

On bleak days like today in College Park when it is so cold that the girls in North Face Jackets and Uggs can’t help but shiver, and sparrows huddle in packs near the tires of freshly parked cars, (the smart sparrows have taken thermodynamics, of course, and know the friction between the rubber and the road causes thermal heating so the tires are quite warm), I sometimes ask myself why I’m here. While sitting in math classes with 200 other half-asleep students in the basement of the Armory, I find it hard not to feel like a number. When budget cuts come in Annapolis and out-of-state students inevitably get stuck with tuition increases, I wonder how I’ll ever get my next payment into the bursar’s office.

And through it all, I love being a Terp.

What’s my favorite memory here? I remember being dumbfounded at my first football game freshman year when everyone at Byrd Stadium shouted “O” during the national anthem. Maybe it’s feeling the excitement of shaking copies of this wonderful newspaper and screaming “SUCKS” while the opposing team is being announced at Comcast. Or tasting the blue breeze of the Chesapeake at the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Ukulele Association’s Annual Sail and Strum Yacht Cruise (trust me, it exists: I’ve got pictures to prove it).

The thing that gets me, though, is that people flat-out don’t believe me when I say I’m here because Maryland is a great school. Right now I’m sitting in my laboratory in the physics building where I’ve learned how to use a genetic algorithm to design an array at the South Pole to detect extra-galactic neutrinos.

Sound cool? Yeah, it is. No really, it is.

What the skeptics don’t realize about Maryland is the problems usually associated with going to a large state school – big classes, bureaucracy and student anonymity – are actually great strengths. This is the perfect place for the intellectually promiscuous: You can study anything, take risks, make mistakes and move on. Our school’s most accomplished alumni – Jim Henson, Gary Williams and Connie Chung to name a few – used their time at the university to find their passion in life.

While it is depressing sometimes to sit in a large lecture hall where your professor doesn’t recognize you, let alone know your name, those same professors are always happy (and sometimes surprised) when you come to them with a curious mind to talk outside of class.

Can’t see a reason to talk to faculty about anything? Find something else. If the Schrödinger Equation doesn’t stiffen your nipples, maybe studying 19th century feminist literature or making frog puppets out of lime green felt will.

Benjamin Johnson is a senior physics major. He can be reached at katsuo@umd.edu.