Common Time: When people say Carleton is quirky, what do they mean?
18 June 2025
Photos by Zach Spindler-Krage
Quirky (kwәr-kē), adjective: having many quirks—a peculiar trait or idiosyncrasy—usually in an interesting or appealing way
The word has been used to describe all things Carleton, from students to classes to the overall atmosphere of the College, for years. But what does it mean to this generation of students? We took to the Bald Spot during a recent Common Time to find out.
“The quirkiness is something you feel more than something you see. It’s like Carleton being so small and kind of isolated has led to it creating its own culture. Everything has its own unique Carleton vibe to it. People express their emotions more and are more willing to talk about random things. It’s not uncommon to walk into a dining hall and at one table, someone’s talking about solipsism, even though neither of them are philosophy majors, and then at another table, someone is talking about physics concepts. People don’t do small talk here—there’s not much filler.”
— Ryan Quinn ’25
“Liberal arts is not just the thing that we do, it’s the way that we live. I’m head of the Rocky Horror Picture Show society, I’m also captain of the ballroom dance team, and I work in the theater. It’s just that we are multifaceted in so many different ways. We live and breathe liberal arts in a way that some schools maybe don’t.”
— Carolina Cabanela-Leiseth ’25
“I think it’s that you have a lot of people with individual interests coming together to form collective new interests. Like I’m really into fingerboarding, but my friend Isaac wasn’t as into it until I put him on to it. And my friend Hudson is part of the film society. I wasn’t too into films, and now, since coming to Carleton, I’ve really been connecting with my cinephile side. I really think that it’s about finding communities that you didn’t know that you were connected to, and then connecting to them.”
— James Coronado-McDermott ’28
“I think they mean that we’re very proud of the not-so-mainstream activities that we participate in and things that we’re interested in. Carleton encourages people to do whatever they want, and I think it’s really cute. I think I’m a little bit more quirky. I’m pretty hippy: I do tarot readings. In the Midwest, it’s not the most normal thing to see someone reading your future, but Carleton is a very encouraging environment to do that.”
— Mia Alyssa Lorenzo ’27
“I think it’s about having different people with different backgrounds. Everyone here is talented and smart, but they also come from different situations. I’ve been able to do things that I didn’t do before because of all the connections to interesting people. I’m creating a show called Supernatural Crime Unit FBI. I stayed up all night writing 43 pages of script, and I can’t believe it’s coming to real life because of all the people who were willing to be a part of it. I wouldn’t call myself quirky, but I want to be an influential person—to make sure people do something better in their lives.”
— Jedi Calvin ’28
“I think what they mean is there really is no niche—no particular type of person that comes to Carleton. I came from a high school where I felt like I had to fit into a particular niche and conduct myself in a particular type of way. But coming here, I’ve allowed myself to open that up and not care about what people think about me. Honestly, people love when you don’t care about what anyone thinks about you. It feels good to be in a community where I can just be myself and feel accepted.”
