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The Plan Process Areas of Study Faculty Advising and First Year Forum Student Voices: The Plan
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What is Field Work Term? Student Success and Employer Satisfaction Field Work Term Options Fellowships
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Bennington Student Voices
Juju's Plan Process: French Language and Film Iñigo's Plan Process: Computer Science and Animation David's Plan Process: Acting and Dance Kim's Advanced Work: Developmental Psychology, French, and Statistics Kaiya's Advanced Work: Diversity & Inclusion in Drama and Black Studies
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Academics

The Plan Process Areas of Study Faculty Advising and First Year Forum Student Voices: The Plan

Field Work Term

What is Field Work Term? Student Success and Employer Satisfaction Field Work Term Options Fellowships

Student Life

Student Life Housing Dining Student Clubs & Organization Athletics

Bennington Student Voices

Juju's Plan Process: French Language and Film Iñigo's Plan Process: Computer Science and Animation David's Plan Process: Acting and Dance Kim's Advanced Work: Developmental Psychology, French, and Statistics Kaiya's Advanced Work: Diversity & Inclusion in Drama and Black Studies
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The Plan Process

At Bennington, The Plan is a theoretical map that every student draws to dive deep into the studies of an area and subject of their choice. It’s a personalized, evolving direction of your education designed by you, with guidance from an advisor and faculty who are in your areas of study

🎓 What does that look like in practice?
When you ask a Bennington student what they study, you might hear:

  • Medical Anthropology
  • Victorian Literature
  • Space Architecture
  • Objecthood and Nostalgia
  • Along with more traditional areas:
  • English and Psychology
  • Biology and Photography
  • Painting, Math, and Chemistry  

Students pick their main areas of study and create a central question that might combine their interests to make a path of study that is unique to you. 

🧭 How The Plan works:

  • You start your first year studying broadly with no requirements outside of your First Year Forum Class
  • You create a Plan Proposal your second year to present to a faculty committee 
  • You build your course of study around your questions, interests, and goals
  • You meet regularly with faculty advisors who help you refine your focus
  • Your Plan grows and shifts with you so you can grow as a learner 

The goal is to balance intellectual adventure with academic depth. Your curiosity drives it. The Plan shapes it. Together, they make an education that’s completely your own with depth in your areas of interest while also continuing to study broadly in a liberal arts model. 

This place pushes you to work hard and do your best work and be the most competent version of yourself.

Like all the classes I've taken, I've chosen to take because they've been helpful to support what I'm ultimately going to do.

Whatever you're working on, you're working on in every class. You know, when you get to your last term, it's like well, but wait, there's so much more I could be doing, like there's so many more advanced projects I could do.

Digging deeper into things that you may know something about, but just really need to kind of broaden your base on, I think that has really made it so that you have to step up to the plate. Like the professors aren't just going to throw information at you and expect you to retain that. Like you have to do something with that.

By taking different classes at Bennington, by investing myself into different fields, by trying out new things and all sort of with the same intention of where I want to go. I'm constantly looking for the things that genuinely make me happy and things that pique my interest. And once I've found that, I roll with it. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

If you're not following the path of other people before you, then you can't really be pushed into a certain current, really crafting something unique.

I've learned science by doing science. And that applies to my first class here, to my senior work.

I talk about how we really are focusing on the grander questions of the process, and then figuring out what is needed as a result of that.

I think I'm growing to be more comfortable in not knowing. You know, relishing in the questions and not necessarily the answers, because the kind of work that I'm embarking on is full of questions, and there are almost never any answers.

It's a place to really focus deeply on. So what am I interested in? What am I capable of? How far can I go into that and where can it take me next? I'm not studying what I thought I would study when I came here, because it shows that I've changed, and I've grown, and become a more full person knowing, myself even more.

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The Plan Process Areas of Study Faculty Advising and First Year Forum Student Voices: The Plan
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