The main that that drew me to joining an LLP is that when I applied to UK
I was applying alone, and no one from my high school was attending UK.
I definitely felt alone at first and I felt like I needed that community.
An LLP is a living learning program, so it is basically a community of people who are
like-minded. They could be in the same major or interested in the same things, and generally,
they will live in the same building or on the same floor, and they will be led by a peer mentor.
It's a great community. There are so many resources. It helps you
acclimate to campus so much better. You already have built-in friendships that
last a really long time. It really helps you just ease into this whole situation a lot easier.
I was, of course, very nervous. It was my first time living out of my own house,
and I felt like I was already at home. I already felt like I knew exactly what the dorm had to
provide. It didn’t feel like I was the new kid. It felt like I’d been here for a long time.
Having this large campus broken down into just my LLP when I first moved in
really helped my adjustment period. It made it a lot easier and quicker for me
and so when it came time for me to actually go to all my classes and experience campus
in its entirety, I was ready for that point.
I think joining the LLP at UK is a phenomenal way to make new friends and get involved on campus
and it's a great way to start your investment in your education.
Living learning program really just spells out what an LLP is. You live together,
you learn together and the whole program is like one big family, and one big, fun community.
There's different activities. So, we had a water balloon fight, we had an ice cream
social, and we'll do, like test prep nights. We'll do some fun nights, too, movie nights.
We recently had an event where we helped students schedule their classes so if they had questions
about where is this building, or how far it is from this building, can I make it in time?
LLP's, a good way to think of them, is kind of like a life hack for college.
They simply just make college easier. College can be daunting and overwhelming for a lot of
17- and 18-year old’s coming in and moving away from home for the first time. So, it just makes
the social side better, it makes the academic side better and just kind of makes your life better.
The average end-of-year GPA of students living in an LLP, for instance,
is significantly higher than those students living off campus and even significantly higher
than those students who live on campus in a UK residence hall, but don't participate in an LLP.
The other thing that is great about LLP's is our retention rate
is significantly higher than all those other students living on campus but not in an LLP.
I think what makes UK’s LLP experience so unique is the intentional
layering of support. We have living and learning spaces that meet every need.
We’ve got the larger spaces where students want to gather, we've got classroom spaces for our faculty
or resident instructors to come in and share with our students. But we also have study rooms that
are smaller cubicles or larger if they want to do group study sessions.
It's pretty easy to access resources; one of them is The Study that I went to
a lot. It's their peer tutoring. You always see people studying,
you always see someone that you know in the study rooms that you could,
that you might have in your class and everyone on the floor was very academic-focused.
My coordinator would often times bring in
representatives from campus resources like Presentation U, which helps with presentations.
It's just really great in the way that it builds the community for you. It gives you
access to so many resources that you would not have had otherwise, and I do not think
that I would have adjusted to campus life as well as I did without the help of an LLP.
It is an experience that will leave you better than it found you. You will get
something out of it. I think our LLPs allow our students to feel like they have a place here,
that they have a home here, and it becomes that place that they can feel safe, and they can grow.