Senior writer Sarah Kaylan Butler spoke with Dylan Zanikls, a UNC student, in the Ackland Art Museum Alumni Garden for Town Talk’s weekly Humans of Chapel Hill feature. To view the original Humans of New York blog, see here.
Where are you from originally?
Clinton, North Carolina
What’s different about Chapel Hill than Clinton?
Clinton is a really small agrarian town. My house was surrounded by fields, and here it’s definitely the must urban place I’ve ever lived. I graduated with 147 people in my class, and then, I have — like what — 4,000 here?
Why UNC?
UNC was always my first choice. From the time I was four years old, I was walking around with a UNC shirt on. I applied to like seven other schools, and never considered another one seriously. This was where I thought I should be.
If people were considering coming to UNC, what would be the best thing you’d say to convince them? What would you say to convince them not to?
The biggest thing for me was the diversity of actually getting to meet people from different places. I never had that opportunity was I was younger. I went to school with the same people for 13 years, and knew everybody in the yearbook by name. Here I get to see new people every day, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot by experiencing other people.
My biggest issue is … it seems like the administration is less concerned with the students themselves and more concerned with appeasing every group of people who disagrees with something.
They feel like they have to correct it, and I feel like at a liberal arts institution you’re supposed to feel uncomfortable. That’s how you grow, and how you develop new ideas and find out really how you think for yourself. I don’t agree with the administration and a lot of things they do, but I love this school.
