I had a so/so experience here. Not only is the college located in the middle of nowhere, but the student body pretty much embodies every negative social stereotype you can think of for unmotivated 20 years-olds. You hardly ever see people reading or studying around campus, mainly just being loud and obnoxious or standing in doorways on their phone. I made a total of 3 or 4 friends in my 3 years of attending the college, as they were the only people I could stand being around for more than 5 minutes. However, some of the older students seem to give a crap more than the millennials going here. Probably because they appreciate college more than the ones whose parents are sending them here to get rid of them.
You'll often hear someone complaining about a professor, asking to have a grade changed (yes, really), and when you're in the classroom, no one really participates as no one has studied the material. I could go on and on about how dim the younger student-body is, or how bad the parking is, but let's leave it at this: keep your head down if you need to go here, and get your studying done. You'll be able to transfer to a better school once you've paid your dues. If you must interact with people here, avoid the younger population.
The town of Barnesville is hideously boring. There's no bars for miles, and even worse there's no decent restaurants nearby, unless you can settle for Hardee's, Subway, or some dumpy Mexican restaurant. The only really nice place, a Chinese buffet, shut down May of 2012, and was replaced by some trashy steakhouse with frozen food. It's obvious Barnesville is meant for retired individuals. It's definitely no Milledgeville or Athens.
The college itself does seem to be expanding a lot (I revisited in 2017 to see a massive overhaul and was very impressed, but as of writing this, it consisted of about 10 buildings, with about 3 being used for classrooms). The cafeteria was just renovated, so I guess that's something. The student 'success' center is a good place to get tutoring, but only if you need help with math. Getting tutoring for anything else is kind of a waste of time. The IC building is pretty depressing, and everything feels tight, but it's where you're going to spend the bulk of your time.
I've always seen the professors as 'you get what you pay for'. I've had a couple of really good professors, some okay professors, and a lot of down-right terrible professors. I once had a professor that taught the class by playing a slideshow with vocal narration. Just be prepared to do a lot of studying on your own, otherwise you'll never graduate/be able to transfer. Even though it's a junior college, it's still going by the University System of Georgia, so the classes are still relatively hard. It's good if you don't have enough money to go somewhere else, but there are still a lot of better schools out there, like GCSU or something. If you want to be handed the answers to tests and just breeze through college, then I suggest going to Southern Crescent, or whatever Griffin Tech is calling themselves these days.
So anyway, in conclusion, the biggest beef I had with the school were the students, so if you have half a brain, just pick your friends carefully. Gordon is a nice school, and will help you get into a university, but I learned you can get straight A's without heavy studying. Give it a chance, and you might grow to love it. read more
