It's that time of year when the walk to and from class becomes far more interesting.

Snow flurries fall over new flowers. Tuesday afternoons on the HUB lawn contain more scantily clad people than Friday nights downtown. Long-buried gloves and lost ID+ cards emerge from the snow and litter the campus like lost treasure troves.

But don't let these distractions get the best of you. It's also the time of year that you must watch out for flying Frisbees -- and the time when all 23 miles of campus walkways are filled with backward-walkers, all of whom are known to call out, "We are!" at random intervals.

Yes, it's that time of year again, when high school juniors starting the college hunt and already-accepted high school seniors descend on campus. The Lion Ambassadors, our impossibly enthusiastic cheerleaders, tell them and their parents all about Penn State -- from why University Park has a different ZIP code than State College to how easy it is to get library books from other Big Ten schools.

They promise potential students a good time and ensure the parents that Penn State is more than just a good time.

Some of those students will end up here. But, others won't. Many of them, particularly the top-tier students, only apply to Penn State as a back-up or safety school. As soon as they receive their acceptance to somewhere else (especially if that acceptance contains a generous financial aid package), the Penn State acceptance letter heads for the recycling bin.

Penn State was my safety school. I didn't want to come here.

This may come as a shock to you, but I'm a complete and utter nerd. My idea of collegiate perfection was some small, illustrious liberal arts school in New England.

But, financial concerns sent me to Penn State, much to my embarrassment, especially when my equally nerdy friends laughed hard when someone reported that they had heard the members of a more popular table all say where they were going to school. It went something like, "Pitt, Penn State, Pitt, Penn State, Penn State Altoona."

But, here I am, at my safety school, and I love it. I have more school pride than most of my friends at more academically prestigious schools. I love the football team, the drunken E-A-G-L-E-S cheers in Beaver Canyon and my pseudo-greek organization.

I am far happier here than I would have been elsewhere.

The safety school reputation is not a result of academic weakness. Penn State graduates have made an indelible mark on society in all fields, from the humanities to finance to biology. The problem is that we don't value ourselves enough, nor does the administration. We advertise ourselves as a partying, fun school and ignore the fact (perhaps we just repress it) that most of us work hard, too.

Our collective low self-esteem broadcasts itself to the rest of the nation. On the message board of a college advice Web site frequented by high-achieving high school students, a student actually listed Penn State as his "bottom of the barrel safety."

Now, that's just harsh.

Realistically, though, how can we expect high school students to give Penn State the respect and consideration that the university deserves? The university's prestige revolves almost entirely around the non-academic sun. If you do a news search for Penn State, 90 percent of your results will be sports-related.

The other 10 percent probably relate back to Playboy's Girls of the Big Ten package.

We flaunt our sports and our girls, but we fail to brag about our academics. It's as if we have performance anxiety: We don't know how the world will react if suddenly Penn State begins to portray itself like Harvard.

Furthermore, it's hard to consider yourself elite if you're just one among 40,000 people. Size matters, and as far as schools are considered, smaller is almost always better. Besides the Ivy League, most prestigious schools are much smaller than our mammoth university. We need to play up the idea that all 40,000 attendants (OK, maybe there are a few exceptions) are bright, hard-working individuals.

We need to advertise our professors' achievements.

We need to advertise our students' achievements.

By getting rid of the "safety school" label, we can attract more competitive students, who will turn into student leaders and academic superstars, who will earn more money, who will donate money to Penn State, which will help attract more competitive students. That will increase the value of your degree and help keep the Penn State name respectable.

But don't try too hard.

We don't want a ton of nerds like me running around this campus.