Back in the day (whenever that was for you), cracking the books open at college literally meant cracking the books open—hours upon hours of studying for exams, papers, and oral presentations.

These days, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder campus spend just 11 to 15 hours a week prepping, according to the Daily Camera. That’s slightly less than students at other schools, leaving room for improvement.

Expectations for CU students should be high, because they can go on to do great things. Take a bunch of theatrical idealists who decided to risk opening a theater in Baltimore even though most of them had never been there. At the time (about 10 years ago), the Maryland city seemed to be the country’s best bet in terms of cost of living and local funding for the arts.

As The Washington Post reports in a glowing profile, 10 of the transplants from Colorado are now the performers and proprietors of one of Baltimore’s hottest troupes, Single Carrot Theatre, which was named the city’s best theater company by Baltimore City Paper last year.