WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO DONEDONEDONE
Dear Vassar and friends,
I’m writing to you to let you know that on this fine afternoon, May 10, 2012, I am officially done with my sophomore year. Yes. It is true. After hours of studying molecules and mechanisms and resonance structures in the retreat, I approached Rocky 200 with dread. My organic chemistry final was drawing near. I did ten push-ups outside the building to ready myself for the torture I knew was to come. Two hours later I crawled from the building, crying and bleeding profusely. I actually think the exam was fine (KNOCK ON WOOD, AHHH!), but everyone associates organic chemistry with trauma, so I might as well keep up the reputation! I then proceeded to frolic through the halls of Main building by myself, because none of my friends are done with their finals. My end of finals has come rather anti-climactically, as most people are not done and are therefore unwilling to celebrate and frolic with me. Ah, well.
This summer I’m staying on Vassar’s campus and doing URSI (Undergraduate Research Summer Institute) with one of my psychology professors. I’m going to be doing research on how people’s personalities change when they interact with different people. Cool, huh?! Well, I suppose it is goodbye for now, but I will see you all when I’m a junior! Huzzah!
Love,
Anna
Tabling is my middle name
Hey all, today I’m writing my last post of the year from the college center. I’m out here tabling for the Vassar College Equestrian Team. We’ve got red velvet vegan cupcakes (as well as non-vegan), white chocolate chip brownies, chocolate chocolate brownies, white chocolate cookies, m&m cookies, and peanut butter bars. Oh, and last but not least— VCET beverage glasses. Pink base. Check em out on the bake sale page.
We’re a bit short on volunteers so I decided I didn’t mind tabling for a large chunk of time (8:30-11, 4-5.. oy ve). It’s been good so far since it’s a multitasking-friendly job, but this is a “marathon not a sprint,” so I’ll have to pace myself.
The aforementioned quote was said by a dear friend of mine in reference to Founder’s Day which happened last weekend. Founder’s day is FULL of stuff. Music, food, games, carnival rides, and more. So yes, you have to pace yourself for both the VCET bake sale as well as Founder’s Day. For all you accepted students out there– you won’t stop hearing about Founder’s Day from the moment you naively ask “what is Founder’s Day?” I think I can safely say it’s one of the most anticipated days of the year. Besides the spontaneous VCET bake sales. Jokes aside, it really is a great day. We were lucky to have decent weather this year (a bit on the windy side if you ask me, but no complaints really) and last year as well.
Another funny thing about Founder’s Day is that it’s the one Saturday of the year when you’ll see more than a few students out and about before 10 am. I would say the huge majority of folks are up and at ‘em before noon, and certainly on the field (where all the festivities are) by 2 or 3, if not earlier. That’s why it’s an interesting task to give tours that Saturday. I was on both the 9:30 and the 12 tour this year, and I couldn’t walk more than 10 feet without having a friend or stranger yell HAPPY FOUNDER’S DAY or the ever popular happy birthday wishes. Menaces. If you’re on a tour and someone walking by wishes your tour guide a happy birthday it’s probably not their actual birthday. Especially if said passerby-er says it’s the guide’s 21st birthday. That is super unlikely.
Well I’m signing off. Got to keep focused on all this tabling/multitasking. I should start being productive while I’ve got the time too… or not. No worries, finals week is a marathon not a sprint (you can apply this to almost anything in life. I’m going to have to thank my friend for her lyrical genius). There’s time.
FOCUS!
This past weekend was the Office of Admission’s annual FOCUS on Vassar Weekend, the main event of the Multicultural Recruitment Intern team. Nearly eighty admitted high school seniors and prospective members of the Vassar College Class of 2016 (affectionately called prospies when they visit) came to campus this weekend to see all the countless reasons why they (and you) should matriculate to Vassar. Basically, it was the weirdest!
Calendar time will tell you that I myself had the lucky opportunity to attend FOCUS a little over a year ago. Benedict time is quite sure that I just wandered around campus with other prospies during FOCUS just yesterday. Seeing students just like me asking the same questions, experiencing the same confusion and excitement that I felt just a year ago was… Yikes! Going full circle!
All in all, it was a great weekend! If the group of students who came is any indication of what the Class of 2016 is like, then I could not be more excited to meet the incoming freshman class. I loved having the opportunity to give back the experience I had last year to this year’s students. It’s really such a magical time to be a high school senior. All the students I got to know were so energetic and curious and their enthusiasm for getting to know Vassar really reminded me why I love this school so much.
Focus has been kind of a key theme for the week. The semester is starting to wrap up and everything’s happening at once. In between meetings with professors, elections for VSA (go student government!), meetings for meetings, etc., I’m somehow trying to find time to do my schoolwork and study. What a concept: doing your schoolwork in college!
As the seasons are tentatively shifting towards a warm and sunny spring, I often find fellow students bathing in the sun on the many expanses of green grass on campus. We’re stressed about finals but ultimately so glad to soak up that pure sunshine and just enjoy an afternoon. It’s a beautiful busy time of year—a time to focus on everything academic, everything frivolous, and everything Vassar!
ASSASSINS!!!
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
For the past two weeks up until today, I was unbelievably stressed. I was anxious to leave my room, and when I sat in the deece (all campus dining center), I made sure to face my back to the wall so I would have a better view of everyone around me. I was twitching constantly from lack of sleep, and I trusted NOBODY. The reason for my slow transition into insanity was all because of the stupid game assassins. For those not in the know, ‘assassins’ is a game in which a group of people gets together, and each is randomly assigned a TARGET. Thanks to the use of an online forum, the assigning of targets is a very secretive process, and no one knows who your target is, but YOU. Then, it is up to you to sneak up on your target and “assassinate” them by any means you see fit. The catch is that no one is allowed to see you make your attack, so you have to be very devious about it. Because I decided I wanted as much stress in my life as possible, I signed up for both the assassins game involving all the different campus a cappella groups, and the assassins game for Main House. Thankfully, I have been assassinated in both games, and can now get a full night’s sleep, but I’m happy to say that I put up a fair fight. I will commend my murderer today, as he staked out camp around the corner from my room and waited for me to leave my room before brutally stabbing me with a plastic spoon.
Opening week and the inner wall
This week has been pretty exciting. Took my last Italian midterm before the final, turned in one of the last Spanish essays of the semester, started planning my schedule for next semester, and last but not least, I got to watch my hometown win the NCAA tournament. The last piece of news is a bit bitter sweet because I couldn’t be home to celebrate, but it feels good knowing UK got their 8th.
So here we are at the end of the week (almost. I still have a couple classes and some work standing between me and the weekend) and I find myself in the Jewett MPR (multi purpose room: a large room with sofas and chairs and a flat screen tv!) watching the second day of the opening week for the major league baseball season with my friends. One of them is a die hard Mets fan while the other is a Red Sox fan, so I’m splitting my time between the two TVs in the building, each with a different game playing. I grew up in a college basketball town– not MLB– so I’ve had a good time getting “educated” about this culture. It’s easy to get caught up in the thick of it as my friend next to me yells expletives at her beloved team when she feels they’ve let her down.
Side note, I just found out I’ll be leading an outing club trip to the inner wall in New Paltz in a week. That’s not true, I knew I was going to do it; I just wasn’t sure how many people would want to go. Turns out I’ve got more people than I have transportation, so we’ll have to work that out somehow. But it’s going to be a great time– I haven’t been rock climbing in a couple years since the place I used to go back home got shut down. I guess I have no excuse though since I live near one of the most beautiful national and state parks ever AND I go to school in the equally lovely Hudson Valley area. Plus, the outing club subsidizes half of our entry fees. It’ll be a good week.
Frisbee and Organic Chemistry
3/29/12
First of all, I’d just like to say CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! to all the newly admitted Vassar students! Yayyyyyy!
In other news, I had a Frisbee tournament this weekend at Haverford, which was just wonderful. Frisbee is a three-season sport here at Vassar; We play several tournaments in the fall, practice indoors during the winter when there’s snow on the ground, and THEN drive for 18 hours to Savannah, Georgia over spring break, where we spend four days playing in a tournament and the rest of the time hanging out on the beach and having a good time. I’ve been both my freshman and sophomore years, and it’s an amazing trip… It didn’t hurt that it was 80 degrees and sunny nearly the whole time.
And now, of course, it’s back into the swing of things! I have an organic chemistry test next Wednesday that I’ve been studying for well in advance, just because I have to know a gazillion pages worth of reactions and other chemical things. It’s a good thing, though, that organic chemistry is one of my favorite classes at Vassar. My professor rocks. It’s awesome how a good professor can make you enjoy a class you never thought you’d like. And off to study!
Awesome Alums
I’ve been meaning to do a blog post on awesome alums for a few weeks, and Lisa Kudrow’s video above is the perfect excuse. She mentions some great ones in there: in case you didn’t have a piece of paper handy, she names Meryl Streep, Noah Baumbach, herself, John Carlstrom, Judge Richard Roberts, Matthew Brelis, Phil Griffin, Chip Reid, Vera Cooper Rubin, andSau Lan Wu. What she doesn’t touch on is a few of my favorite, more historical alumnae; the pioneering Vassar women who changed the world after leaving Vassar College. Let me introduce you, very briefly, to a few…
Ellen Swallow Richards, class of 1870, was the first woman ever admitted to M.I.T., and later taught there, essentially founding the field of ecology. On top of all that, she was featured in a Wonder Woman comic for those groundbreaking accomplishments.
Grace Murray Hopper, class of 1928, is one of my favorites. She was the inventor of the first complier in computer programming. After graduating from Vassar with a degree in mathematic and physics—and remember, this is 1928—she went on to a Ph.D. at Yale. She returned to Vassar to teach math, and then enlisted in the Navy, eventually becoming a rear admiral. While in the Navy, she worked on the “Harvard Mark I,” the first computer. While doing so, she gave the world the term “debugging,” when she fixed a computer glitch by literally removing a moth from the machine. You can see an old video here in which she explains what a nanosecond is. And here’s an old video interview with David Letterman in which she proves her considerable wit and charm.
Last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most important poets of the 20th century and a member of the Vassar class of 1934. She was the poet Laureate of the United State from 1949 to 1950 and receives a Pulitzer Prize in 1956. Of course, she was hardly the first Vassar woman to win the prize; Edna St.Vincent-Millay, Vassar class of 1917, won a Pulizer in 1923, only six years after she graduated.
There are many, many more, but you’ll have to look them up on your own. Have fun!
Two months left of freshman year?!
Too soon! I thought last year went by too quickly but this first year at Vassar has flown by. In two days, I head back to campus for the last time this year. Wow.
This semester has been crazy. Coming back from Winter Break, I was no longer a baby freshman, but instead, a seasoned veteran freshman. Big changes, indeed! But, seriously, I knew my way around, have gotten comfortable with my activities on campus, and was excited to go.
More than anything, I couldn’t wait to begin my new classes. First semester, I took more numbers-based courses but this semester, I’m taking all humanities classes all the time. Go reading! The only numbers left in my coursework are the amount of candy bars compared to the amount of movie tickets I should by. Go economics!
I’ve also been spending a lot of time with my work as Class President. Each student that attends Vassar becomes a member of the VSA, or the Vassar Student Association. Students are represented by their class level (Go 2015!) and their house (Go Cushing!) to VSA Council, where student leaders work hard to represent the voices of our constituents.
As highlighted in our Mission Statement, Vassar prides its system of shared governance. Though the administrators are ultimately in charge of the direction of the school, it has been empowering to be given so many opportunities by the college to give input from the student perspective. In the fall, our President, Catharine Hill (aka Cappy), and the Dean of the College, Chris Roellke, hosted Town Halls in each of the Houses to talk about important campus issues.
That said, student government has been a lot of fun too. In the picture below, the Class of 2015 Council is setting up for 7 Deadly Sins, an annual event hosted by Jewett. Each of Jewett’s floors is transformed into one of the Seven Deadly Sins, with clubs and organizations hosting an individual sin. This year, the freshman class hosted Envy—thus the pictures of celebrities.
Aren't we all attractive?
Oh, Vassar. What a magical place!
Here’s hoping the rest of this wonderful first year doesn’t go by too quickly.
Spring break what up!
Well this is interesting- today Poughkeepsie weather decided to give us a bit of the winter we’ve been lacking lately. I’m alright with it as long as it’s decent weather once I come back from spring break. I’m going home to Kentucky this break, which is just what I need after a tough round of midterms. I’ve got a lot of family back home and strong ties to my place of birth since I’ve never lived anywhere else (though I’ve traveled a bit here and there, especially since my 28 year old sister moved to New Zealand. That’s a nice trip to make if you can swing it).
The reason I mentioned home is because this time of year is really exciting for people who have applied to internships for the summer. Some plan on being far from home, while others are applying to programs here at Vassar. A couple of my friends are doing either the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) or the Ford Scholars program, both are paid summer-long interships here at Vassar, which is amazing. Those are always great experiences because you get to work with a professor on his or her research and really get practical lab experience.
I did something like that my senior year in high school back home, so I decided against applying to URSI this summer. Instead, I’m going to focus on logging some hours shadowing a vet, both small and large animal if possible– it’s good experience either way. Since I’m on the pre-vet track– which is not a major at Vassar, instead you just take the prerequisite courses for vet school– I will need to have a certain amount of experience by the time I graduate, and since I live in Kentucky, the land of the bluegrass and thoroughbred racing, I figured I’d take advantage of my opportunities back home. The only down side to that, is that I’ll be 800 miles away from most of my Vassar friends, who are going to work either at Vassar, NYC, or who live up here already.
But I’m used to it at this point. I absolutely love home, but I came to Vassar because I knew it was the school for me. Learning to balance home and Vassar life has been a bit of a challenge, but I’ve got a much better handle on it than I did freshman year. Almost all of my closest friends stayed in state to go to college, so that was one big challenge to overcome. It certainly does make the breaks from school that much sweeter– being able to see all my friends every time I come home is pretty lucky, and a luxury I don’t think most people have. Plus, at the end of long breaks from school I find myself asking Vassar friends when they’ll be back “home” again, meaning at Vassar. I’ve found that feeling of comfort is not necessarily singular nor exclusive, and I’m happy to have more than one place I call home.
A Slideshow Scavenger Hunt
I’m going to take a break from Vassar’s YouTube channel this week to talk about an online source you might not have considered checking out: the website for our Alumnae/Alumni Quarterly publication. I know the point at which you’ll be an alum seems a long way away—you’re not even on campus yet!—but trust me as a soon-to-graduate senior that is will come quicker than you expect.
What I want to highlight in this post is something very cool that the Quarterly did in their Spring/Summer 2010 issue. They invited 9 Vassar alums, one as recent as the class of ’09 and the oldest from the class of ’56, to come to campus and spend a day back at their alma mater, taking photos of our beautiful 1000 acre campus and the students who inhabit it.
You can find the nine slideshows here, and I’ve prepared a scavenger hunt to lead you through the photos and help you get to know Vassar better, even through the lenses of our alumni photographers. Come along with them on their visit to campus, and see if you can spot:
1. An art studio in the Aula. Vassar guarantees all of its junior and senior Studio Arts majors their own private studio space.
2. The seminar room in the converted Maria Mitchell observatory, one of the National Historic Landmarks on campus, which now houses our Education Department. (Of course, we have a new observatory on campus for our Astronomy students: find a picture of that as well for bonus points.)
3. The morning mist over Sunset Lake, one of our two man-made lakes on campus.
4. A lecture taking place in the Francis Lehman Loeb art center, which houses over 18,000 works of art students at Vassar can use as sources for their own studies or as inspirations for their own artwork.
5. Editors hard at work in the Miscellany News office, putting together the next issue of Vassar’s student-run weekly newspaper.
6. Vassar president Catharine Hill, or “Cappy,” walking her dog Nelly across campus, with a view of Main Building in the background.
7. A dance class in Kenyon Hall. This weekend, the Vassar Reparatory Dance Theatre is performing their annual year-end show at the Bardavon Opera House.
8. A view of the Shakespeare Garden, which contains every plant mentioned in Shakespeare’s works.
9. A mysterious-looking piece of equipment in a physics laboratory. As a testament to the fascinating lab work we do here, every Vassar physics professor is currently being supported by a National Science Foundation Grant.
10. Any of the many, many photos of Vassar’s spectacular Thompson Memorial Library.
Happy hunting!
