It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m sitting at my Senior Fellow desk, as always, nervously watching the hours pass as the Cultural Show put on by Middlebury’s International Students Organization (ISO) approaches.  The event is often touted as the best show of the year, and as the emcee for this year’s show, I’m beginning to feel the pressure.

I am currently in charge of ISO’s social events as a member of the Executive Board.  And being the outgoing person I am, was volunteered to host the organization’s biggest shindig of the year.  After several late nights spent writing scripts and sitting through dress and tech rehearsals, the day has finally arrived.  Tonight, I get to help showcase one of Middlebury’s best attributes – internationalism!

I know, I know, I’m not an international student.  But it’s all about countries from all over the world coming together to share their culture.  To me, it’s important for Middlebury and American culture to be incorporated, too.  I’ve grown up in America, but surrounded by people from around the world.  When I was little, my best friend was my Korean downstairs neighbor.  In high school, I was surrounded by students from Germany, Korea, China, and Taiwan at my rural Alabama boarding school.  And at Middlebury, it would be impossible to list the countries my friends come from.  When I went abroad, my best friends in Paris were Middlebury students from Peru, Malaysia, Canada, and the Philippines.  Then I moved on to China in the Spring and spent my summer living and working with Romanians in Bucharest.  Now, at Middlebury, I’ve found my international niche.

That year encouraged me to become more involved in the international scene at Middlebury, so I applied for a spot on ISO’s exec board.  And here I am!  The ISO show is only hours away, and I have the honor of being one of the main faces of the organization.  The evening’s two shows will be followed by an after party in the on-campus dance club “The Bunker” (an intimidating concrete basement venue known for ragers and techno beats).  By 2 am, I may be all international-ed out for the day.  But the work with ISO continues.

Thanksgiving break is fast approaching, and I’ve been collaborating with the student-run Crossroads Café to plan a home-style Thanksgiving Dinner for the students who have decided to stay on campus.  Dinner will be followed by pie, tea, coffee, and a screening of Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, as well as a poker tournament.  I’ll also be grocery shopping and hosting more casual group dinners for the ISO throughout the break to make sure people survive off of more than Ramen noodles and Easy Mac (although they’re both delicious) while the dining halls are closed.  The remainder of break will probably be devoted to catching up on movies, work, and hanging out with friends who have decided to stay on campus.  I’m looking forward to a few days of calm and solitude and to celebrating the holidays with my very international Middlebury family!

I take great pride in being the first Senior Fellow to write about our impending graduation.  Tomorrow night is the seniors’ 200 Days party.  It’s a senior-only event beginning the official countdown to graduation and sets the stage for our 100 and 30 Days parties, a prelude to the year’s culmination: Senior Week and Graduation in May.  With flowing food and drink (for the over 21 crowd, of course) and Ben Schiffer ’10.5 dj-ing for the shindig, McCullough Social Space won’t know what hit it.  This “2012 End of the World Theme” is just what we’ve been waiting for to release the stress of senior year.

For this one night, we can be sure no one will ask “So what are your plans for graduation?” “Have you found a job yet?” “Did you also get that 3^rd round interview with JP Morgan?”  No, tonight is all about us and enjoying the company of our incredible classmates.  Gone are the days of wading through stacks of thesis books in our gorgeous mezzanine library carrels.  Senioritis has set in.

200 Days is giving me a lot of perspective as I head into the final haul.  Getting A’s on midterms and writing dissertations on Romania’s economy hardly seem important anymore in the grand scheme of things.  The focus is shifting away from school, but not, as you might expect to the job search.  All that seems to matter anymore is savoring the final 200 days we have with the incredible class of 2012 that we’ve lived and learned with for the past four years.  This message was reaffirmed at our Senior Class Dinner last week when an alum gave us parting words of wisdom: enjoy senior year.  No need to say that twice.  The other seniors and I heard that loud and clear.  This weekend welcomes a new total abandon.  The real world is fast approaching (and no, I’m not alluding to Frank Sweeny).  So here’s to finishing those first 15 pages of thesis, to the last football game of the season, to the dance parties waiting to happen, to 200 Days, and to the amazing experiences we’ll be having in the years to come.  To the Middlebury class of 2012!

One of the most rewarding aspects of my Middlebury experience has been my involvement within Cook Commons, one of the five residential neighborhoods on campus within our Commons system.  Through Cook, I’ve met some of my best friends, cultivated lasting relationships with professors and staff, and attended some of the most fun and memorable social events during the past four years at Middlebury (notably, the annual Foam party and Cook Prom).  Yet, as if all of those fun things weren’t enough, the entire Commons community occasionally gathers to eat dinner all together in Atwater dining hall, in something known as a Commons Dinner.  Each Commons hosts these dinners, in which all students within the Commons are invited, along with the faculty and staff members who work within that commons or are affiliated with it.  Besides offering a chance to enjoy the delicious Atwater fare, Commons dinners become an opportunity, at least for me, to share a meal with some of my most favorite people and closest friends on this campus, students and adults alike.  Plus, it’s always fun to feel like you have “special” plans for dinner.

Many people like to compare the Commons system at Middlebury to the houses in Harry Potter, and everyone thinks that their own commons is Gryffindor.  In reality, our school is not so similar to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, yet I still think of Commons Dinners as a little bit like the big banquets in Harry Potter, where everyone sits by their house.  For some people like me, the commons are a source of pride and identification on campus and have served as a way for me to develop many meaningful relationships.  Commons dinners in Atwater offer the chance to sit down and share a meal with faces you might recognize from freshman year, a professor who you might have had in class somewhere along the way, or in my case, to have dinner with my current suite-mates, all of whom I met while living in Battell, in Cook Commons, nearly four years ago.

Last Friday night I had planned for a quiet night in, pretending to myself to “catch up on work” when my real plans involved drinking tea and watching Hulu. Imagine my dismay, then, when I was about to get into my pjs at 11:15 and I received a text from my roommate: “Come to LoFo! Now! There’s nobody here! The DJ’s awesome! Come dance!”

Aside from a raised eyebrow about the excessive punctuation, it didnt take me long to roll out of bed and find my coat. My roommate (one of my best friends since we met the second day of Orientation in August 2008–we were neighbors on Stew 3, our freshman hall) is one of the Tri-Chairs for Brainerd Commons, one of the residential neighborhoods on campus. As a Tri-Chair of a Commons Council (basically a student activities board), she has many duties: running meetings for students interested in planning events, raising her eyebrows about the ridiculous nature of the name “tri-chair”, and organizing events for Brainerd students and the wider College Community. This year, Halloween coincided with Homecoming weekend, so the usual blowout Halloween festivities seemed to be taking a back seat. My roommate and a few other Commons Council chairs decided to remedy the situation by throwing a “Freaky Friday” Halloween dance in Lower Forest—affectionately called LoFo and commonly known as the creepiest room on campus. It’s pretty much a basement.

Given that the music started at 11, it wasn’t a huge surprise that there were about four people there by 11:15–college students tend to take “fashionably late” to an extreme. By the time I got there at about 11:30, though, the party was hopping and I dove into the crowd to find my friend.

“Hey!” she yelled over the dulcet tones of Ke$ha mixed with some sort of Dubstep beat. “So glad you came! It’s ALL FRESHMEN! And it’s AWESOME!” I looked around me to find that I recognized very few faces indeed for a dance party (dance parties are one of my main extracurricular activities, so I tend to know the crowd).

You might expect that upon hearing the party was filled with lowly freshmen that I, as a senior, would have turned tail and booked it out of there. One of the things I love about Middlebury, though, is that everybody is worth knowing, no matter their age or class year. I ran into some people from my Italian class, some people from the dance department, and met some people I’d seen around but had never been introduced to. I ended up having a fantastic time—it was one of the best dance parties I’ve been to in awhile.  As my roommate has indicated, it was indeed AWESOME, and worthy of excessive punctuation.