You’ll never guess who I saw this past Saturday night at Middlebury. Don Draper! Looking spiffy in a black suit and hat, Don was out and about, but his fellow “Mad Men” were nowhere to be found. Instead, Don was interacting with a new crew, and a rather curious crew at that. With him was a group of serious birdwatchers, some black cats, a pair of fly fishermen, biker chicks and even the Flinstones! No, this was not a dream I had, this was Halloween at Middlebury.

Though there may be more costumes seen around campus this Wednesday on October 31st, for the most part Midd Kids rang in Halloween a bit early this year. Throughout the semester, though, students constantly dress up for various occasions. Whether it’s for a specific team or club on campus that has organized an event, or just a group of friends wanting to spice up their wardrobes, it’s not uncommon to see students dress up a bit funny on a Saturday night here. Over the course of three years at Middlebury, I have managed to accumulate a unique assortment of quirky clothing options reserved for these occasions. Together with my friends, a communal box has emerged, filled with boas, crazy hats, neon t-shirts, animal print fabric and more. You never quite know what you’ll walk away with after diving into our shared stash, but after a wardrobe choice has been made (and been edited, and re-edited, by friends) you will want to take a quick picture that you can show your grandchildren some day — proof that before your legs became creaky and your hearing started to go, you dressed up like a goofball and had a good night out.

Given all the dressing up that goes on at Middlebury, I shouldn’t have been surprised that students went “all out” on Halloween. Part of me anticipated this, but part of me was caught off-guard too. While trick-or-treating may be a thing of the past for most of us here, as my weekend showed me, Halloween is still very much alive. A slew of intricately-carved pumpkins, all of which had been created by students, sat outside my friends’ porch on Friday night. When I stopped by that evening to say hi, I found a tray of freshly roasted pumpkin seeds and a steaming pot of mulled apple cider. That festive spirit continued as Don Draper and the rest of the gang emerged the following day.

I realized that midway through a fall semester consumed in part by job-searching, my quasi-adult mindset may have gripped me a little too tightly. As we run between interviews and information sessions, pretending to know what we want to do after graduation, we have to remember that at the end of the day, we are still college kids. For a minute, don’t be a student, don’t be a young adult: be a kid. Dress up funny, carve some pumpkins, sip apple cider and have fun. After all, it is Halloween.

Studying abroad is a rite of passage at Middlebury. After slogging through grammar classes when you really want to be trekking the mountains of Peru, after sitting at language tables when you want to be sitting cross-legged at an Indian dinner, after screening German films about Berlin nightlife for class and getting sucked into them—finally you can experience it all in person!

Of course all of the lead-ups are necessary to reach a sufficient level of the target language, and all of our language immersion models are mini-abroad experiences, but nothing compares to the real thing.

I have dreamed of studying abroad in Spain since I lived there. To clarify—I lived in the south of Spain as a little girl but always watched wistfully as my Spanish friends went off to their classes while I went to international school. I always knew that I wanted to be one of those bespectacled  long-haired, important-looking college students that I saw every time we drove into Seville, and that I too wanted to have that beautiful language passing from my lips.

Finally after two years of college I got that chance, opting for a Middlebury program in Madrid. Knowing that the Spanish university system is not as rigorous as I am used to at Middlebury, I made this tough decision because I knew that all of the teachers hired by the Middlebury program would be challenging, leaders in their academic field, and vetted by the school. And they were. It is difficult trade-off for many students, who want to meet host students, but who want a serious semester abroad with easily transferable credits. I chose to go through a program that I knew was going to be equivalent to my political science track at Middlebury, and figure out a way to join the community in another way.

I did manage that, by volunteering for a one of the madrileño gay rights organizations, and I spent a good chunk of my free time organizing a queer film festival, doing everything from handing out flyers in the gay-friendly district of Chueca to deciding between indie short films to taking tickets at the door. This is my number one recommendation to all prospective and current students who are thinking of studying outside of the United States—find something niche, something that you’re passionate about and find a similar organization to join which abroad (could be a rugby team, a cooking club, or a theatre troop), just anything to get you a secure spot in the community.

To condense a semester abroad into a single blog post is impossible. I traveled all over the country, seeing everything from Goya’s paintings in the Prado museum of Madrid to the beaches of San Sebastian to a flamenco performance in Seville to Gaudi’s extravaganzas in Barcelona. I missed my friends and my Midd community and there were some uncomforts of settling into a brand-new apartment and new transportation system, but I found my groove after not too long and had both a satisfying academic and personal experience. I can’t emphasize enough how much prospective students should already be making plans for their dream semester or year abroad—you have the whole world open to you!

Every senior at Middlebury is required to complete some kind of senior work, in the form of an independent project, production, or thesis. There are a couple of guiding principles here: First is the idea of challenge by choice. Students have the option of choosing an independent study or an honors project depending on the level of commitment they choose. Second is the concept of student choice. Students choose a project appropriate to their departmental focus: a music major might write a piece of music; a theater major might direct a production; a science major might conduct laboratory experiments; and a political science major will write a thesis.

How do you choose a thesis topic? After all, this is a project you’ll be working on for at least a semester, if not a year. Of course, you hope that the topic that is both interesting to you personally, and also one that has some academic value and is worth your time. Often students will find inspiration from a paper or project during sophomore or junior year. Others will find inspiration from their time abroad, summer experiences like internships or volunteer work, or some long-held interest. Still, many students will come into their senior with little idea of a topic that inspires them—this is why we have advisors!

I’m a political science major, and for me it was clear I wanted to write about some element of my time in China. Since a political science honors thesis is a three semester/yearlong project, I knew I had to find a topic that could keep me engaged for a full year. My internship this summer at the US Department of Commerce gave me the opportunity to learn about the importance of the Internet in various contexts. And having lived in China and learned about the uniqueness of the Internet censorship that exists there, I knew that this would be an interesting topic for me. My advisor helped me to narrow the topic to something focused, academic, and worthwhile.

So now it’s research time! The first stages of the thesis involve reading as much as you can about the topic of your choice. It is an exciting, humbling, and terrifying stage of the project. And by the end of J-term, amazingly, the bulk of my project will (hopefully!) be written.

People say that writing a thesis is simultaneously the best and worst thing they do at Midd, and the easiest and hardest, too. You have the opportunity to explore a single topic in depth, to become a real expert in an area, and to hone your research, writing, project management, and analytical skills. At the same time, a thesis requires self-discipline and a long-term commitment. Overall, though, it is a project that, after eight months, you can look back on with some pride.

I’ll have some more reflections on what the process is like come spring, but for now I’m excited to learn as much as I can about my topic and to begin outlining my work for the rest of the year.

When I first heard about the DiscoMidd program I was psyched, but for all of the wrong reasons. In Portugal we call clubs discotecas or discos so I immediately conjured up an image of all us Senior Fellows getting dressed in our slinky best and hitting the Vermont nightlife scene.

Lost in translation, apparently.

What DiscoMidd, or Discover Middlebury is actually a program that Middlebury hosts every year which we call a “multicultural open house”—it is open to prospective student who come from under-represented groups at Middlebury: African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, and American Indian students; students (regardless of ethnicity) with demonstrated financial hardship; and students who are first in their families to pursue a four-year college education.

The idea is that Middlebury provides transportation, food, and housing to this group of 75 students, and shows them what Middlebury is really like, pairing them up with a student host, letting them sit in on classes, attend talks and club meetings, and generally get the feeling for the school.

Upon realizing the real meaning of the program, I became instantly even more excited than when I’d imagined it to be a night on the town, because I knew that I wanted to dive in headfirst to the project. Getting a chance to work on this sort of initiative is precisely the reason that I applied to be a Senior Fellow.

Let me explain a little bit about why this initiative is near and dear to my heart: I grew up shuffling between countries—Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Japan—and never staying in one long enough to learn everything about their school systems. So when I finally decided that I wanted to apply to a college in the United States, I was at a loss for where to start. While my parents were both educated and supportive, they expected me to be independent in my application process and there was no hand-holding or proof-reading of essays. I did not grow up visiting U.S. colleges , did not know which ones were the best or what activities gave me the best shot at getting admitted, and did not have a college guidance counselor to steer my choices. Instead, I spent hours poring over college websites, bought myself a big, fat book of American colleges, and painstakingly pieced together the way to go about filling out forms.

It is not entirely due to  luck that I am at Middlebury; I was always a good student and hard worker, but my path was not as smooth as other from an East Coast high school. I firmly believe that no student should have to go through the process alone, like I did, but should have in place a network of support—family, teachers, counselors, siblings, friends, bosses—that can help them decided where they want to go and help them tackled the logistical mountains to getting there. But for those who do not have this safety net, we, Middlebury should pick up the slack and serve a bigger role.

Because of Middlebury’s commitment to giving students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to the chance to see our school, I will be taking a shuttle up from the Admissions Office to the Burlington airport at 8.45 on a Homecoming Sunday, I will be greeting students as they come in from their trips, I will be shuttling back down with the last trip at 4.00pm, I will be matching them with hosts, and then I will be leading a student question panel from 7.00-9.00pm. And I will be loving every second of it.

           I am in love with my suite. It has been the best part of my year thus far, between riding lessons and nuclear security lectures, amongst Fellowship interviews and films screening and lengthy discussions on the meaning of nature in Jane Eyre. All of those times have been wonderful too, but there is nothing better than returning to my Atwater suite at the end of a day blurred with events and papers and meals, and shaping my own little community.

            I find one of Middlebury’s most charming attributes the feeling of an overarching community, but in my suite I can sculpt my social microcosm—I can be left alone with a mug of tea and a global development article on a Wednesday night, or I can rally my three suitemates to invite all of their extended groups of friends over for 90s music and conversation on a Friday evening before heading out for a night at the social house Tavern. My senior year living has become a way to bring Middlebury to me—to enjoy a cookie that I grab from the dining hall, to hold impromptu board meeting of the Middlebury Open Queer Alliance, and to host my sister (a Midd alum) when she drives up for the occasional weekend.

            In an odd way, the suite is also a transition site. I no longer live in the middle of campus, I can no longer walk outside of my door to hear the hubbub of a Riddim dance performance, or dash thirty seconds into a dining hall. Because I am at one end of campus I feel, in my college way, that I am commuting to class every day. The busyness of my schedule means that I am often out from 8am until dusk, working in the library, attending lectures, meeting up with friends over lunch, and giving information sessions at Admissions, getting back late to my room, unslinging my bag from my shoulder with a sigh. I love this feeling of being a quasi-adult, and sometimes I imagine that I am already in the position that I see myself in eight months from now—living with other young professionals in an apartment in an urban environment, sharing my small trials and triumphs with three other friendly faces. We make suite dinners on the weekends, troop down to the gym together on brisk afternoons, and have one another do quick read-throughs of introductory essay paragraphs, which is exactly what I want out of a future group of working friends.

            I can’t be sure whether Middlebury College deliberately puts senior in these transition residences, or if everyone feels the way that I do about them. I have one foot in college as I enjoy every moment of a lecture about aid strategies in Tanzania, go to concerts, and dig into my mountain of thesis work, but also one foot (perhaps as of yet just a few toes) in the professional world as I apply for jobs, interview, write grant proposals, and generally get myself prepared for the workforce. And my suite is there through everything, inviting, friend-filled, but with traces of the real-world future about it.