The following is a schedule of an ideal average weekend at Midd (as in, nothing is out of the ordinary but it’s a great time!) All entries are based on true events. See www.middlebury.edu/events for a detailed account of some of the amazing happenings at Midd!

Friday

• 9:30-10:00: Make a breakfast Panini on the Proctor dining hall Panini makers (think English muffin, eggs, spinach, cheddar, cayenne)
• 10:00-10:10: Take a leisurely walk to my class in Axinn, my favorite academic building. Analyze the state of the foliage. Say hi to friends on the path. Smile at the same people I pass every Friday at 10:05.
• 10:10-11:00: Go to my American Studies class with Professor Nash called Livin’ for the City. Discuss and debate readings, integrate current events, and try to stump the unstumpable professor with challenging questions.
• 11:00-11:15: Go to McCullough Student center to pick up a package (remember, this is my ideal weekend, so grandma sent me cookies!!!!!) and my paycheck for my campus job. Get distracted looking at the bulletin board… will I make it to all of the interesting lectures and events this week?
• 11:15-12:30: Enjoy a prolonged lunch in Atwater dining hall. It’s Friday, which means it’s burger day. It also means the dining hall might be playing pump up music over the loudspeakers! The sun beats through the floor-to-ceiling windows and I hop from table to table to chat with friends from all different social circles
• 12:30-1:00: Run over to Bi Hall, our science center, to chat with my geography professor and advisor. We talk about research methodology for my semester-long project on the urbanization of Native Americans, we discuss possible ideals for a future independent study project, and we review which classes I’m registering for the fall (we are both very excited about cartography!)
• 1:00-5:30: It feels wrong to schedule my Friday afternoons, because the beauty of them lies in their spontaneity. Sometimes it’s a time for laundry and tidying up. On nice days, it’s the perfect window to go for a hike. Occasionally I’ll go to local Drop-In Brewery for a tasting with friends. After especially busy weeks, I curl up in my bed with a book and ginger tea. I love Friday afternoons.
• 5:30-7:30: Unless something really unusual is happening, I spend Friday evenings with Hillel, the Jewish organization, celebrating Shabbat. We have a service followed by a homecooked meal.
• 7:30 onward: Hang out with friends… it’s been a busy day. Who knows what tonight will bring!

Saturday

• 10:30-11:30: Brunch in Ross dining hall. Should I make a Belgian waffle with homemade peanut butter? Local yogurt with homemade granola? Cinnamon swirl pancakes?
• 11:30-2:30: Do work at Midd Chocolates. Enjoy a mocha with homemade whipped cream and marshmallows along with unlimited chocolate samples. If I need wifi to do work, I might go to the Stone Leaf Teahouse in Marbleworks, another one of my favorite spots.
• 2:30-4:00: Go on an afternoon adventure to get some exercise and enjoy the Vermont outdoors. Maybe I’ll check out the Trail around Middlebury or Chipman Hill, both within walking distance from campus.
• 4:00-6:00: Continue doing work or hang out with friends…only time can tell.
• 6:00-8:00: Cook dinner at home with my housemates. Perhaps we will make a homemade pizza and salad again?
• 8:00-10:00: Pop by a college-sponsored event with friends. Maybe it will be roller blading in the student center? A Riddim hip hop concert? An a capella performance? A student-produced play in the Hepburn Zoo (the Zoo is a performance space—there are no live animals there)?

Sunday

• 10:00-10:30: Breakfast in Proctor
• 10:30-1:30: Head to one of my favorite spots on campus to do some homework: the tables in the back of the library, the Abernathy Room in Axinn, a nook in Bi Hall, the cubicles with amazing natural light in Hillcrest…so many options!
• 1:30-2:00: Grab more food. We don’t have a swipe system, so why not? The more the merrier!
• 2:00-4:00: Check out a sporting event with a friend. This weekend we will be attending the Quidditch tournament, which is especially exciting since Muggle Quidditch was created at Middlebury! #BringQuidditchHome
• 4:00-6:00: Continue catching up with friends, or do homework, depending on the weekend.
• 6:00-7:00: Grab dinner with a friend I haven’t seen in a while. So much to catch up on!
• 7:00-11:00: Go home and get ready for the next week. This includes but is not limited to calling mom and dad (normally I’ve already called my mom like 10 times by now, but I’m putting it on the calendar just in case)

Last night, along with hundreds of others in a standing-only, busting-through-doors Mead Chapel, I saw New York Daily News Senior Justice Writer and political activist Shaun King speak on the relevance and reality of the Black Lives Matter movement, and field questions from the audience. As perhaps the most widely shared and circulated writer on my Facebook feed right now, to finally see Mr. King in real life was a fantastic experience. When he first began to speak, his natural ease made the gravity and significance of his points so much more impactful that at some lines, he was met with a deafening wall of silence, completely at a loss because of the truth to that point. To not only see this event, but see it for free and a five minute walk from my suite was incredible.

But this sort of relevance in performance and events is not new to this talk or this year: Middlebury College, and in particular its student leadership, has consistently done a great job bringing things to our campus here in Vermont.

An event that comes to mind for me is last fall’s performance of the King’s Singers, a world-renowned all-male vocal sextet from the UK. These guys. In Mead Chapel. My God, were they good. They performed a two hour set, the first half consisting of classical church hymns and the second half a collection of songs from their album, “Postcards,” traditional songs from various world cultures. I accidentally rose to give them a standing ovation at their penultimate song, but it was well deserved if not poorly timed. They gave an encore performance of Paul Simon’s “Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy,” and if that wasn’t the most beautiful thing I’ve heard come out of a person’s mouth in my life then I just have no conception of beauty.

It speaks volumes about the College for it to bring such a group here. At my time at Middlebury, I’ve gotten the opportunity to see Donna Brazile speak on the state of politics, watch artists like Chance the Rapper and Misterwives live in an intimate, small college venue, and that’s on top of the range of visiting scholars and academics that come pretty much every week for smaller lectures and discussions. This past Friday we had our annual International Politics and Economics symposium on the global illicit drug trade, featuring researchers on the subject from top organizations and programs, and next week the primary Art Critic from the Wall Street Journal will visit campus.

And on top of all the wonderful student acts and performances, I think seeing these events is when I feel luckiest to be at Middlebury.

Best,

Danny Dignan

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. I’ve dressed up on the whole spectrum of costumes from the classics (witch, ghost) to puns (taping two quarters on me to be “50 Cent”) to completely random (an olive… just an olive. Not sure where I came up with that one). We’ve had pumpkins out in my suite since the beginning of the month, and had costumes planned from the beginning of the school year. As college students, you may think we’re pushing the limit of acceptable trick-or-treating age. You’d be right. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t get into the holiday spirit in our own way here on campus. This past weekend, MCAB hosted its very first Haunted House, and I got to be part of it!

MCAB is the Middlebury College Activities Board, a student group in charge of organizing fun campus events including concerts, speakers, dances, and themed events like the Haunted House. They’re responsible for bringing performers to campus, which is great because the concerts are affordable and convenient for Middlebury students to attend. In my time here we’ve had some big names like Chance the Rapper, Matt and Kim, T-Pain, Borns, and many more. MCAB is allotted a hefty budge to host these types of events, and as students we get a say in how that money is spent.

Any student can submit suggestions for a campus-wide event they’d like to see happen, and this year people showed interest in a Haunted House. MCAB took that idea and ran with it, going all out with spooky decorations and incredible costumes and makeup. It was held in the Bunker, an open performance space that was converted into a dark maze with various themed rooms. They recruited actors and affiliates of the theater department like myself to perform as zombies, mummies, prisoners, ghosts, and other scary figures.

I may have gotten a little too into character as a creepy haunted spirit (black and white face paint can do that to you), but we all had so much fun. I guess we all played our parts well, because we managed to make some guys on the baseball team scream like little kids. All my friends who went through the house said they were genuinely terrified, which means the event was a success! I decided to keep my costume on for the rest of the night because at that point I was committed, although I did notice other students keeping their distance from me as we crossed paths. I later realized that the friendly smile I had on just made me look like even more menacing with my blackened eyes and lips and long, ragged dress. Oh well – all in the Halloween spirit!