This past week, the Middlebury student body went to the polls to elect the members of next year’s Student Government Association. For 24 hours from noon on Wednesday to noon on Thursday, students logged into a website where they ranked their preferred candidates in races for SGA President, the Student Co-Chair of Community Council, representatives for their Commons and Class, and two proposed amendments to the Honor Code.  After the dust had settled on these hotly contested elections, 75.4% of the student body turned out to vote in the election, by far the highest rate in recent memory. After a year in which the issue of apathy and communication between the student body, the student government, and the College administration has been at the fore of campus conversation, this incredible turnout is an emphatic statement of how much Middkids care about what goes on in their community.

The campaigns for the SGA elections generated ample campus chatter on campus. It seemed like everywhere you went, students were asking each other: “Who are you going to vote for? What do you think of (insert your favorite candidate here)?” The buzz was partly generated by the number of candidates, 34 in total running for 15 positions, including four for President, and partly generated by who the candidates were. There were students who had been a part of the SGA since their first day at Middlebury and others who had never done anything in student government ever before. And as such, almost every social circle was brought into the election in some way, since they all had a stake not just in how the student government would affect them in the abstract, but a concrete interest in seeing a friend win a seat at the table.

My favorite moment during these elections, however, happened this past Monday evening, when the four presidential candidates and three candidates for Student Co-Chair of Community Council participated in a public debate in Crossroads Cafe. I was in charge of catering for the event and ordered refreshments for about 40-50 people, a good turnout for this kind of event in the past. Boy was I wrong! As the hour for the presidential debate creeped closer and closer, more and more students kept streaming into the space. By the time the debate began, more than 200 of us had managed to squeeze into the cafe. Every nook and cranny of the space was taken; some students leaned over railings on the second floor, others sat on the billiards table, still others stood on the stairs. And in front of that crowd, our four candidates made their case for why they should lead the SGA. They answered questions about their experience, their qualifications, and their stances on issues ranging from social life to environmental sustainability to surveillance cameras.

During the debate, I was in charge of walking around with a mike in the audience so that students could ask questions of the candidates. And as I stood amongst the crowd of students, I realized this was exactly what I imagined college would be like. If they had made a movie about the small residential liberal arts college experience, this scene would have made it into the script. In that moment, the feeling of the Middlebury community was palpable in the room and in that moment, I was so grateful to be a part of that community.

As the Chief of Staff of the Student Government Association, I have been working with the College’s administration to coordinate the nominations for the annual faculty and staff appreciation awards. As nominations from the student body have been trickling into my inbox this week, I have been reminded that one of the things that makes our campus community so vibrant and dynamic is the energy and commitment of our professors, our caretakers, our athletic coaches, our public safety officers, and our dining hall staff. While our Awards Committee will choose one member of the faculty and one member of the staff for their hard work, I think that all of them ought to receive more appreciation for the important role they play in our community.

To start with our professors, they are some of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever met, but what I will remember about them after graduation is the time I spent talking about them in office hours, after classes, and even in grocery stores. Our professors are here because they love teaching and they truly care about us as more than students, but as people. In addition, from the professors I’ve met working with the SGA, I can tell that they really care about the community they are a part of, dedicating their time to our judicial process, discussing issues in Community Council, and attending sporting events, concerts, and presentations their students are a part of.

Other than our faculty, our staff members, ranging from the chefs to the caretakers in the dorms to the librarians, help make the College the smooth-oiled machine that it is. Many of them rise bright and early, long before many students even think about getting out of bed, to make sure that everything is ready to go for a new day. They do such a good job that we hardly notice their presence. Yet, when you take the time to get to know our staff members, they are humble, caring, and hard-working people, whose presence remind me that there are bigger things in life than that next class, the next paper deadline, or the sports practice.

Many students here often describe Middlebury as a “bubble” – a place where we are safe from the trials and tribulations of the real world. While our students may feel this way, Middlebury is the real world for our faculty and staff. This is their home, in a much more permanent sense than we could ever call it that. And their love for this place is contagious. For that, I salute every faculty and staff member here at Middlebury. Without them, this community would not be what it is.

Last summer, I had the fortune of working in the Middlebury College Museum of Art as a full-time curatorial intern, alongside the Chief Curator of the Museum, Emmie Donadio. During my time at the museum, my main project was to help Emmie assemble two upcoming exhibitions, one on a number of Andy Warhol prints and the second on  street artists. Despite not having had a lot of exposure to contemporary art prior to last year, or perhaps because of it, working on these two exhibitions was an exciting and rewarding task that allowed me to see the nitty-gritty that goes on behind the scenes in a museum setting.

Now, more than five months later, both these exhibitions are on display at the College Museum. The first, containing 10 Andy Warhol prints gifted to the College by the artist’s foundation last spring, opened in the first week of January. Ranging in subject matter from his famed Campbell’s Soup Can to a flamboyantly coloured Mao to Queen Ntombi of Swaziland, this eclectic collection of uneditioned proofs are now a part of the College’s permanent collection. As an artist, Warhol is one of the most renowned household names in America, with one of the most prolific oeuvres of any artist in the 20th century. As such, doing research on Warhol was like staring into a bottomless pit of unanswerable questions. Scholars and commentators have studied and written on just about every facet of Warhol’s life and his art. Synthesizing all that information was one of the most challenging experiences of my summer. In the end, I distilled the information I researched into short and sweet wall labels, which tell viewers the significance of each work. Since the Warhol Foundation donated countless gifts to many educational institutions in recent years, 2015 is an especially busy year for Warhol exhibitions around the country.

The second exhibition that I worked on was “Outside In: Art from the Street”, mostly in its preliminary research. The exhibition, which takes up most of the upper floor of the museum, contains an incredible array of contemporary urban artists from around the world, including some of the biggest names in street and graffiti art today: Banksy, JR, Swoon, and Bäst. Nevertheless, these are street artists, and prints can only tell you so much about their talent and creativity. As such, the museum hired British street artist Ben Eine, whose work British Prime Minister Cameron gifted to President Obama in 2011 during a visit to the U.S., to paint a wall for the exhibition. To bring in an even more authentic taste of the street, a co-curator of the exhibition even went down to New York City to bring back the remains of an actual graffiti wall from the studio of the artist-team Faile.

With some of the biggest names of contemporary art right here on campus, it is indeed high time for art here at Middlebury. If you find yourself around town, be sure to check out both these exhibitions, which will be on view until Sunday, April 19.

One of the four classes that every Middlebury first year takes during their first semester is a first year seminar, a writing intensive class capped at 15 students designed to prepare students for the writing-intensive Middlebury curriculum. Each fall, around 40 seminars are offered for our September admits, ranging from The Art and Life of Andy Warhol to Literature in Exile to The Geology of National Parks to The Story of Geometry. My first seminar, elegantly titled Oratory: Winning the Soul with Words, was one of the most academically transformative experiences of my Middlebury career.

Taught by theatre professor Dana Yeaton, the seminar was divided into three parts. During the first part, we read Aristotle’s book “On Rhetoric” and studied the theoretical components of constructing a powerful speech. The middle third of the class was focused on reading great speeches throughout history, from Pericles’ Funeral Oration to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to MLK’s I Have a Dream. During the last few weeks of class, we wrote and delivered a number of our own speeches, culminating in a TED Talk presentation.

The class was incredibly rewarding precisely because it was unlike anything I had ever done before, or after, for that matter. Since it was the first time he had taught the class, Professor Yeaton experimented with different methods of teaching and various kinds of assignments. He always brought an energy to the room that made the 75 minutes fly by in the blink of an eye. And because of the personal nature of our final TED Talks, the 15 of us got to know each other very well by the end of the semester.

In the January following that fall semester, Professor Yeaton invited a few of us from the seminar to participate in the College’s annual Martin Luther King Day Celebration in Mead Chapel, an evening of song, dance, and oratory that commemorates the life of the civil rights hero. Together with a few other theatre students, we performed a condensed reading of MLK’s famous I Have a Dream speech. Relying on the projection of our voice and the acoustics in the chapel, we tried to capture, without microphones, the cadence of King’s speech and project its power to the standing-room only crowd. We even added a touch of Middlebury flair by reciting one section of the speech in various foreign languages.

This past Martin Luther King Day, I returned to the chapel to watch the oratorio for the first time since I participated in it three years ago. Professor Yeaton helped direct the show again, this time with students from his Speechmaker’s Studio J-Term class and members of the newly formed Oratory Society. Together, they read a series of quotes from MLK and other civil rights leaders to begin the show and like us, performed a reading of the I Have a Dream speech. Sitting in the pews, with a tinge of nostalgia, I felt incredibly proud of how much Professor Yeaton’s oratory program has grown at Middlebury. This was the second year in a row that he has offered the Speechmaker’s Studio as a J-Term class, attracting students ranging from political science majors to varsity skiers to international first years. His Oratory Society hosted an “oratory slam” in the fall and conducts workshops open to anyone wishing to improve their public speaking skills.

In his quest to bring public speaking to the fore of the liberal arts curriculum, Professor Yeaton has struck a chord with students who recognize the importance of that skill in today’s digitally connected world. The oratory program is yet another example of how the liberal arts continues to evolve here at Middlebury.

I am spending this Thanksgiving Break more than 7000 miles away from home, in Beijing, China, conducting research for my senior thesis. As a joint political science and art history major, I am combining my training in both disciplines in this capstone project. Focusing on the intersection of politics and architecture, I am investigating how the development of the National Mall in Washington, DC and Tiananmen Square in Beijing reflects the different political ideals at the foundation of each regime but also how the historical-political moment in which the spaces were conceived led the leaders of each country to pursue similar political ends, despite the difference in their ideology.

I am spending 8 days here in the Chinese capital, visiting the municipal archives, museums, and libraries that hold documents dealing with the construction of Tiananmen Square in the 1950s. I am staying in a traditional neighborhood of alleyways and courtyards, which is allowing me to see a side of Beijing I’ve never seen before. I am, of course, spending a lot of time in the square, to experience the space for myself and to examine the architecture with a critical eye. The best part about this trip? Middlebury is paying.

This trip to Beijing would not have been possible without the generous grant I received from the Undergraduate Research Office (URO). Every fall and spring, Middlebury College students have the opportunity to apply for senior research project supplements of up to $1500 from the URO. These supplements are meant to eliminate financial barriers for seniors working on their capstone projects and provide support in addition to what many academic departments provide for these projects. The funding can be used for anything from trips overseas to see an art historical site to the purchase of pipettes to hiring a translator to translate documents critical to one’s research.

When they hear the term “liberal arts college,” many prospective students and families, especially those oriented towards the sciences, assume that Middlebury lags far behind larger universities in our capacity to do research. That is simply not true. The grants from the URO are one example of how Middlebury is supporting its students in their independent research endeavors. Each spring, Middlebury hosts a spring student research symposium, at which any student can share the research they’ve worked on in the past year with the whole college community through oral presentations and poster boards. Every summer, over 100 research assistants work on campus full-time directly with faculty members, mostly in the sciences, but also in fields like political science, philosophy, and English.

Far from being disadvantaged, students wishing to conduct research at Middlebury have more direct access to faculty and equipment than they would at larger research institutions. If you work hard, you can start gaining research experience during your first year at Middlebury. Co-authorship of papers by faculty and students is not an uncommon phenomenon. Middlebury students regularly travel to conferences to present projects they’ve done inside and outside the classroom, as I hope to do with my senior thesis in February. For now, I’ve got to get back to searching the shelves here at the National Library of China in Beijing.

For as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in student government. Whether it was running the classroom “variety shows” in elementary school in China, being Class Rep during middle school, or getting elected president of my high school’s student body, I have always found satisfaction in making student life just a little bit better for my peers.

At Middlebury, I have continued my involvement in this area through the Student Government Association, colloquially known on campus as the SGA. In my first two years at Middlebury, I was elected Senator for my class, which meant that I represented the voices, concerns, and ideas of my classmates in the SGA. The Senate is the deliberative body of the Middlebury SGA, consisting of class and Commons representatives. It has the ability to spend the student activities fee on initiatives beneficial to the student body and pass resolutions that state the official opinion of the students.

For the last two years, I have been involved with the SGA Cabinet, in my capacity as the Chief of Staff to the SGA President. Each year, the president of the student body appoints a team of people to help him or her with managing the operations of the SGA. As Chief of Staff, I have the fortune of leading this team of 15 passionate, ambitious, and incredibly competent individuals as we implement resolutions from the Senate, distribute the student activities fee to organizations and ensure their smooth operation, and lobby administrators on issues as diverse as sexual assault prevention to changing our distribution requirements.

While at times, the multitude of SGA-led projects and initiatives can be overwhelming and progress on them painstakingly slow, being a part of the student government at Middlebury has allowed me to learn about the issues important to the student body from many different perspectives. I have learned, through my SGA experience, that nothing is black and white, especially at such a diverse institution like Middlebury. It has also allowed me to meet so many students that I would have never otherwise met before. Even though we may not agree on everything, everybody in the SGA has one thing in common: we all share an abiding love for the Middlebury community that we are willing to spend hours and hours changing it for the better. That student-driven passion and sense of ownership to leave our community better than when we found it is what I will miss most about this place.

Senior year of college, like the senior year of high school, can be an amazingly exciting but also frighteningly nervous time. Unlike the previous three years of college or high school, you are in a completely different mindset. Instead of looking up to students older than you for guidance, you are those wise, maybe even intimidating, seniors who you once admired. Instead of panicking about switching into the classes you want, you revel in all the tricks you have learned over the years – emailing professors weeks in advance and playing the “I need this class for my major” card. Instead of worrying about getting an internship for the summer ahead, you are madly studying for the GRE or MCAT or LSAT, or of course, looking for that elusive offer of employment.

This prelude to the transition into the next phase of our lives means that we have a whole lot more things to balance on our plate during the next nine months, more so than any other time in our college career. Perhaps you are finally leading the club you’ve been a part of since your first year here. Perhaps you are writing a monstrous 100-page thesis. Perhaps you are walking around campus in a suit and tie three days a week, networking and attending interviews. If you are a high school senior reading this, you will certainly relate with this everything-is-happening-at-once feeling. Leading clubs. Planning events. AP exams. Volunteering. And of course, applying to college.

So how do we keep sane? How will you keep sane? Well, first there’s sleep, that precious thing we’ve all learned to treasure here at Middlebury. You can’t possibly expect to balance what’s on your place without the rest and energy your body and your mind need to function. Sure, caffeine helps, but it can’t substitute for the time you spend in bed.

After getting the rest I need and climbing out of bed ready to tackle my day, I like to use a calendar and to-do lists to organize my time. I like to visualize my time so I can plan out my day in my head – what dining hall is closest to my class before lunch, how long I have in the afternoon to do homework before going to that lecture at 4:30, when I can sneak a hitting session in on the tennis courts with my friends. My dad  told me an old Chinese proverb once, “the best memory cannot beat the blunt point of a broken pencil.” In other words, if you are feeling overwhelmed, it helps to write things down so you can use your brainpower to do other things.

But my favorite way of finding balance amidst the craziness that is senior year is taking stock of the little things that happen over the course of a day and going out and doing something spontaneous once in a while. This time of year, it’s enjoying the fiery reds, yellows, and oranges of the fall foliage, or taking an afternoon off to go apple picking. In the winter, it might be going sledding at midnight with your friends, or extending dinner into a two-hour conversation with your friends. In the spring, it might be finally asking your crush out on a date, or going for a late night drive with the windows down and the radio blasting. There is value in the spontaneous, especially when going between classes, the dining hall, and the library begins to feel a little too routine. There is value in the things that we overlook because we are going too fast. Who knows? Along the way, you might just find the perfect inspiration for that Common App essay, or find a new argument for your thesis, and if nothing else, you will come back with a new dose of energy to tackle the challenges of senior year.