The student center is the core of most college campuses, a building overemphasized on the tour as the heart of the campus, with students flowing in and out constantly, pumping out activities and information to the entire community.  Yesterday, I started wondering what role Middlebury’s own student center serves… How many times a day am I in McCullough?  Who else is usually around?  What happens there?

McCullough lies at the center of campus, directly between many of my classes and my dormitory.  Last Wednesday I stopped by the mail center to look for letters or care packages (and got a paycheck too!).  I then immediately spent a part of that paycheck buying tickets to our spring concert, Wale (one of my suitemates is the chair of the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) Concerts Committee and was in charge of booking him) and tickets to Stopkiss, a play that my other suitemates are directing and starring in as part of their senior work, at the Middlebury Ticket Office.

On the way out, I glanced up at the Honor Code signatures on the wall.  Upon matriculation, every Middlebury student signs an agreement pledging to submit only original work with proper citations and to maintain integrity in all aspects of academic life.  I flashed back to the day we signed the pledge, when hundreds of freshmen squeezed into McCullough to meet with the deans and to assume responsibility of our college lives.  The pledge brings a unique atmosphere to Middlebury: tests are unproctored, and closed-note take-home exams are common.  As a result, students work for personal achievement rather than in direct competition with their peers.

Later on in the night, I returned for Trivia Night at Crossroads Café.  The Café is a student run business that serves healthy food options including Asian noodles, frozen yogurt, fresh fruit, coffees, and smoothies.  The Café’s stage hosts student musical performances, poetry readings, trivia nights, lectures, and community discussions on a regular basis.  I grabbed a table downstairs while my friends ran upstairs to the Grille to order food.  They returned a few minutes later with a Dr. Feelgood (a grilled cheese with chicken tenders inside) and a Heart Attack (fries smothered in cheese, bacon, chicken tenders, bbq sauce etc.) for the group to split.  The room quickly filled with about a hundred students hunched over in groups trying to identify a man (Nicolae Ceauşescu) from his photo.  A few hours later, as Trivia Night came to a close, I swung by MiddExpress (the on-campus convenience store in McCullough) to restock on tape and notebook paper before heading home with my suitemates.

As I reflect on the number of things I did in McCullough over the course of a single day, I’ve realized that I’ve been underestimating the Student Center all these years.  McCullough may not be the only center of student life on campus, but it is definitely an essential part of daily life for MiddKids.

Yesterday at 4:00 I rushed out of class to my room and quickly slipped on four layers of spandex, sweatpants, and waterproof gear, gathered up my hat and gloves and headed over to Adirondack Circle.  When I arrived at the small loop in the center of campus, a group of 20 was already waiting for me.  We piled into a few cars and drove off to a stretch of Otter Creek outside of Vergennes.  Once we got to the creek, we waded in past our knees, and *gently* (as I yelled repeatedly) placed our boat into the ice cold water.  I spent the next two hours crammed into a three foot by one foot nook, the coxswain’s seat.

I joined the Middlebury College Rowing Club (or Crew Team as it’s more commonly known) as a wide-eyed freshman on campus.  My friend, Christina, had already joined the team and the novice women were scouring campus for a coxswain.  “You’re loud!” she said to me, “and small-ish.  Do you have any interest in joining crew with me?”

From the moment I agreed, my life at Middlebury changed dramatically.  As an athlete, I spend 3-4 hours a day at practice on weekdays and 12-14 hours on weekends travelling and racing.  The demanding schedule has forced me to prioritize.  Be it a lecture series I want to attend, Trivia Night at the Grille, homework glaring up at me expectantly from my desk, a road trip with friends to the Ben and Jerry’s factory, or a meeting as social chair of the International Students Organization, I am constantly evaluating what I do (and don’t!) have time to squeeze in around crew.   The sport has also taught me to be relentlessly organized and helps me maintain focus and perspective in all aspects of college life.

Crew, too, has brought out a dedication and passion in me that I never realized I had.  Spending every other week of my college career waking up at 4:30 am for morning practice has never been easy, but it is surprisingly fulfilling and unbelievably rewarding; with every practice, our boats get faster and with every season, our hard work shows in the results.  I have also had the good fortune of watching shooting stars fly over Lake Dunmore while gliding across the water in the pitch black, and watching countless sunrises with the backdrop of the lake and mountains, each seemingly more beautiful than the last.

In two days we will travel as a team to Lake Lanier, Georgia for our Spring Training.  In Georgia, we live in a small neighborhood of houseboats and practice 3 times a day.  Our first race of the season is on Atlanta’s Olympic racecourse at the Clemson Sprints, a nice opportunity to compete with teams we rarely get to see.  Before we know it, we’ll be racing our way through the rest of our spring season.

I can’t wait to be spending time with my team, to be doing what I’m passionate about, and to be racing again.  At the starting line of each race, I repeat a quote from Coach Noel Wanner to my boat, “Smile at the start because racing is the best thing there is.”  With a collective deep breath from my eight rowers, we’re off.

Hello everyone!  I’m excited to be back blogging after a J-Term hiatus.

Now that our final semester is in full swing with reading assignments, papers, and group projects I find myself back in the habit of spending ridiculously long hours in the library.  This may sound a little nerdy, but I learned quickly after arriving at Middlebury, that the library is not at all a bad place to be!

Middlebury’s Davis Family Library is so much more than your run of the mill, dreary building filled with stack s upon stacks of books.  Yes, it does look a bit like a spaceship from the outside, but everyone knows it’s what’s on the inside that counts!  Here are a few of the library’s best features:

1)      Moving bookshelves – ok maybe you’ve all seen them before, but when I walked in a bewildered freshman from Mississippi, I was in awe at the electronic moving stacks.  Now I’m realizing just how practical they are.  The library’s extensive book collection has the perfect balance of obscure specialized books and all the classics and thanks to the moving bookshelves, we even have room for more!

2)      Abundant group study rooms – so you don’t have to feel bad chatting in the library…

3)      Mac lab – filled with dozens of high tech Mac computers and printers, this is the perfect place to get digital media projects done, or procrastinate with PhotoBooth.

4)      Wilson Café – located at the front of the library and open daily, the Wilson Café is the perfect study break.  Grab a delicious Chai Tea Latte to go and bring it back to your carrel or settle in the comfy booths to enjoy a late night snack.

5)      Comfy Chairs – the library is home to dozens of comfy blue recliners perfect for relaxing while you work your way through reading.  The chairs on the second floor at the east side of the library are my personal favorite, as they provide a view out over the entire town of Middlebury and to the mountains beyond – particularly impressive when fall foliage is at its peak!  While the comfy chairs are a great place to spend a lazy Sunday, they can be a bit dangerous… students do tend to fall asleep there after a long stretch of studying.

6)       Endless Carrels – for those seeking a more formal study space, the main library is also filled with carrels for thesis writers and those who don’t have time to snooze.  These carrels come with no distractions and are ideal for working to make a deadline.  Carrels are located in the basement (the quietest level, for sure), main floor, second floor, and the more secluded first and second floor mezzanines.

7)      WARMTH – I didn’t realize until I looked out of the window from my carrel this weekend and saw snow flurries blustering past, but the library is one of the warmest places on campus.  The weather outside may be frightful, but the library is so delightful!

Still libin’ it up through my last semester   –   Teresa

This morning I, along with the rest of the class of 2012, woke up at 6:50 am for the last time. We turned on our lamps, pulled out the list of CRN numbers we scrawled on papers the night before, and logged on to bannerweb. Then, we counted the seconds down to 7:00. At 6:59:59, students clicked across campus and began copying in codes as quickly as possible, vying for spots in our first-choice classes.

Now, this may all seem a bit dramatic. As seniors, we get first pick at registration and are very likely to get exactly the classes we want. But we go through the routine nonetheless, cherishing our final round of registration. The courses we signed up for today will be our last at Middlebury College.

With Middlebury’s impressively large course catalog, it has been a chore to find the right balance between finishing out all our requirements and making sure we squeeze in the random classes we always wanted to take but didn’t have time to… Actually, I can’t lie, I tried to register for an overload (5 courses) because I had so much trouble narrowing down my interests. Unfortunately, banner only let me sign up for 4, which is probably prudent in the end. Realistically there is no way I could balance 5 classes, job applications, Crew’s spring season, other extra-curricular commitments and still find time to see my friends (my top priority for second semester of senior year!).

I ended up registered for Political Islam with the absolutely incredibly Quinn Mecham, The Japanese Economy (a little out of my comfort zone…), Advanced Arabic, and Arabic Linguistics. We’ll see if I make it into my 5th choice, Chinese Readings in Politics and Business. It’s saddening to have my schedule set for the rest of my college career, but also invigorating to be looking forward to a whole new set of classes and my final semester at Midd!

I’d encourage any perspective students to look through the online course catalog online and try to create your ideal semester at Middlebury. Chances are, you’d inevitably encounter some scheduling conflicts (as I did this semester) and have to alter your plans accordingly, but I guarantee you could easily find something else you’d love to take!

In the infamous words of Rebecca Black “It’s Friday.”  And, yes, we so excited.  I woke up this morning and thought to myself, “Thank Goodness It’s Friday!”

… until I looked down at my planner.

My day looked a little something like this: class, MIDTERM, class, work – booked solid from 9 to 4.  An incessant stream of classes, tests, and homework keep me busy during the week.  But what I’ve come to realize during my time at Middlebury is that my schedule does not let up even if my workload does.   I survived my International Finance midterm this morning, but now I’m faced with something much more daunting: the weekend.

Tonight I’ll be running a few errands in town, then I’m off to a potluck dinner hosted by a group of friends in their fabulously homey Voter suite (complete with spiral staircase).  The potluck is followed by an event my friend planned, which gathers students from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to share their stories and experiences.  Around 9:30, I’ll head over to a reunion of sorts with friends who studied abroad with me in China last spring and spend the night reminiscing about 珍珠奶茶 and Beijing’s hutongs.

Saturday doesn’t get any easier.  My day starts at 9 am, and between moving boats with the crew team, tailgating the final home football game of the season, supporting friends in the annual Global Rhythms talent show sponsored by Wonnacott Commons, and late night movies, I don’t expect to have much free time.  Sunday brings its own woes with 15 pages of my “mini-thesis” on Roma political mobilization due next week, an Arabic essay, and the regular load of homework for my other classes.

So instead of “Thank Goodness It’s Friday”, this week I’m thanking goodness for November 6th and the extra hour of sleep, studying, or partying with friends.  However I choose to spend my hour, I know it will make a huge difference!  If only we got an extra hour every week…

Hey y’all!

Welcome to Middlebury College’s Senior Admissions Fellows Blog.  The twelve of us will be sharing our thoughts on student life with prospective students this year right up to our graduation!  Take some time to explore the posts from previous Senior Fellows and check out our Senior Fellows website, too.

Posts will be coming soon…

Teresa