My New Blog!
Just to let you all know, I am now posting at http://carrie.smcbloggers.com/
I hope you will check out my new blog and get to know our new Saint Michael's College Blogger team!
Welcome Back!
SMC is officially BACK!! I moved into my Townhouse on Saturday and have had two of my classes during the first two days (Advanced Dance on Monday and Western Calligraphy today...doesn't sound half bad, does it? Ahh the perks of being a senior!!). I have been working really hard on the upcoming LEAP retreat (I am Support Rector which basically means that I do a lot of organizing outside of our two meetings each week) and I've been able to relax and enjoy the very summer-like weather! Coming back to school was not stressful this year at all - I've moved in an out so many times that it is almost like second nature to pack up a bunch of stuff into my car and head back to school!
The rest of this week looks great - tomorrow I will have my first meeting of "Research in Electronic Environments," which is a Library Studies class and will hopefully be useful in writing my thesis, and the second meeting of my dance class. Thursday will bring another meeting of my Western Calligraphy class and my first Senior Seminar class (which only meets once a week...but for three hours!) and I will be at my internship all day on Friday (Make-A-Wish Foundation of Vermont). I will have a few other meetings here and there, and once things get back into full swing, I will have a tour time each week as well as the dance classes that I will be assisting the teacher in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. All in all, this looks like its going to be a great semester!
Community!
To me, one of the most important things about St. Mike's is the community. This community is hard to understand if you haven't experienced it, but in the past few weeks I have had two strong reminders of how amazing the St. Mike's community really is...
The first took place last weekend when I went down to New Boston, NH to visit my close friend from St. Mike's, Heather. Heather went on the service trip to Kentucky with me and was also in my business class, so even thought we've only known each other for one semester, we have become really close friends. Heather and I had been planning this trip ever since we returned from Kentucky because we purchased tickets to the Counting Crows/Maroon 5 concert at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, MA. We made plans with one of Heather's roommates from St. Mike's, Katie, because she lives in Mansfield. Even though I had only met her once, Katie and her family welcomed me into their home and Heather and I spent a good portion of the day before the concert with Katie's family. This gesture reminded me of how much the St. Mike's community means - even thought I didn't really know Katie or her family, because we are both part of this community, they welcomed me and we quickly all became friends. Katie's mom made us a delicious dinner before the concert, her twin sister Erin scrounged around for rain gear for us (because the weather outlook for the concert was not great) and the rest of her family was just really warm and welcoming. Katie took us to and from the concert and then we spent the night with her afterwards. I had an amazing weekend, mostly because of Heather, Katie and both of their families. This quick taste of the SMC community made me excited to get back on campus in a few weeks!
The second reminder took place when I was vacationing with my family in Portland, ME this past week. We stayed in Old Orchard Beach, but took a trip up to Portland to do some shopping. I happened to be wearing my St. Mike's sweatshirt (because there is rarely a day that I don't wear something with "Saint Michael's College" written on it!) and a complete stranger stopped me to ask if I went to school at SMC. I replied that I did, and we talked for several minutes about when he had graduated, our respective majors (Journalism for him, English for me) and how much we loved it. I've never seen this sort of spontaneous conversation spring out of another college's apparel, so I think this shows that the people at St. Mike's love their school and love to talk about it with each other and everyone else.
Even though you can't fully understand the St. Mike's community until you have experienced it, I think that both of these examples shed some light on what it is like to be a part of it - it is caring, genuine and really fun!
POW Excitement
I returned from POW (Pre-Orientation Weekend) on Sunday after two and a half days of great experiences. The group of first year students was wonderful - they were engaged and interested in hearing what the upperclassmen had to say in their talks and I think that they really came away with some new friends and a newfound excitement for where they will spend the next four years of their lives, SMC. Here is a group photo!
In addition to learning about one another's experiences, we took a beautiful hike on Saturday. We hiked on the Sterling Pond trail at Smuggler's Notch, which brought us to the Sterling Pond (where most of us stopped for a quick swim!) and then to this awesome view -
Going on POW made me exhausted, but incredibly excited about returning to St. Mike's in the fall. What a great way to spend the weekend!
POW!
If you remember back a few months ago, I wrote a post about going on POW (Pre-Orientation Weekend). POW is a program for incoming freshman to learn about SMC, get to know one another and get to know some upperclassmen. We will go on a short hike, listen to talks by current students and have a great time!
We are leaving today and I am SO excited!!! I will try to get some pictures up when I return, so stay tuned for that early next week!
Even the most stubborn can change...
So this post is going to be about country music. I used to hate country. Like hate hate. Hate a lot. Until a few months ago when my friend Heather made me four CDs of her favoritie country music for my birthday. I was skeptical at first and tried to pretend that I couldn't get into it. However, slowly but surely, I caved and these songs slowly became some of the most played songs on my iTunes. I know - all of my country-hating friends are probably cursing me right now, but alas, it's true. I am OBSESSED with listening to country music.
A lot of people in Vermont like country music - we even have a big country music festival in my town every year. However, I never really gave it a chance. My parents never listened to country, so instead of listening to Tim McGraw when I was growing up, my parents were playing Dan Fogelberg. However, after giving the four CDs that Heather made for me an honest chance, I found myself changing my stubborn attitude about disliking country music.
This may not seem like that big of a deal, but if you read my blog, you know that I listen to Kanye West and Justin Timberlake, not Carrie Underwood or Rascal Flatts. However, once I stopped thinking about what other people would think if I started to like country (when you have an opinion about country music, it is usually a strong one and so I thought that flipping sides would not be so simple), I discovered a whole new genre of music to love!
For me, college has been filled with transformations like this - I never thought that I would be dancing as seriously as I am, but I branched out and tried something new. I would have never expected to be so heavily involved in a religious retreat program (LEAP), but I am and I love it. And I certainly wouldn't have expected to choose Taylor Swift over the popular countdown on the radio, but I find myself doing it quite often now. College is about becoming your own individual person, and all of these changes to my once steadfast ideas have only positively impacted my life.
However, don't be fooled - I am still loving Wyclef Jean, Dave Matthews and Maroon 5 just like I used to - I just have plenty of other music to throw into the mix.
As country artist Jessica Andrews sings,
"It's all a part of me
And that's who I am"
Beautiful Summer!
Summer has officially hit VT - if we make it to 90 degrees today we will have and official heat wave! (three or more days over 90 degrees!) Even though I am not fond of this humid weather, I had a great weekend enjoying beautiful Vermont!
On Friday, I spent some time downtown on Church Street. If you are not familiar with Church Street, it is a pedestrial mall which is right in the center of Burlington. This weekend was part of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, so I heard some good jazz music while walking. On Saturday I attended an SMC reunion dinner - this weeked was alumni weekend at St. Mike's and one of the events is a class dinner. A few current students are invited and offer perspective on what SMC is like today and listen to the great stories about SMC years ago. I was seated with the class of 1968 and really enjoyed talking to the alums and their wives (the graduating class in 1968 was all men, as SMC was an all male school until the early 1970's!)
On Sunday I took the opportunity to go down to North Beach on Lake Champlain and enjoy the weather. It was packed, but the scenery was beautiful and I enjoyed spending a few hours with an SMC friend who was visiting Burlington for the day. After we left the beach, we went back to Church Street and found some air conditioning in on of Burlington's cutest coffee shops, Uncommon Grounds. One of the fantastic fresh squeezed lemonades hit the spot and was a great end to the day.
Vermont is filled with stuff to do during the summer - if you get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it!
My first VIDEO!!
Check out my first video and see me in real life!!
first roadtrip of summer 2008
If you have frequented my blog over the past year, you probably picked up on my love for traveling and visiting new places. However, there are a few places that never get old, no matter how many times I travel to them. One of those places in Montreal - it's a fairly quick drive (less than 2 hours from campus) and seems like another world, despite the fact that it is easy to get to and very accessible. It reminds me a lot of France, but it also has the familiarity of the US - it's a great city.
As I had mentioned in a previous blog, my best friend from home Kristin and I got tickets for Kanye West's Glow In The Dark Tour, which was in Montreal at the Bell Centre last night. I took the day off from work (it's not that busy in Admissions yet) and we left a little after noon. We shopped all afternoon on St. Catherine's Street, had dinner at Peel Pub (so good!) and then went to the show. It was a good show - Kanye had three openers (Lupe Fiasco, N.E.R.D. and Rihanna) who were all good, especially Rihanna. I'm not a huge fan of her music, but I know a good number of her songs from the radio, so it was cool to see her perform so many songs that I know. After a long setup for Kanye (he didn't come on until almost 11:00!), he played a great set of both newer and older stuff. He's a very different performer than others that I have seen - he was pretty serious the whole time and is a very individual performer so it was only him up on the huge stage for the WHOLE time (his band/back up singers were all set down below the stage wearing black so that you could hardly see them)- I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to rap for far over an hour straight with no one else up there with you. The show had kind of a strange theme, but all in all, his music is amazing and despite our horrible seats, we had a good time. We managed to stay awake for the ride home after the concert by playing Backstreet Boys songs and working on our singing voices - needless to say, it was a great trip.
Kristin and I enjoying the concert!
The community at St. Mike's has become a second family to me, but even though Kristin and I don't share our college experiences, we still can pick up right where we left off and have an amazing time together. She will be gone for most of the summer doing research at SUNY-Potsdam, but for the time that we have together, we are making the most of it! If you have a chance to do a few roadtrips or go to any concerts at all, take advantage of them - those will be the times that you remember and I guarantee that you will be so thankful that you did them!
Congrats Class of 2008!
I can't believe that all of my amazing friends from the SMC class of 2008 have graduated! Commencement was held on Thursday, May 15th - I watched most of the ceremony on a live video broadcast to the website at my house, and I was cheering for all of my friends despite not being there in person. I have so many friends from the graduating class, but I am very close to two in particular - my fellow blogger Mallory and my good friend and Jazzercise buddy Em. After watching the ceremony, I headed to Em and her boyfriend Andy's graduation party in South Burlington where I was able to congratulate the graduates and meet their extended families. Despite the rainy start to the day, it cleared up beautifully and we were able to enjoy the sunshine in Em's backyard.
It surreal to think that I am now an official senior in college! I know that I have the whole summer before I really get started, but I no longer have anyone ahead of me! I will miss everyone from the Class of 2008 next year - I have never been a student at St. Mike's without that class there with me. However, both Em and Andy will be on campus taking graduate classes and working for Res. Life, and Mallory will be in the Burlington area for the summer and then will probably be heading to Boston, but that is close enough to visit!
Things will definitely be different next year at St. Mike's, but I think the biggest difference that I will adjust to is the fact that my sister, Emily, is going to be a freshman! I am excited to share the SMC campus with her, and I know that she will do well and have fun. I hope that some of my readers are either incoming freshman or the parents of incoming freshman - I will try to post a lot this summer and get some pictures or videos of campus up here so that you can add to your excitement! All of my readers are more than welcome to post questions, but if any incoming freshman or parents have questions about adjusting to SMC, who to talk to about a certain concern or just what to bring, ask away!
I can't believe that I have been writing this blog for almost a year - so much has happened! I hope that you have found my experiences to be interesting and informative. I am going to continue blogging through this summer and next year, so please feel free to send any feedback my way. Hopefully I will have many more successful experiences to tell you all about!
