Blog - Page 114 of 147 - Life at Hope College

Cheesin’

So, many of you have probably read Amanda’s blog. How exciting, right? Anyway, I just wanted to blog about our trek to America’s Dairyland. We were cordially invited by Amanda’s roomie, and one of my good friends, Hannah. Our destination: Green Lake, WI. It was a small, pretty community. Great place to vacation in the summer as well! So, our journey commenced by departing Hope around 5:00 PM. It takes about 5 hours to drive there. But why would we leave so late? Great question. We avoided the Chicago rush-hour. It’s the 3rd largest city in the U.S., so I would presume that there would be many cars. Although we avoided Chi-Town traffic, we encountered Holland traffic and road construction traffic. It was annoying, but whatever, right?

Then, we met Hannah’s dad in Chicago for dinner! Chicago is Hannah’s half-way point, so it was also a great place to stop. We went to a Szechuan restaurant. Szechuan is a region in China known for its cuisine. Anyway, her dad is CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) and has a Ph.D., so I bombarded him with nursing questions. After our delicious meal which consisted of large portions, we drove all the way to Wisconsin, and arrived around midnight central time.

SATURDAY:

Today was a fun packed day. We attended the Green Lake Harvest Festival. I thought this was pretty neat to see a community come together. I sampled TRUE Wisconsin cheese curds, which were so delicious (but gross at the same time). We also did some shopping and watched a parade. The Harvest Fest Parade was crazy. My bestie Amanda and I got string cheese from a lady dressed like a cow. The people on the floats threw candy, and I felt like a child, LOL. It was great to be away from school because school can get so overwhelming! Anyways, after a long day, it was back to our homework, dinner, movie, then bed.

SUNDAY:

Sunday was our last day in the Cheese State. We ate breakfast, walked around downtown Green Lake, bought Wisconsin souvenirs, and went to the birthplace of the Republican Party. I was so happy I got to go to this!! After our good-byes, it was back to Hope. I didn’t look forward the 1-hour loss, but we got Panda Express in Chicago so it was ok. But, when we got home, I was in time for my favorite TV show, REVENGE!

So, thats what happened this past weekend. Homecoming is this weekend, so there is more to come on that one! Make sure you follow me on Twitter, ok? CLICK HERE!

Oh, and here are some PHOTOS!

Here's my best friend! — Here’s my best friend!

Birthplace of the Republican Party. I felt patriotic! USA!

Cheesin' in the Cheese State — Cheesin’ in the Cheese State

We’re in Wisconsin

Last weekend, my roommate REALLY wanted to go home. It was her small town’s harvest festival in the middle of Wisconsin. She was nice enough to invite student blogger, Marv, and I along. As lovers of all things fried and cheesy, we had to accept the invitation.

As we move into the second month of our semester, things are getting hectic. College schedules can get repetitive, even though activities are constantly changing. Having done research at Hope all summer (more on this soon), I was getting the itch to get out of Holland. A trip to Wisconsin was the PERFECT CURE.

We perused Hannah’s cute little town and got to see a parade and many interesting specimen of Wisconsin natives (no offense wisco’s). Oh, right. And I also wore a tiara around all day. Hannah was prom queen her senior year of high school, and after finding her crown at her house, I decided to wear it around the Harvest Festival to, naturally, pretend I was queen of Harvest Fest.

I had some really interesting reactions to my tiara. I was called princess multiple times (mostly by fried-cheese-selling vendors) and people complimented me often on my headwear. I think my friends liked it (secretly of course) because they felt like they were in the presence of royalty. Which, they were. 😉

Once the parade started, things REALLY started to get real. I’ve only been to Wisconsin once or twice before, and all when I was younger. It really is a different atmosphere than even the upper back woods of Michigan. Marvin and Hannah ran into the badger-thing, Bucky. I thought he was quite strange, but I was not aware he even existed… so… there’s that.

Yeah and the BEST PART OF THE ENTIRE THING??????? Cows handed out string cheese. Ya. For real. There were COWS running up and down the street. Handing out STRING CHEESE. That’s when I knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore…er…Michigan.

Gru and the kids – along with minions – made an appearance. This was quite a shock because I know they are busy with their recent filming and producing of Despicable Me 2.

Also the people of Wisconsin were very excellent hosts. This girl (below) heard me cry when her and her friends got all the swedish fish. She offered me one of her packs. –Sweet, right?

Unfortunately, I developed the dreaded fall cold while I was in Wisconsin –could have been all the fried cheese Marvin and I ate. But hey. We make sacrifices in life… even for string cheese.

HEY — you’d better check out Marv’s Blog while you’re at it. And follow us on Twitter! Click Here for Marv’s, and Here for mine!

Learning about being a Sushi.

This year I have a fabulous opportunity to be a teacher’s assistant for one of my good friends, Professor Linda Strouf. Her First-Year Seminar class is entitled: “Who am I? and Who are the others?”. The focus of the course is for first-year students to think about finding the “other” within themselves and to wrestle with the contradictions of identity.

The first “module” of the course was about Islam. Being a private, Christian college in the northern midwestern United States, the Islamic population of Hope College is fairly small. Though Muslims do attend Hope, their numbers are not great. To learn more about Islam, we read the book The Muslim Next Door, which I highly recommend for anyone beginning to explore Islamic traditions. For most of the students in our class, it was a brand new experience.

We wrapped up the content by taking a visit to the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, MI. Just a short, 3-hour trip for us — we took a Saturday and went!

I, personally, learned a lot about Islam, though I feel I had a decent understanding of their religious traditions to begin with. Our tour guide, Eide Alwain, was ever-gracious and welcomed us and our Christian traditions with open arms. He called himself a “Sushi” – a self proclaimed mix of Sunni and Shiite Islamic traditions, so as to show others that he does not judge based on your sect of religion. He encourages interfaith discipleship and works closely with the churches in his area to learn more about other religious traditions.

Of course, my bestie Marv came along for the ride, as Linda, Marv and I are all BFFs. It was really eye-opening for him as well. Marvin happened to be the only male along for the trip (a coincidence I swear), and part of the Islamic tradition is for the two genders not to touch. Men and women do not shake hands, do not brush up against each other, etc. This was VERY hard for us to get used to inside the mosque, as (being besties) we push, shove, laugh, brush, kick, etc each other ALL THE TIME. I practically had to tie my hands down. PLUS. I really was used to the tradition of shaking hands after a visit. So as Eide wrapped up his talk, I ALMOST extended my hand to shake his. Thankfully, I caught myself in time.

Our discussion of Islam and our trip was very interesting from the perspective of a Hope student. Though we live in a very diverse city (Holland), we too often get stuck in the Hope bubble. Though we have have some diversity here, the majority of students are from the same background. It is comfortable to hang out with people of your same race and religion, simply because they are VERY LIKE you. But guess what. Everyone is like EVERYONE. Look at a prime example in my story: My bestie Marv is a Philipino, and I’m as white as they come! I joined a multicultural sorority where white is the MINORITY, and I absolutely LOVE IT. It doesn’t have to span across races, religions, sexual orientations or genders though. Coming up, I’ll talk about my trip to Wisconsin with my roommate, Hannah. She is Irish (pretty white!) though her childhood experience in Wisconsin was completely different from mine in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

OK OK OK. A long blog story to wrap up an easy point: GET TO KNOW THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU. They may look the same or different from you. They may think the same things, or maybe they have different ideas. Learn about them, absorb their culture and their traditions, and GROW. You will become an exponentially more interesting, well-rounded, and HAPPY person.

I mean, look at all the fun we had in these pictures:

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Weekends in the Fall

Hey Everyone!

I cannot believe it is already October and the semester is now in full swing. This past weekend was packed with fun events. On Friday evening I ate with some friends on the patio at the City Vu restaurant in downtown Holland. We watched the sunset and chatted for hours. After dinner I played racket ball with a friend who graduated last year from Hope. He is now studying at University of Michigan. It was a lot of fun to catch up with him and play racket ball.

On Saturday morning my running buddy Steph and I drove to Grand Rapids for a 20-mile training run for the Grand Rapids Marathon. We woke up at 6:00 AM to start the run at 7:30. After 3 hours of nonstop running we drove back to Holland and bought some fresh food at the local farmer’s market downtown. Then I attended my final Pull at Hope College, and finally after losing all my years at Hope, Even Year won! I unfortunately was not able to see the very end of Pull, because I was headed to Grand Rapids to view ArtPrize.

On Saturday night I went with a big group of people from Hope to walk around Grand Rapids and check out some majorly talented pieces of art. After hanging around Grand Rapids we ate at Applebee’s for half-off apps (a very common thing to do at Hope).

Sunday morning I attended church and enjoyed such a beautiful day outside. I golfed at Winding Creek on a perfect fall day. After golfing I ate some delicious Qdoba outside and finished up my weekend with some homework and attending the Gathering.

One of the reasons I love Hope is because every weekend is different. There is always so much to do and different fun opportunities both on and off campus. I’m now a little behind in homework and need to catch up from such a fun weekend.

Enjoy the beautiful fall weather!

Stress Reliever

Everybody has those super long and stressful weeks, right? Well, I just had the most hectic week of my college life. Multiple tests, homework assignments, and meetings consumed me this past week but you know what makes it seem tolerable? Friends and being able to finally relax and take a minute for yourself. On Friday, I was planning on just lounging around but my friends had the great idea of getting together and going out to dinner in South Haven and having a girl’s night. Let me tell you, that was the perfect solution to all of the stress in my life. We made fools of ourselves while singing along to Taylor Swift in the car ride to dinner and once we got there, we just shoved our faces full of food. Some non-cafeteria food was just the perfect beginning to the weekend!

Once we got back to campus, we ended up watching “House Bunny” and “Sydney White” and “The Lucky One.” Yes, we did watch all of those—well I fell asleep for a chunk of one, but it was the ultimate movie marathon. Basically, my point is that even when life and circumstances seem intolerable and you hit a point where you just want to give up, friends always seem to lift your spirits—at least that’s what mine do for me. Whenever I am having a rough day, one of my friends either at Hope or from home happen to text me something that just makes me feel better. Friends and people who simply understand you and your life are the people that always seem to cure whatever funk you are in. For instance, something happened this weekend that just bummed me out and I got back to my apartment and my friends picked me up and surprised me with a pint of ice cream and candy to cheer me up. Seriously, friends (and food) are the ultimate cure when you are feeling low.

Dinner in South Haven with these lovely ladies!

On a brighter note, this upcoming week should be pretty exciting with the inauguration of President Knapp on Friday! Also, some classes are cancelled so that’s just an added bonus! In addition, homecoming weekend is this next week, so the annual hoedown will definitely be a hit, so everybody better go to that!

That’s it for this week, so don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @hopeleslie15.

A Weekend to Remember + MY FIRST PULL!

It has been quite the weekend here at Hope (in the best way)! Friday started off for me with a trip to Grand Rapids Community College to attend a voice master class featuring John Wustman. Going into it, I had no idea what to expect, but it was an awesome experience! Seven extremely talented college students from the area sang and Mr. Wustman critiqued them. Even though I didn’t sing, I learned so much from him!

Friday night I attended a music education banquet in Nykerk. We ate dinner and then talked and played some games to get to know each other. It was so cool to get to know some of the upperclassmen in the music ed department since I hadn’t gotten to meet too many of them before. I am so excited and blessed to be a part of such a great department at Hope!

Then, that night, some friends and I took a trip to Captain Sundae! I love Captain Sundae so that was an awesome way to cap off Friday night. Here is a picture of all of us!

Captain Sundae

Saturday morning I got up bright and early once again to attend my first music education conference. It was held on-campus and I got the chance to go to some really cool music ed workshops and learn some great teaching tips from current teachers! It was a really great experience to have, especially as a freshman just starting out in the program.

After I left the conference, I went straight to the event of the weekend (or the semester, or the year, or the century, or you know, forever): THE PULL! If you aren’t familiar with The Pull, it’s a giant tug-of-war across a river that occurs every fall. The 18 freshmen (coached by the juniors) pull against the 18 sophomores (coached by the seniors) in the most intense tug-of-war I’ve ever seen! Each puller has his own moraler, a girl who cheers him on, gives him water, acts as his eyes, and is basically his biggest support system throughout the event. It was so exciting to watch and I have so much respect for everyone involved in it.

The view across the river to the even year side! The pits are blocked off by huge banners so each side can’t see the other.

Even Year ended up coming out on top this year, but it was still an awesome thing to experience! You can read more about it here!

After the Pull, I went to Peachwave (a frozen yogurt shop downtown) with some girls because they were having a fundraiser to benefit leukemia and lymphoma, a cause that is very close to many of our hearts. You can’t really go wrong with frozen yogurt for a cause!

This morning I went to Pillar Church with my friend Grace. I’ve been going there pretty much since school started and I really like it. It reminds me a lot of the church I grew up in and I absolutely love the sermons. This afternoon I got all my homework done super early, which is pretty much miraculous since I’m usually up until about 3 AM doing homework after the weekend. Then I took a long nap and woke up to go downtown and have dinner with a few of my friends at the brand new Jimmy John’s! Then we went to the Gathering, Hope’s Sunday night worship service. I hadn’t been able to go to the whole thing in a couple weeks, so it seemed even more awesome than usual this time! The Gathering is such a great way to start off our week. When we came back my lovely friend Jessica made nacho dip and, as food generally does, it brought several clusters together!

All in all, it was an awesome weekend in the middle of what I’m hoping is a series of really great ones! Last weekend my parents came to visit me, this coming weekend is my brother’s wedding in Indiana, and the following weekend is fall break, so I’m finally going home! I love Holland, but I am so excited to go home and see my family and best friend, go to my home church, go to my favorite pizza place and apple orchard, and sleep in my own bed!

Thanks for sharing in my Hope experience with me! Feel free to leave me a comment, send me an email at kathryn.krieger@hope.edu, or tweet me at @hopekathryn17! Hope you all have a wonderful week!

We Want Mike!

Although there are three Mikes that live on the second floor of Kollen 2 East, us girls of Kollen 1 West aren’t looking for any of them. Our real search is for a three foot tall, green, one-eyed Mike — Mike Wazowski.

It all begins about a week and a half ago when we celebrated another birthday on our floor (no cake this time… but a celebration just the same!). Her mom dropped off a giant “life-size” balloon of Mike Wazowski from Monster’s Inc. as a gift. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As the story begins, Mike Wazowski was not quite small enough to live in a dorm room, so he began to live in our hallway (which, to be honest, was extremely creepy. If you were coming in after studying at 12am, seeing this green dude in the hallway was quite the shock.) Regardless, he became our 1st floor West mascot: we took our pictures with him, Skyped our families with him, and even set him outside each others’ doors as a morning greeting.

Then one day, the unthinkable happened: Mike went missing.

We searched and searched for him, but we did not have success in finding him. We were about to give up; but late one night, we saw a group of boys from Kollen 2 East returning him. As we asked them questions, they said they had found him laying around and “wanted to return him to his rightful place.” We accepted their answer and thanked them for returning him.

A few days passed, and Mike stayed happily in our hallway.

Then he went missing again.

We assumed the culprits were from the 2nd floor, so we searched top to bottom, asking anyone and everyone if they had seen him.

The rumors began to fly: he was deflated, lost his arms, shredded… the list goes on and on. The only rumor we could confirm that his arms, in fact, were missing. The 2nd floor RA said he saw them laying in the hallway floor earlier in the day.

We began to narrow down the suspects, then we went into action.

We made "Missing" signs that said we were looking for Mike and posted them throughout the second floor of Kollen 2 East. — We made “Missing” signs that said we were looking for Mike and posted them throughout the second floor of Kollen 2 East.

After we posted our “Missing” signs, we got one in return from the second floor…

It simply said Mike would not be returning.

Although we weren’t really crushed, we did miss our Mike Wazowski. We accepted their note back and “coped” that Mike was gone for good.

When we woke up the next morning, here’s what we found waiting for us in the hallway:

MIKE WAS BACK! Our excitement was endless. — MIKE WAS BACK! Our excitement was endless (note that his arms are, in fact, missing.)

There he was, standing in the hallway — armless, but not deflated. And he’s been here for about two days now, but we’ll have to wait and see how long he sticks around… who knows when and if the next search will begin. 🙂

Want to keep up with more of the shenanigans and fun going on at Hope? Keep up with me @hopesophie17 on Twitter and Instagram.

Got any questions, comments, or just want more? Shoot me an email at sophie.guetzko@hope.edu.

Hope you have a great weekend!

An Apple-Picking Adventure!

Hi all!

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to reunite with some of my Assistant Director friends from Orientation (I talked about them here).

On Friday night, I went to a bonfire hosted by two ADs, Jess and Alexis, who live off-campus. We roasted marshmallows while we listened to the iTunes Radio country station; Jess is a country music fanatic! Along with the ADs, Jess and Alexis invited a bunch of their other friends to the bonfire, most of whom I did not know. Being at the bonfire was a great reminder of why I love the atmosphere Hope so much: it’s small enough to feel connected to a lot of people, but there are always new people to meet!

The following day, we spent the afternoon at Crane’s Orchards in Fennville. Crane’s offers a corn maze, hayrides, and in-season fruit picking. We went to pick apples and had tons of fun! Take a look!

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After picking apples, we went to the Crane’s restaurant, where they have DELICIOUS donuts and cider. If you can’t make it out to Fennville, I recommend that you go to Crane’s in the City in downtown Holland to taste their yummy treats!

I’ve been having so much fun enjoying the beautiful fall weather! What have you been doing? Let me know in a comment or on Twitter!

Talk to you later!

Rachael

Applying to Hope

As I’m sure all high school seniors are aware, college application season is fully upon us. For many seniors, this is accompanied by more stress than seems humanly possible, but it doesn’t have to be that way! While applying to schools is nerve-wracking for everyone, planning ahead a little bit can alleviate a good amount of your stress. Most applications that I filled out as a senior were not extremely time-consuming, except for a few essays and short-answer questions, but being ready for these and having a little bit of an idea of what you want to do with them is always helpful!

GPA and Test Scores

A big factor of stress for many seniors is their grade point average and ACT/SAT scores. However, these are things that you can’t really change at this point unless you retake the tests and wait until next semester for your GPA to (hopefully) improve a little bit. However, by that point, it is late in the application season and you might have to wait a lot longer to get an admission decision. Your grade point average and test scores are pretty much set in stone at this point in your senior year, so don’t worry about them too much since you can’t change them. Just put them down honestly on your application. You’ve done what you can about them, and now all you can do is hope for the best! Your academic record may not be what you wish it was, but the admissions office looks at so much more than just your grades and test scores. Don’t count yourself out!

Essays

Contrary to what some people believe, admissions officers really do read your essays. The decision letter you’ll get from the admissions office at Hope will confirm this for you because they actually respond to your essay in the letter, so that’s pretty cool because you know that the work that you put into your essay didn’t go to waste. Having said that, do not stress too much about your essay. Write it to the best of your ability and have someone else read it to check for spelling and grammatical errors. Some people take their essays to their English teachers to proofread, and that’s a great idea too. I just had my mom check over mine, but the important thing is that you have someone else read it. A fresh pair of eyes will often catch the things that you didn’t!

Waiting

I think the general consensus among most people is that waiting for decision letters is pretty much the worst part of applying to college. However, in general, the earlier you apply, the earlier you’ll hopefully get admitted! Don’t stress about getting applications done super early, but just whenever you have a little downtime, work on your application. You can save them on the Common App (the application software that Hope uses) so you can do a little bit at a time and come back to it later. It’s super convenient and helpful if you’re a busy person! Taking a Saturday morning or a low-key weekday evening to power through a few applications all at once can be a good idea too. It just depends on your schedule! I know that once you finally get all your applications submitted, waiting can be really stressful, but it’s so worth the work and the wait once you finally get the letter welcoming you into the Hope community!

I asked my roommate what the most stressful part of college applications was and she said, “Uploading them. Downloading them.” So there you have it, folks. Once you’ve downloaded it (if you even have to), you’ve pretty much already done the worst part. Have hope! Applications can be monotonous and tedious, but ending up at a school you love is so worth it, trust me!

If you have any other questions about Hope or the application process, please feel free to email me at kathryn.krieger@hope.edu, leave me a comment, or tweet at me at @hopekathryn17! I would love to hear from you!

Typical Week at Hope College

For those of you who might be wondering what a typical day at Hope College is like, this blog post is for you. One of the most frequently asked questions from students visiting colleges is “what is a typical day like here?” So, here’s a schedule of a typical week:

Classes: At Hope, classes are held either Monday, Wednesday, Friday for 50 minutes or Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and 20 minutes. Most students take 16 credits, or 4 classes, during a semester.

Homework: Homework in college is a little different than homework in high school. Most professors at Hope agree that for every 50 minutes you are in class, you’ll have 2 hours of homework. While this isn’t true for every class, Hope is academically intense so you can expect to spend a nice chunk of time doing homework or studying.

Meeting with Professors: Because Hope is a small college, students have the opportunity to get to know their professors. All students are assigned an academic advisor from their major that guides and mentors them throughout their time at Hope. Most students meet with their academic advisor once or twice a month just to catch up and discuss how the semester is going.

Chapel: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a 30-minute Chapel service happens. While Chapel is not required, a lot of students do attend regularly.

Gathering: Each Sunday at 8:00 PM, Campus Ministries has a church service – The Gathering. Again, like Chapel, The Gathering is not required, but many Hope students attend.

Work: Most students at Hope work somewhere, whether that is on-campus or off. I know that several of my friends work as Residential Life Assistants, Student Overnight Hosts, Student Teaching Assistants, or Office Receptionists – each of these jobs works with class schedules so you will never have to worry about missing class for work. Also, I have known others who have worked off campus at stores or restaurants around Holland.

Pull or Nykerk Practice: Hope College has two very unique traditions: The Pull and Nykerk. Pull is a huge tug-of-war across a river in Holland, and Nykerk is a competition involving singing, oration, and play. Freshmen and Sophomores compete against each other in these two events. The Pull takes place at the beginning of October, and Nykerk takes place the first weekend of November.

Intramural Sports: One of the goals of every Hope student is to win an Intramural Championship T-Shirt. I have never won a shirt but the good news is that I still have time. Some of the sports that you can play are tennis, softball, basketball, flag football, and volleyball.

These are just some of the activities that would take place during a typical day at Hope. Most students are very involved on campus which allows them to make great friends while receiving a first-class education.

Hopefully this post gave y’all a good idea of what Hope is like and “hope”fully I will see some of you on campus in the next year!

Go Hope!!

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