I hope you all enjoyed your Spring Break and feel relaxed and rejuvenated as we enter this last sprint before the school year ends. As a senior, it felt like this Spring Break was needed more than ever before. Here’s a little glimpse into what I did!
For my break, I headed down to sunny Florida with my family. It was so nice to be able to spend one final break with them before my sister and I graduate. We had been to Florida before, but this break was different. This break was needed, and it didn’t feel long enough. We didn’t want to come home!
When we boarded our plane Thursday afternoon heading to Florida, we were cold and ready for the sun. I can say with confidence that we didn’t leave the sun for 10 straight days. We spent every day on the beach reading books, taking much-needed naps, and dipping our toes in the warm Gulf Coast water. We had some different excursions during the evenings, like going to a play, exploring the surrounding Naples area, and going on a sunset boat ride, but other than that, we played many games of cards and read a lot of books. It was blissful! Leaving Florida’s 75 degree weather and coming back to Michigan’s 30 degree weather was a wake-up call, but I’m glad to be back with my friends for these final weeks until graduation.
A view of the sunset from the boat tour we went on!It was so much fun being able to go on Spring Break with my best friend!
I hope you all had a great break and are ready to push through these next few weeks!
We all know Porsche. One of the most luxurious and most technically developed cars one can buy in current market. People think Porsche is one of the symbols of brilliant German engineering, precision, and reliability. As of right now, it is truth, but most people do not know that Porsche is not German company. It is Czech company, which moved to Germany and became German. Actually, the founder Ferdinand Porsche, was born in Vratislavice neighborhood, which is part of Liberec, my hometown. He went to Technical University in Liberec and got a job in Vienna when he turned 18. On of the reasons, why he did not come back to the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia back then) is because he sympathized with Hitler and his ideas.
Also what people do not know is that Volkswagen Beetle is a reality only because of Adolf Hitler. The VW Beetle is a direct product of Adolf Hitler. He actually contracted Ferdinand Porsche in 1934 and asked him to design and construct it.
The fact that Porsche had a lot of sympathies for Hitler was a big controversy of reconstructing his house where he was born in Vratislavice, Liberec. Nevertheless, Škoda the Czech car manufacturer bought it and made a museum out of it.
I talked about Prague a few blogs ago, but I have not mentioned my hometown and the city I was born. There is a lot of things to talk about, so I will probably write two or three more posts about it because my town in many ways is really a pearl in a sea.
Liberec or as many people know the city as Reichenberg in German, is a city located on the North of the Czech Republic, only 30 minutes from German and Polish border. It has population of 102,000 people and it was first mentioned, and therefore established in 1352. It is a pearl in the sea, because of its population and economic power and demand, it is very beautiful and historic.
Liberec has a lot of beautiful, historic and modern buildings that form the city, but those Jětěd and Liberecká Radnice are the symbols of the town.
On of the great things in Liberec is its location between mountains, so people can in 20-30 minutes drive outside Liberec and ski, mountain bike, walk, or cross country ski. On the top of the mountains is a telecommunication tower and hotel at the same time. It was designed by Karel Hubáček and built in 1973. In that time, people saw it as “futuristic” building.
Ještěd in during the winter.Ještěd.
The second symbol of Liberec is Liberecká radnice, which would translate to English as Town Hall of Liberec. The architect of this was Franz Neumann, an Austrian architect. The building was finished in 1893 and it is a “smaller” copy or version of the Town Hall in Vienna.
Even though it is the start of a Spring, Prague, the capital city of the my home country, the Czech Republic, has something spectacular. In every bigger city in the Czech Republic there is a Christmas market. There are always very Christmasy, relaxing, and romantic, but the Prague Christmas Market is in the league itself. It was ranked as the number 1 Christmas Market in the world by CNN.
The market happens on the Old Town Square in the heart of Prague. Its historic square dates to 11th century. The biggest attraction is an astronomical clock in the town hall called Orloj. There is a sad and amazing regarding the clock. The sad one is they blinded the builder of Orloj right after he made it, in order to prevent him of making it somewhere else. The positive news is that, Orloj has been working since it was constructed in October 9, 1410.
Prague´s Chirstmas MarketPrague´s Chirstmas Market from the airAstronomical Clock called Orloj from 1410
Happy Monday, Readers! I hope you all have transitioned back into school and homework smoothly after coming back from Winter Break. We’re in the final stretch now until Spring Break – hooray!
I’ve decided to take a break from writing on a Senior Struggle this week to tell you about my Winter Break – it really was an amazing few days filled with friends and outdoor activities!
For Winter Break, my housemates and I decided to visit Minnesota, where one of our housemates is from. We decided to visit her house because we had all been to each other’s houses before except for hers and wanted to see where she was from before graduation rolled around and we were out of time and weekends. So we packed up the car and drove ten hours to Minnesota, passing through Indiana, Illinois, and (what felt like) the huge state of Wisconsin.
Once we arrived at her house, we headed straight for her families cabin even farther north of where she’s from. It was so good to get away and play endless board games, read, play with their dogs, and just relax. It was even better because there was limited cell phone service, so we were forced to unplug for a short time – it was amazing! One of the activities we did was snowshoeing across the lake her cabin is on. I had never been snowshoeing, so the experience was new and exciting.
After spending a few days there, we came back to her house to spend some time with her family. We explored the nearby city of Minneapolis and saw what the city had to offer. One of the highlights of her hometown tour was Minnehaha Falls – a usually frozen over waterfall just shooting off of Minnehaha Creek. Because of the warm weather, the waterfall wasn’t frozen over, but that made it even more beautiful!
After her hometown tour, it was time to head back to Holland. Ten hours and many snacks later, we arrived back at Hope ready to take on the coming weeks. It was a restful and relaxing break and I hope yours was just as adventurous as mine!
Until next time!
During break, we got to snowshoe across the frozen lake – it was beautiful!
Dogs make everything (even breaks) better.
Flowing Minnetonka Falls.
On day three of our trip, we got to explore downtown Minneapolis. This is the skyline!
I loved getting to travel for one last break with my best friends!
Happy Monday, Readers! I hope you all have transitioned back into school and homework nicely after coming back from Winter Break. We’re on the final stretch now until Spring Break – woohoo!
Happy Monday, readers! Miraculously, after writing last week’s blog, I feel a lot better about being busy this semester. I feel like writing that blog post put a lot of things in perspective for me and I’m at terms with my workload for the semester. My new goal is to get most of my homework done during the weekends so that my weeks are a little less hectic. All it took was some rehashing to figure out how to do that!
The new thought that has been on my mind since I last wrote is the fact that I am scared out of my mind to leave this safe little bubble of Hope I’ve called home for the past four years. Thinking back on it, Hope has been my safe haven. It has given me an education, put amazing people in my life, and most importantly fostered my faith for the past four years. Everything has been made easily accessible to me and has been extremely convenient. It’s been easy to get involved, see friends when I need to, and go to church without straying too far from campus. The way I tend to think about this convenient bubble is in terms of my email signature. It looks like this:
Hope College, Class of 2017
English Major and Management Minor
Career Development Office, Career Advisor
Student Blogger, Hope College Admissions
Hope College Student Ambassador
Hope College Student Congress Representative
Nykerk Cup Executive Board Member, Treasurer
To me, my email signature shows that I’m accomplished here at Hope and how easy it was to make those accomplishments happen. Once I graduate though, that signature will disappear and that thought is extremely scary to me. All my accomplishments will be gone! I will have to start from scratch building up my email signature with involvements and activities. How will I even begin to do that if I’m not within the comfortable bubble of Hope? How will I find activities to be involved in and make a new normal for myself?
One way to alleviate some of this stress about graduating and creating a new normal is by preparing for life after graduation. For me, that means to start thinking about it. A way that I’m going to start this conversation is by attending the event series “Life After College” which is put on by the Career Development Center, Campus Ministries, and the Senior Seminar program. Every week the series will be covering a different topic that seniors will have to face after graduation. This week on Wednesday from 3 p.m.–5 p.m., or Thursday from 7 p.m.–9 p.m. in the first floor rotunda of Martha Miller the topic that will be covered is finding a church. As a faith-driven person, that topic is very important to me and something I want to invest in. Other topics range from faith in the workplace to friends and fiancé’s after college – whatever the topic I know I need to start thinking about it!
Hopefully you all have started thinking about what life holds for you after graduation, but if you’re like me and haven’t even started, just know that Hope has amazing resources like the Career Development Center to help you start that conversation.
Happy Monday, friends! It’s a good day to stay inside and read a book, watch some Netflix or perhaps… write a blog!
In case you don’t know, the theme of my blogs for this semester is “Senior Fears/Struggles” and the more I’ve been dwelling on this theme, the more fears/struggles I can think of. The predominant one for this week? The concept of time.
My housemates and I have been struggling with this a lot this week; so much so that we have designated a chair in our living room as “the breakdown chair”. (If you couldn’t guess, it’s the chair where people go to cry if they’re having a life-crisis.) It’s actually really fun – we take a picture of every visitor to the chair and are going to make a collage at the end of the semester. So far we have had two visits to the breakdown chair and that’s only this week.
Need a good cry? Come over and take a sit in The Breakdown Chair.
The origin of both breakdowns has been due to busyness and lack thereof. One of my housemates, Britta Hageness, finds herself in the non-busy category and comments on her situation as follows.
I feel like all seniors are in one of two boats. They are either jam-packed busy – finishing up a full course load while also applying for jobs or grad school, working multiple part-time jobs, and taking on huge leadership roles on campus – or, there are seniors who only have one or two classes left and are left with an abnormal amount of time in their day-to-day lives.
I [Britta] am the second one, and I think I’ve been having a mini identity crisis about it. I think my past three years of college have been a balancing act of trying to be the “perfect” amount of busy. I’ve tried to not over commit myself to clubs and other activities because a) I want to be able to finish my homework and b) I like my sleep. But I also want my schedule to be full enough to feel like I have a specific purpose on this campus and to avoid boredom.
This semester, my “perfect balancing” system has gone out of whack because I have too much time. I’m only taking one class at Hope, along with one class online. Grad school applications have been sent out, so that’s also off the to-do list. Having too much time is a unique problem for a college student. I truly don’t think I’ve ever been bored for the last three and a half years, not even for an hour. Now I’m trying to avoid boredom on a daily basis. I’m trying to make the most of it by reading books for pleasure and by actually being prepared for class. Maybe I’ll take up a new hobby like sewing or figure skating… haha.
I guess it’s a nice transition into the real world where we won’t find our identity in our major/ classes/ studies. However, it doesn’t feel like the college life that I’m used to.
While many seniors are in Britta’s situation, there are also many seniors that are packing it all in. That would be me.
I’ve found that I’m barely treading water this year what with being enrolled in 16 credits that I need to graduate, working three jobs, and being in more clubs than I can count. On top of that I still need to come out of this busy season with a job so that I’m not completely lost after graduation. Most days I wonder how I’m going to come out of college in one piece.
While Britta and I are both struggling with managing our time, the idea to be taken away from both our situations is balance. After college there will be an adjustment period for sure, but as long as we know ourselves and how much we can handle (or not handle) the natural balance of work, friends, and life in general will fall into place.
So whether you’re feeling the busy burn or waiting for life to pick up, know that college is all about finding out who you are and discovering your balance. Take a deep breath, everything is going to be ok. (Said more for my own assurance than yours I’m sure.)
