Well prospies, spring semester will always get you. It’s the busiest, shortest, most fun, but most stressful time of year. With breaks every few weeks, it never feels like your in class for long. Tests creep up on you super fast and you NEVER have the long, relaxing experience of fall semester, though both the same length of time.
As busy as we all are, it means a lot of things are happening. Decisions are being made, committees are meeting, and progress is in the air. Here are a few cool things that have happened lately at Hope:
- Hope got a new president (!finally!).
- We also have a new (but returning) dean of sciences!
- I officially accepted my summer research position under Dr. Fraley to continue working on my project for a 10-week span at Hope.
- Hope’s own William Pannapacker wrote a great piece about building a liberal arts foundation for the New York Times. In the article one particular sentence has resonated with me for the week. Keep it in mind as you are on your college search and decision process:
When it comes to choosing a major, you should engage with things that
you care about, that interest you and that will produce your strongest
efforts.
In other news, my friends have been going crazy in efforts to maintain our scholarly statuses and sanity. We have taken to doing absurd amounts of homework until late at night and rising early for breakfast. Though we struggle to maintain this routine of happy, early, college students (breaking norms are never ok), here is a photo of us in our prime, enjoying the atmosphere in the Cup and Chaucer before our 8:30 AM class.
In our spare time, of course, we keep ourselves occupied. Marvin and I recently designed our Halloween costumes for next year. He’s on the left, dressed as the rough endoplasmic reticulum and I on the right as a mitochondria. We also took all the food in our dorm rooms and checked it all out on the app Fooducate to see how unhealthy we are… Believe me, we are unhealthy.
…Ok… maybe we spend too much time studying the sciences.
Last but not least, I went home and worked (and studied a lot) all of spring break. I got to see my puppy, made a bit of cash to pay for school, and of course… studied orgo.
Questions, comments, concerns? Want to go out to coffee when you’re visiting? Want to see my research lab or meet a professor? I’ll get you in touch. Contact me at amanda.porter@hope.edu or @hopeamanda15 on twitter ;).
