Class of 2013: Freshman Blog

I thought about writing this entry a week ago.  However, I just didn’t know how to put what I was feeling into words.  A part of me was coming to the realization that home would never be home again after you’ve left it for a significant amount of time.  Home becomes some interim place between where you were and where you will go next.  It’s as if you try to relive all your old ways, memories, patterns like it’s a movie you’ve seen a million times.  But once you come back, it plays in black and white, and no matter how familiar all the lines are, something feels distant.  Last week, I couldn’t care less if I didn’t come back for years.

A lot changed from last summer to this.    This summer I said good-bye to a lot of friendships, many as old as elementary school.  To be honest, I couldn’t tell you what went wrong.  The thing is when move away, you hope it’s the memories of the times you spent together that will keep you close.  However, the experiences you have when you are apart inevitably cause you to change, and some friendships just can’t bare that weight.  A year ago, I thought those friendships would last forever, and, now, they have come to an end.

In the few days before I left, it finally hit me, I was home all along this summer.  Suddenly, I was met the same feelings I possessed before moving to Hopkins one year ago; a stomach full of fear, sadness, and anxiety.  Saying goodbyes are always hard.  Last year, I knew that I would be home in a matter of months, but this time that certainty isn’t present.  I bought a one-way, without the slightest notion of when I would come back.

Upon my arrival to the Chicago Midway airport, I discover that the seating at the gate for my flight to Baltimore was full, so I wandered to find a gate with some open seats.  I found an open chair, and thinking nothing of it sat down and relieved my back of the excruciating pain my carry-ons were producing.  Then I glanced up, and the sign above the gate read Minneapolis, Departs 11:50 AM.  Then I thought if I had a blank ticket to go anywhere in the world, where would I go?  There I was in the Midway airport, almost exactly mid-way between Minneapolis and Baltimore.  Would I turn back and return to a place where the faces, places, and feelings are familiar?  Or would I carry on to a place that I love, but at the same times elicits all these feelings of fear, giddiness, and anxiety?

But then I thought, I felt the exact same way last year.  There were moments in the early part of my freshmen year that I would have given anything to go home.  Of course there are moments of apprehension, and loneliness, anxiety, and nausea.  Things always get better.  So I finished my lunch at the Minneapolis gate, then wandered back to the gate to Baltimore, knowing that I couldn’t give up Hopkins, no matter how much I would miss Minnesota.

After to returning to Hopkins, I was filled with excitement, butterflies, and an unexpected and unwarranted surge of energy.  It felt good to be back.  But after my first night in my room, I woke up startled early in the morning.  Something was missing.  I glanced to the foot of my bed, to realize that my twenty-pound, oaf, and blob of cat, Pantaloons, was missing.  There are always things and people you have to leave behind, and that’s the hardest part.  But you have to learn to find the things that make this new place home.

The summer after freshman year. It’s a transition period. It’s a chance to have a fun summer job or a chance to try and prove ourselves in the adult world. It’s a chance to reconnect with old friends after a year filled with changes. It’s a summer of memories and fun. The past fourteen weeks (and two days -- totally one hundred days!) have been a wonderful experience for me…here are the highlights, in no particular order.

1. Mudfight/mudsliding – Many of you have probably read in novels or seen in movies about people having mudfights but never thought they actually happen. That was pretty much my thought at the beginning of the summer. Whatever appeal they may have had as a four year old mud pie connosieur was certainly practically all lost by the time I was eighteen – I liked to think of myself as having slightly more refined taste. It wasn’t really supposed to become a mudfight either. What began as two friends playing in the sprinklers and trying to persuade JHU_Keith that we could slide down the beach on cardboard boxes turned into a full-on mudfight complete with over half the RAs and about fifty residents on the freshman quad, complete with rain and sprinklers. At some point, it turned into sliding down the minor incline on the quad, and it ended up with us covered in mud and grass running around the beach and on top of the Hopkins sign. It was amazing -- I’d have never expected myself to do that, or to have fifty others convinced it was fun, either, but it was one of my best experiences at Hopkins!

2. Exploring Baltimore more – Before I came to Hopkins, I’d heard a lot about what Baltimore had to offer, and I was excited to take advantage of that. I don’t think I did very well with that during the school year. I did get out and explore some, but I found that I was often just doing things on campus. This summer, I really explored Baltimore more, thanks in part to the Inner Harbor and Beyond Scavenger Hunt with PreCollege, as well as just exploring with friends and by myself. Baltimore’s got some great neighborhoods, and I’m eager to explore more during the year.

3. Polo games/Connecticut Mondays – For one of our programs with Pre-College, we went to a polo game in Monkton, Maryland. We dressed to impress, learned all about polo, and had a blast. We decided we couldn’t go every weekend, but we wanted to keep that same enthusiasm alive, and so for part of Spirit Week we started Country Club/Connecticut Mondays. Here’s a picture from one of the first Mondays!

Some of us dressed to impress...

4. Music video – What can I say? I don’t think most people had a summer job quite this awesome. As the JHU homepage put it, we turned Homewood “Upside Down!”

5. New York adventure – Something I love about the east coast is how easy it is to travel between places. In June, I had a weekend-and-then-some adventure to the New York area, staying with friends in the city, Long Island, and Connecticut. It was my first time being in Connecticut when I wasn’t on a Bolt Bus, and my first real chance to explore the City and Long Island. It was great to see friends I hadn’t seen since school ended, as well as go to the beach, see the sights in New York, and learn what a forest really was!

6. Summer jobs – I had two jobs this summer. I was working in the Admissions Office as a tour guide and a general student worker (with JHU_Brian and JHU_Mandy!), and as an RA for the JHU Pre-College program. Both were good learning experiences, and I’ve gained quite a few skills, from all the interesting facts about this school to creative impromptu programming to walking backwards to keeping track of forty kids at an Orioles game!

7. Summer class – As one of my earlier posts this summer detailed, I had an absolutely fabulous summer class (Applied Forensic Psychology). It was the sort of class I imagined when first thinking of college – subject matter that really interested me, reading in an amount that covered the topic but wasn’t overwhelming, classmates who cared about the topic, lots of classroom discussion, and an engaging professor. Sounds cliché, but it was what I dreamed of, and this class fit all of that.

8. Appreciating California – As my parents (and most people who’ve spent any amount of time with me) can attest to, I love living on the east coast, and often speak pretty negatively of Los Angeles as a result. Still, on my last two visits to LA I’ve been trying to look at the place much more positively (not just because I don’t have to live in it anymore – which would be my normal cynical attitude – but because I’ve been finding much more about it to appreciate this year. Here’s a snapshot of why California should be appreciated.

Beautiful California...

9. All the meals in the FFC  - This post isn’t a shout-out to the food in the FFC. It’s a shout-out to all the hours I spent there this summer (usually somewhere between 3-5 hours a day). I’m not sure how we managed to spend so long there, or how we avoided the Summer 15, but every meal seemed to turn into one big conversation, and we knew that there were always other RAs in the FFC to go eat with!

10. All the new friends – At the beginning of the summer, I could probably count on both hands the number of people I knew who were in Baltimore for this summer. I made an amazing group of friends this summer – people who I’ll be friends with for a long, long time even though I only met them weeks ago. It’s true during the normal school year as well as the summer, but college brings people together. And that’s why I love it so much!

Summer nights in Fell's Point

Oh hello there! I’m currently writing from my actual real live home. I feel like Dorothy with her Toto and all wrapped up with a little Kansas loving. I’ve been away in D.C. for most of the summer getting my intern on, so since coming home I’ve been sitting in either a beach chair or lounging on my sofa.

And here I am at home, spending my wholesome Sunday evening the all American way — with muh teevee. I got through most of my usual TV lineup – “Sixty Minutes” (while muting the insufferable Andy Rooney part); some “Law and Order” episode that my dad figured out waaaaay before I did; and finally I got to the coup de grace: “Mad Men.”

Now nothing gets between me and my television. Or so I thought! You see, despite criticism and absolute disdain- I have stood by the often distasteful “Real Housewives” franchise, sat through entire marathons of “I love New York” on VH1, I even bought into that whole “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant” nonsense for a few episodes. So in a quick summary: I LOVE TRASH TV. Lack of propriety? Questionable morals? You know I’m watching. I am more loyal than a politician’s wife during a sex scandal (cough Jim McGreevey).

But along came “Mad Men.” I know the Emmy award winning show isn’t exactly on par with “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” but this evening, when I started watching a perennial favorite …. I just couldn’t do it. WHY? That’s what I was asking myself! I mean, come on, we have some Don Draper, we have some fabulous get-ups, we have POCKET SQUARES. But I just couldn’t do it. Every time I heard Betty get dismissed, or Peggy get shot down, or Joan skeeved on – I started to get upset. Because all of this nonsense really did happen, be it to my mother or her mother or even her mother.

This summer I interned at a renowned feminist organization, and it really changed things for me. I’d always identified as a feminist, but I became like exponentially more dedicated through this experience. It’s been one of those experiences, where I hadn’t realized that I had changed until I was placed back in my old surroundings.

I remember the exact moment where I decided that the ongoing feminist movement was something I was going to commit to. I was sitting in a lunch with Ellen Malcolm, who founded EMILY’s List (where I interned). As everyone was doing introductions, she suddenly cut one girl off and made her stop. The girl who she had interrupted obviously looked petrified and I am pretty sure I made a Scooby Doo inspired “HUHHHHHHH?” noise.

Ms. Malcolm then said something I will never forget: “Say your full name. Women so often just say their first name- like they shouldn’t be taken seriously. Say your full name.”

Oh man was I intimidated! I was all: “I always say my full name. I’m a baller.” Then I started giving it some thought…. I thought about all the times I introduced myself in that annoyingly high tone, “I’m TY-LER.” Oh, yuck.

And sometime between that point and right now, I’ve changed. And believe me, Imma jump aboard that Obama train like the groupie I am. So of course, I’m excited/nervous to see how my new, ULTRA PC personality meshes back at Hopkins. But I’m going to stand by that. Because I can.

YOURS FOREVER AND ALWAYS LOVES OF MY LIFE THE REASONS THAT I BREATHE,

Tyler D.

(I know that it would have been more dramatic if I had signed with my full name … but I don’t think I’m supposed to use it here. IRONY!).

In case you were wondering, the title of this blog has been borrowed from a catchy Hairspray ballad. I’m currently sitting on the balcony of my room at the Colonnade, sipping a One World cappuccino, and trying to think of clever ways to entertain you, my dear reader, with this blog. You could say that I’m channeling my inner F. Scott Fitzgerald. My dad and I just landed in Baltimore from Dallas and as much as I am attempting to conceal my less-than-24-hours-before-move-in zeal, I am utterly and completely failing. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’ll be running around reeking havoc in Baltimore city. Look out, Charles Commons: here comes Becca K. with her 537 suitcases, 915 UPS boxes, one jam-packed rental car, and one exasperated father. Just kidding about that last one, Dad. Not only will I be adjusting to an apartment-style living arrangement as of tomorrow, but I will also be reuniting with most of my friends that I haven’t seen in what feels like forever! On top of all of that, I am preparing to be a Peer Ambassador (or Orientation Advisor) for a group of incoming freshman this coming week. Shout out to Joe N., who has been in Baltimore all summer working tirelessly to make Orientation a success…we are so thrilled to have all of you on campus soon, Class of ’14! Basically, there is a lot going on around the Hop and I can’t wait until it’s bustling with people tomorrow. There are no words to describe my excitement levels right now!!!!

Becca's suitcases invade hotel room

As much as I have enjoyed being back in Dallas for the summer, I was definitely ready to come back here—it almost felt like home driving in from the airport today! My summer has been so different from what my life was like as a Hopkins freshman. There are of course the obvious differences: no classes, no longer living in Baltimore, and lucky for me, no late night runs to Uni Mini to get a 1,500 calorie sub. Oops. But even weirder was being surrounded by different people, having family around most of the time, spending time with high school friends (who have all had very different college experiences), having more downtime, the whole concept of being bored…etc. etc. I also had a retail job this summer and worked most days during the week, which gave me a little taste (however small) of the real world. It felt weird driving to work each morning alone instead of walking to class with friends, as I was accustomed to last year. In Dallas, I worked with people who were quite older than me, and consequently, my friendships with them were different. I did have a retail job in high school, but it was only once a week (just on Saturdays), and most of my friends would come in and visit every weekend since it was near our houses, which made it feel a little more like school. School, I’ve decided, is what I’m most passionate about right now—specifically, Hopkins! While working this summer did provide me with some useful real-world experience, I’m so thrilled to be back on campus and to be preparing to start a whole new year—new classes, new dorm, new people on campus…new outlook on life!

I’ll be keeping y’all updated on how move-in and Orientation Week goes. We’re headed out to dinner now…until next time…thanks for reading! -BK

After reading Jessica’s entry about building a pile, I’m realizing that I have the opposite problem.  My “back to school pile” is actually a big mess of stuff that was crammed into my desk drawers last year, and I have to go through it all sometime in the next week.  Yayyyyy

And next to the big pile of stuff is this GIANT box of textbooks.  Because I’m doing research in a lab for credit this semester, I only have three classes – how could I possibly need so many textbooks!?

big box of textbooks.

Once the textbooks came in the mail, it really hit me that summer was almost over.  As I wrote about in a blog entry last month, I spent most of the summer volunteering at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  I would highly recommend hospital volunteering to anyone who is thinking about entering a medical profession.  I thought I knew what hospitals were like because I’ve stayed in one as a patient and because my dad works there, but being a patient or visiting a parent at work are totally not the same as actually observing the team of nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, secretaries, supply managers, and everyone that contributes to the successful operation of a floor unit or an intensive care unit.  I had my doubts at the start of this experience whether it would actually help me decide if I wanted to be a doctor, but it was actually very worthwhile.

On top of the volunteering, I tried to take advantage of what could be my last summer at home by learning how to cook, and I think I made a lot of progress.  I’m still no Emeril, but at least now I’m reasonably self-sufficient and can make my own meals.  I also learned how to flip an omelet without a spatula and without splattering egg all over the stove.  I’m sure my suitemate will be impressed.

last year's textbooks neatly put away on the shelf

I’m a little in shock that the summer is almost over but could not be more excited to head back to Hopkins!  There’s so much to look forward to this year.  I’m living with my best friend in a suite in Charles Commons, and since she moved in last week for soccer preseason, she gave me a Skype tour of the suite yesterday.  It looks pretty spacious!  I’m also very excited to start researching in the Spradling Lab at the Carnegie Institution.  Being at the lab for several hours every week is going to be a big change and a big commitment, but it’s a great opportunity and one of the reasons that I chose to come to Hopkins in the first place.

On top of all that I’m so excited to join a few more student groups and to meet the new freshmen!!   It’s weird to think that at this time next week, we’ll be seeing the class of 2014 all over campus!

“A good roommate is like a good pair of jeans. You hold on to them.” -Lauren Conrad

Greetings, blogosphere! Hope you enjoyed the deep epigraph from none other than LC of The Hills. What do you do when it’s the summer after your freshman year, you’re bored, not cool enough to have a glamorous job, fed up with hanging out with your mom and dad, briefed on every poorly written ABC Family sitcom out there, and unfortunately just can’t go back to Hopkins just yet? Easy! Bring Hopkins to your doorstep! That’s precisely what I did this past weekend—I was lucky enough to have my roommate Kimber from New Orleans fly down to Dallas to come visit me and another friend from Hopkins who also lives in the Dallas area. We met up with yet another Hopkins student (and fellow Royce resident), basically adding up to one big happy Hopkins hoedown in Texas (OK, not quite. I honestly speaking don’t even know what a hoedown is, but it sounded so quintessentially Texan I couldn’t resist).

Chloe and Kimber

Don't mess with Texas

Mini Hopkins reunion in Dallas, Texas

It was SO MUCH FUN getting to hang with my roommate and other Hopkins friends and reminisce on old times (err, “old times” were only two months ago but it feels like a lot longer). I took her to some of my favorite places in Dallas—predominantly shopping and eating—that’s pretty much all we have to offer here in good ol’ Tex—but we still had a blast. She had the opportunity to meet some of my friends from home, which was neat. When someone visits you at home, I feel like they get a better sense of who you are as a person. Kimber and I have grown close after having spent a whole school year in the same room, but her visiting me at home was a much more personal experience. In a dorm setting, it’s all about starting from scratch and creating an environment that feels like home, but it never quite comes close to the actual thing. We were also able to catch up on every aspect of our lives, even if it didn’t have any relevance to Hopkins. Plus, we weren’t busy with the daily distractions that college often presents (hence the multiple shopping sprees). Having Kimber here in Dallas to hang out with Chloe and I created a little preview for what the coming month will be like back at the Hop. It also made me realize how much I appreciate the friends I’ve made at college this past year! It was kind of different socializing with my college and high school friends together, but it taught me a lot about how I’ve grown as a person over the last year. As Chloe remarked, it really does feel like I have known my college friends for much longer than a year—literally living alongside someone, going through the ups and downs of your first year on your own in college, embarking on a completely new journey and entering an entirely new chapter in your life side by side. My best estimate is that 60% of my blogs mention Kimber. We’re kind of a package deal (“Kimbecca”), especially if you consider that I will be rooming with her again next year in Charles Commons. Basically, in order to understand me as a person, it is imperative that you know a little bit about my roommate. So here goes!

1)   Her real name is Kimberly but call her Kimber (as the man at an Austin, Texas bakery so cleverly stated, it rhymes with Timber).

2)   She is from New Orleans, Louisiana.

3)   She easily gets the prize for most devoted Hopkins Saints fan. Geaux Saints!

4)   Like me, she attended an all-girls school, but in New Orleans.

5)   One of her favorite clothing stores is J. CREW…when she receives her J. CREW catalogue in the mail, it might as well be Christmas Day.

6)   Kimber is SUCH a fashionista!

7)   So this seems like a complete contradiction to the last statement, haha, but she is a Mechanical Engineering major.

8)   She was born in Dallas, Texas. Yeeeeeehawwwwww!

9)   She recently got back from a trip to Honduras, where she SCUBA dived! Her pictures taken from her underwater camera are amazing.

10) She was an artistic genius at the age of 3. Just kidding. She did paint amazing scribbles with a gigantic tin of red paint though. (Photographic proof at her house in NOLA).

11) She likes Andrew Bird, The Beatles, Matt and Kim, etc. but has recently taken a liking to the Rap and Country music genres. If there was one word that could sum up her music tastes, that word would be “fratmusic.com”…LOL.

12) She’s a fan of Banksy, the anonymous graffiti artist.

13) She has two brothers, two dogs, cats, a miniature horse, and two pet chickens. Naturally.

14) She likes candlelight dinners, long walks on the beach, etc. etc.

15) She and I will be Orientation Ambassadors in a few weeks! Look out for us when you’re moving in, Class of 2014!

For all of you Class of 2014 readers, I know you are close to (or probably have already received) your rooming assignments—it ultimately doesn’t matter whether you’re friends with your roommate or not, as long as you create a favorable rooming situation for yourself (respect for each other’s space and belongings is key to not having a roomhate). In either case, I can assure you that you will learn a lot about your roommate over the course of your first year! Thanks for reading! -BK

I promised myself I would start this entry before the first of August.  Sadly, it’s 2:30 am on the first of August.  Oh well, my intentions were honest.  Why awake at 2:30 am?  Well, my lovely job in retail has these exciting events called floorsets.  It’s one of those retail jargons that you don’t really understand until you work it.  Basically, all of the stuff in the store gets moved around, and new stuff gets put out, etc, etc.  Really it just means a lot of folding for me.  They usually occur after the store closes, which usually means from 9pm to some odd hour in the morning.  The last floorset ran until 6 am for two consecutive nights, which was followed by an Organic Chemistry exam the next morning at 8 am.  You can’t really say you’ve pulled a double all-nighter until you’ve spent it sweating in a non-air-conditioned clothing store doing heavy lifting and running around for nine hours.  Studying did not really happen.  Oh well.

Speaking of chemistry, my final is this Thursday morning.  A part of me really doesn’t want to study.  I have an A in the class, and since I am transferring the credit the grade actually doesn’t follow.  So, in reality, I could pretty much fail or not even take the final, still pass and get the credit.  It is as if nature has offered me a test to decided if I really am a self-slaughtering masochist.  I feel like I would be more upset if I kept my A, and it didn’t follow versus if I got a B or C and it didn’t follow.  However, I am also really considering taking Organic 2 at Hopkins second semester, even though I am not premed, and it is not required by my major.  I am really enjoying the class, and I think I am actually pretty good at it.  It’s so crazy how nature made all of these god-awful crazy rules for how things are going to work.  So much to remember!  But it is completely and utterly ingenious, and more importantly kind of beautiful.  I guess I am lucky to have a pretty good memory, sometimes I wonder if it is semi-photographic.  Is there a test I can take for this?  Either way, I am not going to give my memory all the credit because I did read that textbook, all 600 pages of it.  Other than that, I haven’t put tons of effort into it.  It’s summer after all!  In fact, I haven’t cracked my book open since the last exam!!!  I am dreading it so much, since it seems I have wasted so much sleep to wake up every morning for class.  As much as I enjoy it, I will be happy when it is over.

Organic has really has me considering if I have chosen the right major.  I do love ChemBE.  The faculty is great, and there is a lot of opportunity within the department.  However, ChemBE seems less about chemistry and more about applications and production of different chemicals.  When I compare a class like Process Analysis to Organic, Organic takes the cake hands down.  Currently, we are learning about NMR, IR, and Mass Spectroscopy (which I don’t believe is covered in Hopkins’ Organic), and I love it.  I know there even exists a whole course is Spectroscopy, and I really want to take it. It’s subjects like Quantum Chemistry and Organic Lab have me really considering changing my major to Chemistry.  I think coming into Hopkins I thought ChemBE would be more chemistry based than it actually is.  The only pure chemistry courses that are required are general chemistry, O-Chem 1, Physical Chemistry (the one semester version taught in the engineering department), and a chemistry elective.  It just goes to show sometimes you know what you want when you step foot on campus, but so much can change in only a semester.

In the end, I think the engineering degree may open more doors and lead to more job opportunities.  I hate saying that because I hate students who choose engineering for the money or the prospects of a shoe-in job.  I also must admit that I don’t want people to think I dropped ChemBE because I couldn’t handle the heat.  I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, but I want people to know if it’s hot in the kitchen I’ll go as far as to put my hand on the stovetop.  I also know that my mom would prefer if I stayed an engineering major.  I’ve worked so hard within my major, from my involvement with the Chemical Engineering Car Team, to my involvement with the mentorship program and AICHE, where I was elected as sophomore representative.  In the end I have to stop thinking about what others think and want and really try to discover what I want.  I wish a magic genie could just appear and tell me what the right choice is, but I know that will never happen.

A funny thing happened a couple weeks ago.  I was browsing through my bookshelf looking for something interesting to read, when I ran across some old textbooks I brought home after my grandma died, which included a Schaum’s Outline of Differential Equations.  As I was browsing through the archaic study guide, a small folded piece of paper fell out.  On the back was some scratch work from a problem (most likely from the book.)  When I opened the paper, I ran across a page from a lab report titled Lindlar’s Catalyst, which included detailed instructions on how to synthesize this special catalyst that is used to hydrogenate alkynes to alkenes with cis-isomerism.  At the top of page was the date December 16, 1966.  The lavender-blue ink indicated that the page was printed from a mimeograph, a hand-cranked printer that dated before the late 1960’s.  It was like finding a hidden treasure, a piece of Watkins history.  The careful scripted math on the back was signature of my dad, and the date indicated that the page dated back to his time spent at Caltech.

My dad is a pure genius, and I am extremely critically of other’s intellect.  He is on my list of the most intelligent human beings I have ever met, which is very short.  As a high school student, he handcrafted a particle accelerator in the height of the atomic age including an ultra-high vacuum created from refrigerator heat pumps.  He even built a hovercraft.  In college he was first a chemistry major, then he switched to physics.  However, his senior year he dropped out to pursue an invention, which we now know as modern microwave popcorn, with his brother, under the brand name Act II.  Now he is a small business owner, who makes outdoor lighting fixtures.  It wasn’t until a phone conversation that occurred last semester that I learned that he might have truly regretted leaving the university scene.  As a gifted machinist and physicist, he said the times he spent in the physics labs where some of the best in his life.  Looking back now, he wishes that he had continued to study physics, even at the graduate level, and someday have his own lab.

He used to tell me I would never be as smart as him, which is probably true.  But it’s moments like after one of my organic midterms when I can show him a paper with a big red 95 on the front, that I can see him smile with a gap between his two front teeth large enough to drive a bus through.  These moments makes it all worth it, even if the grade doesn’t follow.  Maybe it’s true, and I will never be as smart as him, nor can I understand what kinds of crazy ideas pass through his mind when he stares into space with his gap-toothed smile.  Then again, maybe I am inching closer to something.  Maybe I was put here on this earth to finish something he never could.  It’s seems illogical and maybe a bit superstitious, but that paper may have fallen out for a reason.  Who knows why I felt such a sentimental connection to a piece of 44-year old paper, but all I do know is that my biggest fear is realize at 64-years old, that I have made a lifelong mistake.

So for now I am going to stay and engineer.  It’s so hard to make a decision after only two semesters; however, if I need to change it should be something I should anticipate sooner rather than later.

With just under 4 weeks left until Orientation Week, most of my work is starting to wrap up. Most of my main responsibilities as part of the Orientation Executive Staff involved redesigning the Orientation website, managing the online registration program, Peer Ambassador Training and the subsequent matching of PA’s with incoming students, and finalizing the schedule. Since the website was basically finished in the middle of June I’ve been focusing on the last few things over the past few months. Today was an exciting day as we’re closing registration in just a few hours, and not only have we seen a huge jump in the amount of the incoming class that’s registered, but we’ve seen a big jump in the amount of incoming students who have registered for the Hopkins Passport.

When I joined the Orientation Staff my goal was to get as much of the incoming class as possible to register for Orientation. We’ve made it mandatory for all of the incoming class to register, and as such my goal was to get the highest yield possible. Last year only about 75% of the incoming class registered for Orientation, and my goal was to get around 95% to register. As of early last week we had about 75% of the class registered, so we decided to send out a mass email to the incoming class and their parents to push for more registrations, and to encourage people who have already registered to purchase the Hopkins Passport. The results of this marketing push were far more than what we expected. As of right now with just about 5 hours left for registration 1215 of the 1237 members of the incoming class have registered meaning that right now 98% of the class has completed this process. Furthermore about 950 members of the class have chosen to purchase the Hopkins Passport, meaning that 78% of those who have registered have chosen to purchase the Hopkins Passport. This is a full 8% above our original goal of 70%.

In the world of JHU Orientation, statistics are everything to the offices which oversee our activities, and I’m 100% sure that they’re going to be extremely impressed when we present the results at our next staff meeting. Last year only 40% of the class purchased the O-Pass, and as previously mentioned only 75% registered in the end. This year we’ve more than doubled our revenue, and we’ve saved with a lot of the other events that we’ve been planning and we’re very excited to see what the participation in each of the events is.

As of right now we’re about halfway done with matching the incoming class with Peer Ambassadors. This year instead of simply matching them by major we’re matching them by personality similarities (this year the incoming class was asked to complete a personality profile after they finished their registration). We’re planning on having all of the matching done by this Monday, meaning that by the time the next JBlast goes out in the middle of next week the incoming class will be able to look up their PA’s online. The only thing really left on my plate is the Orientation Schedule, which is supposed to be done by the middle of next week as well. The best part about finishing the schedule is that once it’s finished mid-next week all of my responsibilities leading up to Orientation Week are complete and I can sit back and relax until early move-in occurs on August 22nd.

Over the course of this summer I’ve done much more work than I could have imagined. From web design to managing logistical data regarding our events and registration it all caused me LOTS of stress, but I think in the end it will all be worth it. The goal of the Orientation program is to help new students to adjust to the environment they’ll be in for the next 4 years of their life. We’ve worked lots more hours this year than we would have liked but in the end we succeeded in our overall goal(s): to have an amazing Orientation program that all of the incoming freshman will remember for most of their lives, and to outperform last year’s program. I actually can’t believe that it’s already the end of July and that we’re closing registration today. When I was in the Office of the Dean of Student Life this morning and they were talking about how happy they were that registration ends this evening my jaw dropped. What’s great though is that the greatest part of the program (and possibly the hardest part) is still yet to come, Orientation week! I’m really looking forward to all the events that we have planned for Orientation week, and I’m even more excited to meet the members of the incoming class.

I’ll finish off this post with a couple of AMAZING pictures that my friend took when he visited me. Originally about 4 of my friends were supposed to come visit me because I’ve basically been in Baltimore all summer, but in the end 3 of them had to back out for family or work reasons. In the end my friend John came anyways even though he had to make the 2.5 hour drive down alone, but it ended up working in our favor because we got to do the things that we wanted to do without having to worry about whether or not our other friends would enjoy it. Anyways, here’s a few of the 150 or so pictures that he took when he came and visited me. Thanks for reading, and see you in 2 weeks!

Here's a nice picture of the lower quad that my friend took right around sunset.

Here's an amazing picture of the entrance to Mason Hall and the Johns Hopkins signature in the background near the front desk.

Here's an apprentice-style picture of me in the Alumni Boardroom in Mason Hall. This is the conference room where the board of trustees have some of their meetings and in my opinion its one of the nicest rooms int he building.

Here's a picture of the Mason Hall entrance on the Decker Quad at sunset. My friend used a polarizing lens so the windows ended up turning purple. It actually makes the windows look even cooler than they normally do.

At this time last year, I was in your shoes.  I was an indescribable mix of emotions: nervous to move to an unfamiliar place, anxious to be more independent, sad to leave so many old friends, and excited to meet new ones.  At the same time, I was busy ordering textbooks, shopping for dorm supplies, searching the Class of 2013 Facebook group discussion threads for answers to my seemingly endless questions, and, most importantly, working part-time at a soft pretzel factory.

When I used to tell people that I worked at a pretzel factory, I usually got a reaction like, “Wow, twisting pretzels would get really old after a day or two!  You must be so sick of it!”  Truthfully, they couldn’t have been more wrong.  This job was perfect for anyone like myself with a really short attention span.  Just as I got bored of twisting pretzels, I’d fill the mustard cans.  When I got sick of that, I could stock the sodas, put together the party trays, assemble the boxes, answer the phone, sweep the floor, dip the cinnamon pretzels, stamp the frequent buyer cards, manage the cash register, and salt the pretzels once they came out of the oven.    Twisting pretzel dough all day would have been incredibly monotonous and boring.  For my own sanity, I needed all this variety in my job description.

The best part was that my boss didn’t seem to mind at all that I switched frantically from job to job.  In fact, I think she appreciated variety just as much as I did since she was constantly coming up with new promotions (my favorite being her idea to pay a middle school kid to dress up like a giant pretzel and wave at the cars passing by).  As part of these promotions, she always liked to switch up our pretzel varieties.  One week she would tell us to make dozens of pretzel dogs, the next week we’d be making pretzel sausages instead, and the following week, cinnamon pretzels would fill the glass case.  Running a factory dominated by regular salted pretzels was clearly not an option.

That being said, one day while I was helping a customer at the cash register, my boss came through the door pushing a giant freezer.  I helped her get the enormous freezer into the corner of the store and realized that inside were ten huge tubs of water ice (or Italian ice as they call it in Baltimore).  Since her store was part of a pretzel franchise she technically wasn’t allowed to sell water ice, but to avoid getting caught, she instructed us to quickly push the freezer into the back of the store if we saw any franchise representatives about to enter.  Just for practice, we even did a few “hide the water ice” drills.

The water ice was a huge hit!  The factory became significantly busier in the following weeks, and this water ice became my boss’s new pride and joy.  She raved about it all the time and seemed to like the mango flavor about as much as the pretzels themselves!  The only drawback to the water ice idea was that once a week when the franchise representative came around, all of us would scramble to get the giant freezer in the back of the store and smoothly answer the rep’s questions about why little kids were exiting the store with purple faces.  (Why did they always have to get the grape!!?)

Unfortunately, a rep came in one day and found the water ice after we failed to hide the freezer fast enough.  Our boss’s mood was much more solemn during the week that followed.  She clearly missed raving about the flavor varieties, seeing kids run around with sticky fingers, and occasionally snacking on mango ice around lunchtime.  Even though we still sold all of our pretzel varieties, the lack of water ice made the pretzel factory an entirely different place.

This (finally) brings me to my point and to the reason that I decided to come to Hopkins in the first place.  At Hopkins, there’s no need to hide your water ice, and there’s no one to tell you that you can only sell pretzels.  You can diversify your college years as much as you want!  Every one of you 2014ers should strive to make your Hopkins experience about taking a variety of classes, becoming involved in a variety of activities, and putting yourself in a variety of new social circles.  The more diversified your Hopkins experience is, the better it will be.  Here’s why:

1) You many love your intended area of study as much as my boss loved pretzels, but whether you’re attending Johns Hopkins or running a pretzel business, you’re eventually going to want some variety to keep it exciting.  Math major?  Try reading to kids at a local elementary school to mix things up!  Cognitive science major?  Try taking Italian!  Take advantage of the options available to you.  Let’s face it, nobody wants to have just pretzels for four whole years.

2) There’s nothing like having 123890813 humungous pretzel orders to fill at once to make you never want to see a pretzel again.  After standing next to the burning hot oven for hours upon hours working to finally get all of those trays and boxes filled, water ice is the perfect remedy.  It’s enjoyable, much less labor, and completely different in every aspect from a pretzel.  The same scenario applies to pursuing any major at Hopkins.  There will be times when you’ll get frustrated with your major and never want to do another integral, read about another important figure of history, or write another word.  In times like these, you’ll be happy you took a completely different class or joined a student group just for enjoyment.  You’re going to need some kind of water ice to pull you through.

3) Customers love water ice!  Having water ice is going to make your business more successful.  Think about how many pretzel places there are in the world.  Now think about how many of those pretzel places also serve water ice.  See?  The same thing will apply to you in the next four years.  There are tons of political science majors out there, but at Hopkins, you have the power and flexibility to be a political science/biophysics double major, pre-law student, admissions volunteer (hint hint), athlete, campus emergency responder, and member of the Art League all at the same time.  How many people in the world can say that?  You truly have a lot of opportunities ahead of you, so keep in mind that it’s good to be unique!

4) There are other flavors of water ice out there that you haven’t had yet, and who knows, you might end up finding a new favorite flavor.  Do you think my boss, one of the world’s biggest pretzel fans, ever thought she would love mango water ice so much?  Of course not!  If there is one thing to take away from this story, it’s that if you never try anything new, you’re not going to figure out what your true passions are.  You won’t get to attend Hopkins forever, so if there is any ideal time to discover your true interests, it’s now!

So, class of 2014, I leave you with these parting words of advice: attending Hopkins is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and in order to get the most out of it, you need to explore both academic and extracurricular areas that are outside of your comfort zone.  I’m telling you this as I’m sitting here with my brand new, bright purple book of Spanish plays for next semester wondering what in the world I was thinking registering for a theater course as a biology major. Aside from participating in a Shakespeare coloring contest back in eighth grade English, I have pretty much zero experience reading plays, so this course has a lot of potential to go horribly wrong.  However, I have to keep reminding myself that this is exactly what the Hopkins experience is about.  By next semester, I might be going around campus quoting Cervantes and Lope de Vega, or I might decide to never read another act or sonnet ever again.  Either way, for the next four months, theater will be my water ice.  What will yours be?

So it’s 11:30 pm on a Friday night.  What am I up to?  Whilst the rest of the adolescent population of Minneapolis maybe at concerts or parties, or other eventful festivities, I am at home, sitting at my kitchen table and reheating my mother’s most recent cooking concoction.  After the first couple bites, it seems to contain a good amount of olives and potentially capers.

So a lot has happened the last couple of weeks.  First was a four-day camping trip up north for the Fourth of July.  Up north is basically Canada, which is a country I have never actually visited but I have been very physically close to.  After a weekend of tent flooding, ten thousand mosquito bites, and not showering, I was very excited to return to the city.

A view from the balcony of the Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis. It overlooks St. Anthony Main, a historic milling district of North Minneapolis.

The following weekend a friend and I took a four-day weekend trip to Chicago, which was awesome.  She had some friends spending the summer in the City, so it was a great opportunity to spend time there.  Man oh man! Chicago puts Minneapolis to shame.

The weekend after that, I figured it was time to put the long road trips to a rest.  I don’t know how much more my circulatory system could take.  That weekend we spent in the city, where we celebrated the Aquatenniel festival and my birthday.  It was pretty low key, but, overall, enjoyable.

The past week was a bit rough.  It began with a mad dash to memorize as much organic chemistry and ended with a slightly painful exam.  The best way to describe summer organic chemistry is speed chemistry.  It’s like a giant race to see who can smash the most reaction mechanisms in their brain within a week.  The insanity ensues for two more weeks, but after that I am home free for the rest of summer.

Tomorrow nearly concludes weekends in July.  My dad and I are heading to St. Paul for the Red Bull Flutag.  Unsure of exactly what it is, but to my understanding, it’s where people make home-made flying machines and attempt to fly them off of cliff.  Sounds entertaining and ripe for some awesome people watching.  Since my dad is the president of his model airplane club and a seasoned hang-glider, I am sure he will enjoy it thoroughly.  I am hoping for some free Red Bull.  I am going to need it for this chemistry final.

12:21 AM now.  So the week has officially ended.  Although it was filled with a decent amount of pain and sweat, I am foreseeing the rest of this month ending well.  Tonight a friend and I watched Juno, which is an awesome movie and even takes place in Minnesota.  Yeah, for reals!  It even mentions Ridgedale Mall, which just happens to be the place of my employment!

Another view from the Guthrie. This one is a snip-it of the downtown skyline.

So I think I will retire to my bed soon.  But not without more food!  Now that my bowl of pasta concoction remains nearly empty (save some capers and red peppers), I think course two will consist of some nearly week-old birthday cake, even though my stomach is feeling a bit queasy from the Swedish Fish earlier.  Nothing quite heals an ailing soul like birthday cake.