Caught in Between

So I’ve disappeared for the last few weeks, and I’m sorry to be MIA! I’ve had a super busy end of October/early November, and I’ll try to re-cap it all in a few blogs.

So last I posted it was right before Halloween, and I was super excited to dress up. Naturally none of those costume choices worked out and I ended up dressing as a Harajuku kid from Tokyo, which was probably the best costume idea I’ve ever come across, as it enabled me to wear a ton of goofy clothes, thus being warm enough for the slightly chilly night, and I also looked insane.

My roommates dressed up as a frog and a geisha, and we encountered included several vampires, Hello Kitty, ladybugs, 80s work out gear, etc. It seems everyone at Hopkins was down in Fells Point, as well, which was really fun. Interesting skill I learned? I now know how to do traditional geisha hair, courtesy of a 10 minute long Youtube video. So useful.

A harajuku kid, a frog, a geisha, a soldier, and then a Telletubby, below.

Post-Halloween continued with more celebrations, as my sorority (Phi Mu) had its annual Halloween date party, which was actually after Halloween as our pledge class had midterms galore the week of the 31st. It was great to continue the absurd costume fun, though. My roommate’s mom is really involved with the theatre department at her high school, and she’s in charge of all the costumes. So we all headed back to her house that weekend, made millions of shortbread cookies, grocery shopped, and tried on 4,000 dresses. We decided as a group to go in crazy ’80s dresses, which was an excellent call, as we found more sequined, shoulder pad-ed creations than I even knew existed.

My roommate, Laura and I, at formal, and

spelling O-H-I-O…a lot of my friends are from the Midwest.

After the fun of formals and Halloween and whatnot, things did settle back into a routine at school. October has been pretty busy with work, and somehow I chose a truly appalling schedule where I had midterms every week from September until this past Friday. Kind of unreal, but it did give me a crash course in time management. I’ve taken on a lot more on-campus activities this year, so it’s been a challenge to keep up to date with SAAB responsibilities, homework, work work, tutoring, studying, Phi Mu stuff, community service, and whatnot. I definitely wouldn’t give up any of these things, and I’m really interested in my classes this semester, but it’s really been difficult to not let anything slip up. In speaking to upperclassmen though, it seems almost unanimous that sophomore fall is one of the toughest semesters, so I feel pretty good about what’s coming in the spring. Other exciting things in the spring include applying for study abroad–and in the mean time, figuring out where exactly it is I want to be next fall.

Speaking of spring classes, we had registration this past week. I am notoriously bad at registering–past mishaps have included my computer crashing, trying to register at a party, and failing to choose a single class for my major. All successes. This term, I registered at lovely 7:01 am, and still only managed to get into 3 classes (9 or 10 credits, I believe). 12 credits makes me a full-time student, so as of now I’m only kind of going to Hopkins next semester. Luckily my past registration failures have taught me that Hopkins professors are really kind, so I’m not too concerned, I’ll just be making a few strategic office hour visits in the next week to convince these professors that actually they really, really want me in their classes.

Final exciting October/November activities included Parents Weekend, and my roommate Eve’s 20th birthday. So excellent. We went to Charles Village favorite cafe, Carma’s, and had a baking extravaganza that included gluten free brownies, rice krispy treats, and chocolate chip cookies. We also spent far too much time decorating the suite.

Laura and I with Eve’s birthday cakes, and Eve, celebrating her birthday and our crazy decorations.

Right now I’m back in lovely NJ for a wonderful break from school. It’s great to be home, but I’m excited to get back to Hopkins–the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is so much fun!

-Lauren

p.s. another blog is coming soon with more updates, and hopefully information about what classes I’ll be taking in the spring!

Each semester I try to give an exclusive look at one of my classes. This time, I’ll do my “Education and Inequality: Individual, Contextual and Policy Perspectives” class, an upper level writing intensive course in the sociology department. I was going to break my Michael Jackson title streak for this entry until I thought about his song “Keep the Faith.” I say this because in this class, we have examined disheartening statistics about schooling, theories and reasons for them, and possible solutions. At first, I felt like all this class did was reinforce my knowledge of how bad things are for the U.S. in terms of education. Then I got over it and realized that a LOT of people have been and still are researching this problem and working on it–hence the “Keep the Faith” title I’ve given to this blog entry. :)

The professor is Dr. Stefanie DeLuca, who has got to be one of the most laid back professors I’ve ever had. She is young and brilliant, and devoted to studying the sociology of education, and outcomes of education for youth. And she tells us to call her Stefanie, which is kind of weird I won’t lie. But she’s definitely another great professor JHU has to offer–and NOT in a pre med department!

So what is this class about anyway?

We started off talking about theories of education and society. Theories like…legitimation, where some people think that education is not as necessary as people think it is! These people believe that society has been brainwashed into thinking that we’ll die without education, because education is seen as a system of rites that youth pass through in order to fulfill different social roles within society, rather than a tool to make youth more informed and helpful citizens. These theorists don’t necessarily think that higher education=higher skill and competence. Now if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably really interested in Hopkins and therefore are really into higher education, so that theory sounds crazy to you. Me too. But in their defense, if you think about it, a lot of us do hw and schoolwork begrudgingly because we have to, or else we won’t get to the next level. Am I lying? Let that one simmer.

Another theory is the functionalist/socialization theory, which says that schools preserve social order by integrating youth into adult roles, which include training them for demands in the labor market.

And yet another one says that education is influenced based on the needs of society. like Roman education focused on being good warriors; Middle Ages society focused on Christian-izing (yes I made that up) their youth; in the Renaissance, youth were taught more artsy and literature topics; and today, we can see the HUGE emphasis on math and science. So this portion of the course was background.

We then talked about how people attain education and how they end up where they are, educationally and socially. The United States is considered a meritocratic system, meaning that people who start as underdogs but use their wits and intelligence have a high chance of making it to the top, like a “rags to riches” type thing. Other societies, like the U.K. for example, have a more pre-determined system, based on socioeconomic class.

 One of my favorite parts was talking about the test score gap that exists between white and Asian students and Black and Latino students. It’s obvious that the latter group is still lagging behind, despite improvements in overall test scores. WHAT HAS CAUSED THIS GAP? There are parental, teacher, peer pressure, and environmental factors. It is argued that teachers judge students prematurely based on their socioeconomic status, and treat them accordingly. Many minority students complain of being accused of “acting white” if they excel in their studies, and therefore don’t try as hard. And there are a bajillion other factors and theories I don’t have time to get into here.

Another part I liked was gender and education. Overall, women are outdoing men in terms of educational completion and degree attainment, but we’re not seeing that feedback in the labor market! Men still get paid more then women do overall, for the same jobs. Some sociologists feel that from a young age, boys have the advantage over girls in the classroom because teachers supposedly respond to them more, and let them get away with more things. Girls are taught through subliminal messaging that domestic work and secretarial jobs are “meant” for them, and as a result many people feel like girls have the lower hand from a young age and become less confident and wanted in the job market. Or it could just be plain ol gender discrimination. What do you think?

Do any of you all go to high schools where there are different” levels?” As in honors, gifted and talented, college prep, vocational, etc…? That’s called “tracking” and it has many many opponents who argue that students in the lower tracks get the short end of the stick because of this ability grouping. They tend to get worse quality of education as well as vastly fewer higher education opportunities. If you’re looking at this blog, you’re most likely in a high “track” for some or all of your classes in high school–well, statistically speaking, you end up better off than many of your peers. Is this fair? Should schools be “de-tracked” in order to ensure that everyone has an equal chance of academic success?

The last thing we talked about was whether college really is the right choice for our students. If you’re reading this blog (sorry for saying that so many times :)  ) you’re probably one of the people who is into what educational sociologists call the “College for All (CFA)” mentality.

You know it’s true. People push for higher education of our youth all the time, with little to no room to think otherwise about things like vocational/skills training–it’s all college or nothing. There is a huge debate going on about whether this mentality is healthy for America. Statistics show that getting a college degree in no way guarantees a comfortable middle class lifestyle; in fact,many high school grads/college dropouts achieve the same economic level as many college grads. Now of course there are other factors that influence this, but yea…a weird finding. Only a fraction of people who start college will actually finish with a degree, and they’re no better off than regular high school grads. Because so many students are arguably coerced into applying to colleges without looking at other possibilities, those who DON’T make it have no idea what they can do. Our professor is actually writing a book with other authors about why the CFA mentality is dangerous, for lac of a better word, if students are entering the process without being fully informed.

And for the final assignment, we have a lovely 10-15 page research paper on any educational topic of our choice, which I kinda need to start on. But yea, this class is so interesting and gave a lot of insight on the sociology of education in America. She is a great interactive lecturer and if you end up coming here, I’d try to take a class from her!

Until next time,
Dominique =]

 Ahh, the title this week is a Michael Jackson song from his “HIStory” album. Last weekend, the alumni of my alma mater, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, came together to watch the 121st meeting of the 2nd longest high school football rivalry in American history.

Front shot of Poly

I guess this needs some background. I live in Baltimore City, meaning that I am a Baltimore Scholar–amazing donors pay for my tuition for all 4 years here. The whole point was to get high achieving students living in a place not well known for producing high achieving students to go to Johns Hopkins, “a world class institution right in their own backyards.”

Soooo, I feel like I owe so much to my high school for standing out, and for being rigorous enough to prepare me for the rigors of Hopkins. And I try to stay connected with it as best as I can…and being at Hopkins definitely makes that easier!

So as I said, Poly (as we endearingly call it) has a huge long rivalry with another high achieving city school, called Baltimore City College High School. And I won’t lie, the rivalry is kinda serious. Your best friends can go to City (as it is endearingly called) but there’s always that “my school is better than yours” thing going on.

City–we call it “the dump on a hump” but I actually find it slightly aestheically pleasing…shh don’t tell anyone!

Every year the last regular game of the season is one between us and City. All the alumni (who are overwhelmingly male, because Poly and City were originally all boys schools) buy tickets to the game. This was my 5th game, and it felt weird to go back as a sophomore in college and see so many new, young faces. The last class with students in it I recognize is this year’s senior class. While I’m still young, it makes me feel old!

Anyway, I have some pictures to share from the game. I went with my friend, who is also a Poly alum and a Baltimore Scholar as well!

Prep time–peep the awesome orange and blue!
City’s colors are orange and black, but we all know this is a better combo.

 The game is held at M&T Bank Stadium, which is the official stadium of the Baltimore Ravens, so that’s always cool–these high school students use the same size field as professional football players.

Then my favorite part is the halftime show. Both schools have bands that put Hopkins’ to shame…sorry JHU I love you, but one of my largest complaints is the lack of large marching band! Maybe one day. =] Anywho, both schools come up with its own routine, which involves playing popular songs and the school anthem. I was extra proud this year because the band played awesome songs and had good dance routines to go with them…I can’t imagine how hard it must be to dance with a trombone or tuba!

We came really close to losing, but for the first time in years, we had to go to Overtime, where we had a miraculous touchdown and won 26-20!

GO POLY BEAT CITY!

–Dominique

A couple of weeks ago the students of Student Admissions Advisory Board, including yours truly, were asked to brainstorm ways to improve Hopkins Interactive. We’re always looking for ways to improve and expand. Last year, we had the same brainstorm and I suggested the idea of the Academics Blog (http://hopkins.typepad.com/academics/), a blog with the goal of featuring a blog on every major and minor at Hopkins. This year, I un-creatively thought of following the same idea, but in a Student Activities blog instead–a blog with a collection of blogs written by the presidents of student groups aimed towards prospective students.

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Group: Public Health Student Forum

Category of Group: Special Interest

Year Founded: 1998

Name: Jessica K.

Position: Co-President

About the group: Public Health Student Forum was originally founded before the public health major debuted as a major at Johns Hopkins in 1998. A sophomore at the time organized an information meeting where seniors spoke to students interested in public health. The forum was essential to moving public health into the public’s and Dean’s eyes and stimulating the idea of public health studies. The original purpose was to show interest for a public health major at Hopkins. Did it do it’s job? Yes, as a major, public health has grown every year since and, rumor has it, is now the biggest major at Johns Hopkins. The current mission of Public Health Student Forum is to unite students with an interest in public health and to share this interest with others through the planning of events. The group is made up of a general board and an executive board. The executive board meets weekly and general assemblies are held for the general members bi-weekly.

Events: During the year our main events are Public Health Awareness Week and the Public Health Undergraduate Conference. Along with these two main events, we hold general assemblies that have information sessions on research opportunities, study abroad, and courses. We also hold a few speaker events throughout the year.

This year we just finished our third Public Health Awareness Week. Public Health Awareness Week is a week on campus that is meant to teach the Homewood student body what public health is and that it really affects us all. This week we designated our week to Personal Health Day, Health Policy Day, Urban Health and Infectious Diseases Day, International Health Day, and Environmental Health Day. We had a major evening event on each night from an International Health Fair and Potluck Dinner that featured nine groups including many multicultural groups to speaker events on Baltimore, obesity, and healthcare. We also held a power plant tour.  Our events during the day include trivia events, free drop-in workout classes, and information on volunteering.

This year we will be having our first ever (and perhaps the nation’s first) undergraduate conference in public health. We have been working closely with the undergraduate program to hold a conference in Charles Commons on April 16th. The planning for one day is a bit overwhelming at times, which includes applying for grant money, receiving and selecting students from a call for abstracts, recruiting faculty and those involved in career services to attend our event, and much much more. The goal of this is to hopefully have not only a successful conference, but one that can grow and be continued for years to come.

Why I got involved?: I’ll admit that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into freshman year. On top of that, the group has really grown and changed its mission. Joining the group has given me the chance to meet some of my closest friends. Although we all have one common interest, our executive board is diverse in terms of natural sciences and social sciences and year. Many of the people I wouldn’t be able to have met otherwise. On top of this, it’s given me a relationship with the public health advisors. The general assemblies, which often are used as time to hear about the opportunities that other students have had in public health, have taught me about the opportunities that are out there.

Can freshmen join?: Yes, yes, yes! Freshmen are invited to become general board members and attend general assemblies. However, for those committed to public health, we typically choose two freshmen in September to join our executive board as freshmen representatives based on an application. The point of freshmen representatives is to expose them to how the executive board works so that they can continue their leadership in the group later on. Freshmen representatives are responsible for general executive board tasks like assisting with public health awareness week, spreading the word about the group to other freshmen, giving the rest of the board any advice, and whatever odds and ends come our way.

Last weekend, I went on my 2nd retreat with my Christian Fellowship. I think it’s important to get away from campus several times throughout the year, because we all need some rest and brain relaxation–hence the “Got to be There” title. Each year we have a new speaker, and while I didn’t enjoy this  year’s as much as I did last year’s, I was happy I had a chance to leave and meet new people from other MD colleges. Here’s a cool group picture we all took before leaving.

We got to do silly things like play Mafia (if you have never played that game before–stop what you’re doing, grab about 10 people and learn!) and eat legit camp food. And since the trees here aren’t turning as much as I would like, I enjoyed the beautiful colors of the trees at the campsite.

Funny thing is, we all brought homework. All of the other MD colleges there (McDaniel College, University of MD, Towson University, Hood College) thought we were true stereotypical nerds because we had a late night study session–don’t blame us–orgo and differential equations are no joke!

Anywho, I’d like to use this opportunity to say that I think it’s so important to have a core group of close friends to keep you grounded and satisfied. In my opinion, having that definitely improves your experience in college. Wherever you go, get involved on something about which you are extremely passionate–it really will enrich your college experience!

So when we returned, it was back to school time. Yesterday was Halloween, and I went over to a friends apartment for a “Hallowhat?” party, as she so eloquently named it. Part of that involved me dressing up in foil in order to get a free burrito from Chipotle. College kids+ the ability to look goofy+free food=win! Unfortunately, I just made a bracelet of foil due to my lack of creativity, but it worked and I have a nice steak burrito in my stomach.

Well, back to work–it’s 1:15 am, but in 45 minutes Daylight Savings time will end and I will have an extra hour to sleep…ok fine, study. Late night/early morning study sessions are always more fun with your friends. Mine were just running around the library giving candy out to the hard workers here on a Saturday night. What can I say–this is a funny place!

Until next time,
Dominique