2011: Hopkins Freshman Blog

Here, There, Everywhere

Posted by Josh G.

We’re in the dog days of summer now and I’m up to too much for my own good.  The past few weeks have been crazy. 

I’ve been working Mondays and Tuesdays since the beginning of June at an entertainment company in New York City doing interny stuff…lots of excel usage, organizing documents/files/folders/binders and searches that are hard to find what you need even with Google helping along the way.  The company does TV (currently working on a show like Top Model, but with Hawaiian Tropic girls or something), Documentary Film (their first was about the destruction of land in the rainforest by oil companies, their next 3 are a series on the Maidanek concentration camp, its survivors, and the Holocaust), and Live Entertainment (Icecapades, Arthur Live!, USAG Gymnastics Tour). It has definitely taught me that I don’t think I could stand to work a regular office job.  (Except for maybe as an admissions officer, that job is a cakewalk.) 

But here is some advice to prospective students/freshman: you must seek out these internships and other kinds of opportunities yourself.  What I mean by this is Hopkins won't do the work for you.  They have some resources that you may use (like the Career Center), but overall you have to realize that it is now up to you to go out there and look for something.  The best resources at Hopkins you can use are your departments.  Mine sends out emails all the time about opportunities for internships, jobs, or film festival entries.  They will usually know where to find internships and jobs related to your field.  But other than that, you have to be independent and diligent...and having Johns Hopkins on your resume is definitely a boost.

Back to my busy schedule…2 weeks ago Lauren came up to visit and saw Wall-E together.  Wall-E is probably one of the best films of the year and possibly Pixar’s best.  It does things that I have never seen other animated films do that most people wouldn’t notice.  Sometimes the director chooses to rack focus (switching where the scene is in focus, from foreground to background or visa versa) and they even include glare on the “lens” of the camera from the sunlight.  I keep saying that this movie will do more for the environment than “An Inconvenient Truth”.


Then last weekend my friend/new roommate Andrew and his friend from home came up from D.C. to go to Siren Festival which is a free music festival at Coney Island presented by The Village Voice.  We had an awesome time and fought our way into the crowd to be in the front to see Ra Ra Riot and Islands, near the front for Dodos, and as close as we could get to see Broken Social Scene. 

This coming weekend I’m headed to LA where my brother is looking at colleges.  The first weekend after I return I may be working on the set of a short film by another company I interviewed for. (Check out their first video here)  **Disclaimer: The video contains some mature content** They are doing a series of short films for a Democratic website.  The following week its down to visit Lauren again.  The week after that it’s my last week on the job before a week off to get ready to move back down to Baltimore where I get to move in early because I’m an Orientation Assistant.  I can’t wait.

Movies to see (that I have recently seen):
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.  The Savages.  Blow Up.  Punch Drunk Love (saw it for the 3rd time and this time really liked it).  Brick.  Trainspotting.  4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days.  The Player.  Be Kind Rewind. Wall-E.

I leave you here with a video of the Icecapades (now owned by the company i'm working at) from 1988.  Also there is a video of Broken Social Scene at Siren Festival.  Enjoy...

The Halfway Point

Posted by Stephanie D.

Happy belated 4th of July, everyone! This post is a bit belated, too. I've never been too skilled at anything remotely technological, and in the past month I managed to lose the passwords for half of my email accounts/websites, including this one, and instead of trying to fix it myself I spent a lot of time just glaring at my computer. Anyway, I'm back in the virtual flesh now. That's a pretty awkward sentence.

I've never been very good at sitting still - literally and figuratively. All throughout my freshman year at Hopkins, I was so used to going-going-going from one activity to the next, from SAAB meetings to Alpha Phi events to all-night News-Letter production marathons to class to lunch with friends, etc, so it was pretty bizarre for me to get home and realize that for the first time in months, I could...relax. And honestly, it didn't bring as much relief as you would think. I know that a lot of people are happiest and most at peace when there's nothing on their plate, when they can just kick back and watch TV and...um...(what else do people do when they kick back...?), but I've never been like that. So I tried to do that whole "lounge around" thing, and it worked - for two days. After I had relaxed for a respectable 48 hours, I decided to go out and get a job.

After a little sneak preview into the terrifying, depressing job market, I found a position as a hostess at Piatti, a nice Italian restaurant right on the Bay (that's the San Francisco Bay, mind you). Between that and an online internship with NarrativeMagazine.com, a few days in Seattle, a family vacation in Canada, and my fair share of laying-by-the-pool-with-trashy-magazines, I somehow made it halfway through summer before slowing down, looking around and realizing how desperately I miss Baltimore and Hopkins.

I know it seems upside-down to try to speed through the summer in order to get back to school as quickly as possible, but at some point a few weeks ago I realized that was exactly what I had been doing. I had just gotten home from Seattle and had a couple days before going back to the restaurant, and in the time I should have been relaxing or calling up friends from home, I was emailing with my friends from Hopkins and looking online to see if any new courses were listed for the fall semester. It's a bizarre phenomenon that happens during your first summer at home from school. Half of the friends I've been seeing from high school couldn't be more thrilled to be home, or are in some sort of transition - switching schools, taking a year off, etc - and half are dying to go back to school. Interestingly enough, you really can't predict who will end up in each of these categories. I remember when I graduated from high school last year, it seemed like everyone's paths were so SET - that we would each go to the four-year school of our choice and come home each summer and bum around just like every summer in high school. But I've spent much less time with my friends from home than I expected to because everyone is caught up in new and exciting things - internships, jobs, summer classes, volunteer work - and while people range from hating their schools to loving them, it almost makes me feel guilty to fall into the latter category.

With that said, when I realized I shouldn't waste the summer by wishing I was back in Baltimore (ha! If you'd tried telling me that I would miss Baltimore a year ago...), I started to appreciate my home and my family a lot more. Northern California is a truly beautiful place, and realizing that I won't have this much natural beauty around me again for a long time, I started going on little adventures - with friends and by myself, too. I bought a cool, 4-shot camera - you can see the results of it here - and my friend Lisa and I went to the beach a few times to experiment with it and build awesome sand castles. We've also been going to the Inkwells whenever we can; it's a little group of swimming holes in the middle of an isolated woodsy area, and each "Inkwell" is so deep that you can jump in it from 20-foot rocky cliffs. On the more sweltering days, I've been happy to enjoy the scenery from the hostess stand in my lovely, air-conditioned restaurant.

My family vacations have been pretty amazing, too. My older sister graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle last month, and my mom and dad and I flew up for a few days to celebrate. I've never felt a more confusing mix of emotions than when I watched my sister graduate. I was obviously really proud of her, and intimidated, too (she graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors, the highest academic honors you can receive) but it also reminded me how it won't be TOO long until I'm in the same place. My sister and I have always been mistaken for twins (she's actually shorter than me) and there's only a two-and-a-half-year gap between us. It seems like yesterday that I was visiting her in her dorm room during her first year of college, and I know she felt like the rest of college just flew by; it's exciting and scary to realize it will probably fly by for me, too.

To celebrate Laura's graduation and having the whole family together, we went to Canada for a week. It's a really gorgeous, underrated place. We stayed in Vancouver for the first half of the week, eating great meals and shopping and museum-ing, and then drove up to Whistler for the remainder of the week. The 2010 winter Olympics are going to be held in Whistler, and it's no wonder; there is SO much athletic activity to do there! We took out ATVs one day and road all over the mountain, we biked around a gorgeous lake, and on one of our last days, we went white-water rafting in freezing glacier water. More than anything, it was really nice to be with my family and know that none of us were in any rush - we didn't have to go straight back to work or school right after the trip, and we could really unwind and be together for a whole week for the first time since winter.

Somehow, with all of this going on, I'm more than halfway through my summer at home - and I won't even be home for a good chunk of that! In a week, I'm heading to New York to visit my boyfriend and my friends from Hopkins. Before and after that, I'm going to try my very best to relax like a normal teenager. We'll see how that goes.

I Don't Miss Hopkins........

Posted by Rob A.

Yes, the title may surprise you but let me explain myself. While the majority of the Hopkins Interactive students have been reflecting about their time at home and how much they miss Hopkins, I am sitting in the MSE Library studying for Calc III. I can’t really miss a place I haven’t left. This summer I decided to stay at Hopkins and take a few classes. It was by no means required, but since I have changed majors several times I figured it would be in my best interest to stay and take some MechE requirements. The summer is broken up into two terms, five-weeks each. This is the second week of the second term, as well as our sort of “vacation” since we had the Fourth off.

My summer schedule is somewhat monotonous, but I have been enjoying my time. I work from 9-5 in the admissions office doing several things, like giving tours and cleaning up all of the applicants files and getting the matriculated students files ready for academic advising. I have actually been having a blast in Mason; summer is a lot more calm compared to the school year so everyone is relaxed. There are also a few other students working in the building, so we have been keeping ourselves entertained.

From Monday to Thursday, I take a two and a half hour “break” from admissions and go to my calc class. One note I have about summer classes is that yes, you do get to focus solely on one or two subjects, but what I didn’t realize was that you are still taking a several-month course except fitting it in to five weeks. It is a lot of work, but I am glad that I am doing it now and getting it out of the way.

Although class and work take up a huge portion of my time, I have been able to do a lot of other things. Fortunately, there is a surprising number of students on campus so there is always something going on, and if not I will just go and hang out with friends. A bit of a side note, summer is awesome because almost all of my friends either live in apartments or houses so we don’t have to deal with campus housing. I live with four of my friends in a house off of Calvert Street, it’s a bit more of a walk but it is really close to Subway and Chipotle and Eddy’s Market. I am actually living in JHU_Roxi’s room since she isn’t here this summer. Since we all have large living spaces and we aren’t on any sort of meal plan, we have dinner parties all the time, which are delicious. We are planning a huge Thanksgiving in July Dinner next week and a few dinners to watch HOPKINS on ABC.

I also have been able to do more with Outdoor Pursuits this summer. A few weeks ago a bunch of us went canoeing up in Pennsylvania, and I will be leading a few canoeing trips in the coming weeks as well. Since the majority of people in OP are here for the summer, I also have been able to spend time with them. In the coming weeks I will also be finding out which pre-o trip I will be leading! I am really excited for pre-o this year and can’t wait to meet all you ’12-ers.

This past weekend a bunch of my friends and I headed down to Washington, D.C. for the Fourth of July fireworks. Unfortunately it was rainy, but it was still tons of fun to just be there. The fireworks were awesome, but I still can’t believe how many people were there. It was a pretty cool experience to be in our nation’s capital celebrating the Fourth, with monuments and museums as our backdrop. I think it is something everyone should experience, although I hope you will have better weather.

Although I don’t miss the institution very much, I do miss the people that aren’t here this summer. Summer term is a completely different experience since everyone is kind of doing there own thing and it took some adjusting to get used to not having everyone around. Fortunately, we have had several visitors and will have several more by the end of the summer, including a brief encounter with JHU_Stephanie.

So that has been my summer so far, in the next month I will have my looking forward post as well as an update on my summer shenanigans. If you have any questions feel free to ask, especially if you have questions about pre-o.