2011: Hopkins Freshman Blog

The Halfway Point

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.

Doing the time-warp.

All I've been doing these past two weeks, ever since I got home, is working, catching up on sleep, and getting all nostalgic about my freshman year. Alright, maybe I shouldn't be nostalgic yet - after all, I was in Baltimore only a little over two weeks ago...hmm...but since most of my friends from home are still away at school, I've been given plenty of time to look back on what this year has meant.

It turned out so differently than I had expected, because you really can't predict what college will be like; you meet a million people and float around a bit until you figure out where your place is, and you try out activities until you see what fits. I didn't expect to join a sorority, or become an Editor for the News-Letter, or develop an interest in psychology. Everything just seems to sneak up on you and surprise you. Right now seems like the perfect time to show you guys (especially the class of 2012!) the highlights of my first year at Hopkins, and it should be a fun trip down memory lane for me as well.

Across the Universe (Or at Least the Country): This was my first, wide-eyed, too-long post of the year. Ah, I guess not much has changed. I introduced myself, gave a little biography on my years in California, and discussed the crazy dynamics of Orientation and the first month of school.

Trains, Planes, and a Big Yellow School Bus: I had just experienced my first taste of goings-on beyond the Hopkins campus. I discussed my weekend trip to Michigan and my exciting venture to D.C. to see the Dalai Lama (and Richard Gere) give inspiring speeches about the power of peace.

Hello, November!: The first signs of winter, the excitement of parents' weekend after not having seen my parents for so long (that first stretch is definitely the hardest), and starting to make friends from - gasp! - different dorms.

The Procrastination Game: Not MY procrastination, of course (...because I never do that...); the joys of having a roommate who bakes cookies when she's procrastinating, a ridiculous video clip of a puppet llama dancing to techno (this has context...well, sort of), and my first concert in Baltimore: Broken Social Scene. Read this if you're interested in the music scene around campus.

The Week of Thanksgiving AND Christmas: Pretty self-explanatory title. I went home for Thanksgiving and got to spend time with family, and then some friends and I threw an early holiday party.

Christmahannukwanzaka: (try saying that three times, fast): The holiday spirit continued, evidently. This was all about the seasonal frenzy that strikes Hopkins between Thanksgiving and winter break - and my first real snowball fight (thanks, Rob).

"I thought it didn't snow in California?": The first part of my winter break; a fantastic trip to Tahoe with my best friends from high school, and some reflections on my first semester of college. 

Good Decisions: That refers mainly to my decision to go back to Baltimore early for Intersession, the optional three-week period in January when you can take classes and generally just hang out in a pretty stress-free environment. This is all about when I really started to feel like I LIVED in Baltimore and didn't just take classes there; exploring the city and having little adventures.

Homesick? No, more like intersession-sick: Filled with nostalgia for intersession and the adjustment back to real school days, with five classes instead of two, and two weekend nights instead of five. Tough. Exciting things, too, though; my new classes for spring semester started up, and my good friend Lilah came to visit for a few days and I got to see Hopkins through an outsider's eyes.

The Unlikely Sorority Girl: Sort of a self-explanatory title. I wrote about (and justified) my out-of-the-blue decision to Rush, and how happy I was to end up in a great sorority, Alpha Phi.

FAVORITES: This was a common-blog post, where each Hopkins Interactive member reviewed his or her favorite moments, movies, guilty pleasures, exciting. Fun and random.

Greetings from California!: A little review and reflection from my sunny spot in California on spring break. I talked about the action-packed week leading up to break, my "surprise" birthday party, and how close I felt with all my Hopkins friends.

CRIBS: 5 East: Another common blog, but a VERY popular one: my video and [my friend Katie's] tour of my suite/floor, Wolman 5 East. An awkward video - I'm not great on camera - but you really do get a good feel for the suite and Wolman in general.

Go Outside!: The incredible weather and the amazing things it does to the campus; seriously, in spring, the campus transforms. Also about a fantastic night with my friend Chloe in DC, and a clip from my friend Giselle's modern dance performance.

Whoever invented fried oreos...: Wow, what a post to end the year on. Ah well. This was all about the end of school and the bittersweetness that comes with it, and, of course, the amazingness that is Spring Fair - the weekend when the school turns into a giant fair. I conclude with a clip from my friend Suzanne's a cappella performance - just a sample of the talent at Hopkins.

Anyway, so that's the year, condensed. I actually started this post quite a few days ago but just came back to it now, at home. It's still sort of sad to be writing about school because I miss it so much, even having been home only for about two and a half weeks.

My friend Katie (from Hopkins) is actually sitting across from me right now, though!: she only lives about two hours away, so she came to visit. Guess we're not so good at this "summer break" thing. More on summer later, though; for now, I'm going to go enjoy it.

Whoever invented deep-fried oreos...

....should be blamed for the ten pounds I gain this weekend. Honestly, the idea sounds disgusting. Okay, no, it sounds intriguing. But then you taste it - ah! My friend Amanda described it best when she was explaining the taste to someone: "Think of the best thing you've ever eaten. Then, think about bird poop. Well, the best thing you've ever tasted tastes like bird poop compared to fried oreos."

You're probably wondering where (and maybe why) I got a weekend's supply of fried oreos. Hopkins has turned into a giant fair for the weekend. Not even figuratively -- literally, the entire place has been converted to a fair. Booths with every variety of fair food you can imagine fill the freshman quad. The entire quad between the library and Gilman is taken over by art booths and tables with jewelry and clothing...and rumor has it, there are RIDES over by Shaffer - but there is an age limit! Grr. For once, my midgety height won't help.

Anyway, I just realized how ridiculous this blog has sounded so far. It's probably the heat and sugar. This weekend has been an incredible relief from all the work I've had in the past week, and what better way to celebrate than with sugary snacks and sunny days? I have had to volunteer on a see-saw as part of Alpha Phi's philanthropy - all the proceeds we get go to Cardiac Care - but honestly, that's no work compared to the past couple of weeks I've had. Last week, I found out I was elected to be News & Features Editor of the News-Letter - that's the student newspaper here on campus. It's a pretty awesome honor, and I'm so excited for next year with my three fantastic co-editors, but it's also been really stressful and taken up SO MUCH TIME the past couple of weeks (the first week was training; this week, the new positions took over). I joked to my friend Amy the other day that although she thinks I'll be living with her next year, I'll really be living in the News-letter office (luckily it's adorable and literally looks like a cottage in the woods). I'm not kidding when I say this - I actually got home from News-Letter at 5 am Thursday morning. I'm pretty sure the sun was starting to rise.

For all my complaining, though, I'm really, seriously happy with this development. I was so involved in journalism during high school, and for one reason or another, I didn't start writing for the News-Letter until my second semester here - but it was so easy to get started, and once I did, I couldn't stop. It's a great community on campus and I always feel like I'm working toward something that could end up being a terrific story, and it's all worth it when the paper comes out on Thursday. And, not to be sappy or anything, but it's the same way with you admitted students. All the work we put into SAAB pays off during Open Houses, when you all come up and ask questions or tell us you've seen the Cribs videos (eek!) and we get to tell you IN PERSON how much we love Hopkins.

Anyway, I just saw my friend Suzanne's a cappella performance, and it was a wonderful half-way point in the weekend. Suze also happens to be my big sister in Alpha Phi - which you'd probably know if you've read my last two or three blogs, I kinda talk about her a lot - so it was amazing to see her perform, along with my good friend Frances. The groups on campus are so full of energy and although I don't go to performances as often as I'd like to, they always remind me that there's so much talent at Hopkins. I'll leave you with a video clip from Suzanne's solo. It's to Foreigner's song Cold As Ice - now, who wouldn't want to listen to a little bit of that?

Go outside!

"No, seriously. Go outside." That's what my roommate said to me as soon as I woke up last Saturday morning. She wasn't kicking me out of the room - well, I suppose she was, indirectly - but she wanted me to see that it was actually lay-out-and-sunbathe weather for the first time in months. In BALTIMORE.

This past week has been full of 70 degree, sun-shiny days, and it seems like the entire student body has evacuated from their dorm rooms and library cubicles to lay on any available patch of grass and read, chat with friends, picnic, throw frisbees, and generally just enjoy the sun. It's been amazing - anytime I have half an hour to kill between classes, I head straight for the Beach (I no longer boycott the term for the sprawling mass of grass in front of the library) and join the other two hundred people doing the same thing. Sigh. I love spring.

Anyway, I haven't JUST been laying around and working on my tan (/sunburn) for the past couple of weeks - in fact, I've had the most cultural (for lack of a better word) week in a long time! It started last Saturday night, when (after a long day at the Beach, of course), I went to see my friend Amanda perform in a Senior Arts Certificate Skit. These short plays are written and directed by seniors who are trying to get Arts Certificates with their diplomas, and the end product is a series of cool, wacky, creative plays that anyone can audition for. Amanda played an snobbish MC with a pig nose, if that says anything about the tone of the play.

Later that same night, a group of us headed to Shriver Hall to see another performance. For the past couple of months, we've "lost" my friend Giselle to the JHU Modern Dance - so needless to say, we were all curious and excited to see how the performance would turn out. Let's just say it blew me away. Giselle and her fellow modern dancers really, seriously, sculpted their bodies into artwork - I don't know how else to put it. Each dance was totally innovative and beautiful and told a story, and the dancers really did seem like they had been practicing for months. I took a short video of one of Giselle's dances (she's the one with the short curly hair!) and - with her permission, of course - you can take a peek at it here.

   

The rest of the week was busy and hurried, with some great moments - like the hours I spent volunteering at the Admitted Student Open Houses and meeting some of the interesting, exciting members of the Class of '12 (if I saw you there - hi! If you're coming to the upcoming Open Houses - PLEASE come by and talk to us! Seriously - the more you talk to us and ask us questions, the less time we'll have to spend listening to Daniel's stories!), a date party for my sorority (it was disco theme, and I took Amanda - needless to say, it was a GREAT time - just check out the pictures) - and some stressful times, like the hours I put in to my News-Letter article, my Philosophy paper, and my Spanish test...so needless to say, by the time Friday came around, I was ready to de-stress a little.

My good friend Chloe lives in D.C., so a group of us decided to take the Marc train into the city after classes and visit her and some of the museums in the area. We got there in time to wander around the National Mall (Amanda and I went to the National Gallery of Art, while the rest of our friends hung out in the Museum of Natural History), and then Chloe led us to a lovely restaurant in Dupont Circle, where I had the best meal I've eaten in weeks: a California-style salad with ahi tuna, avocado, and rice. Heaven. After dinner, we walked back to Chloe's house mere blocks from Dupont Circle and sat on her roof until we had to catch the train home. A seriously perfect day. Sometimes you can forget that it's SO EASY to get to DC. Baltimore really is the ideal location, because it's its own city, but DC is just a 40 minute trainride away and New York is only a couple hours. I have to remember that next year.

My lovely weekend continued yesterday, when I headed to an Alpha Phi barbeque before the Homecoming game and then to the game itself. I'm not going to lie - I'm not a huge sports spectator (or player, for that matter) so I ended up turning in my seat and basically turning my back to the game so that I could be in a more comfortable position to talk to my friends. Ah, well. It was fun anyway, and I know they won - that's what matters, right? (Feel free to internet-yell at me, Blue Jays fans.)

Later that night, I got treated to dinner at a fantastic tapas place in Fell's Point called Mezze. My 'big sister' in my sorority, Suzanne, is one of the most amazing people I've met here. Her mom came into town for the game and took us and a few of Suzanne's other friends out to dinner, and I can't even describe the meal without being really resentful that I'll to go to the cafeteria tonight, so I won't.

Since I'm in the library, I think I'll (reluctantly) get back to what the library is actually for: studying. Ah, well.

Hopkins Cribs: Wolman 5East

Congratulations, newbies! It's exciting to be addressing this to people who will actually be walking around on this very campus next year....don't be afraid to stop and say hi, at the open houses and next year on campus!

Now that you've got your big decision ahead of you (hint: come here), you'll be curious as to where you'd be living if you came here - I was certainly curious. While Jessica, Josh and Siobhan will be rooting for buildings A/B and the AMRs, it's my responsibility to show you all how awesome Wolman is. As Rob mentioned, Wolman is basically divided into two buildings, East and West - I live in the East Wing, and I've got a great suite.

Since you'll get to watch me roam around my suite and trip over things, etc, in my Cribs video, I decided to let my friend Katie lead you on a picture-tour of my floor. She actually lives in AMR II, but as a testament to the awesomeness of Wolman, she practically lives on my floor/in my room.

Each suite in Wolman has two bedrooms, either one single and one double, or (more typically) two doubles. I live in a double, with my roommate Lauren, and our room is this cool L-shape that sort of lets us have our "own rooms"; we reference Lauren's side of the room as "Lauren's side" and my side as "Steph's side", but we don't have that weird barrier divider that a lot of rooms have.

College certainly forces you to make the most of your space. My bed serves as my desk/kitchen table/hangout area/sleeping space...so it was important to me to pick out a comforter and sheets, etc, that I really liked. I ended up buying curtains at Urban Outfitters and my mom and I fashioned them into a duvet. On the wall next to my bed, I have about 30 or so Polaroid pictures of my friends and family from home - this was my graduation project, I really wanted to get individual pictures of everyone I cared about from home, and have them sign their name and write me a little message - like a personalized yearbook. (There's an awkward part of my video where I sound like I spend hours looking at these photos and crying, but I swear, I love my friends here too!)

I'm not going to lie -- I'm not the most organized person in the world. But I think it adds a little flavor to my room! (My mother might disagree, but luckily, my roommate is almost as messy/therefore accepting of my messiness). My desk is always cluttered with books, pictures, water bottles, etc. Here's Katie, very obviously pretending to read at book at my desk.

Right outside my bedroom is the kitchen that I share with my suitemates, Shayna and Li. I LOVE having access to a kitchen, even if it is tiny - I can't imagine having survived freshman year without being able to wake up to my coffeemaker and a cupboard stocked with oatmeal, a wide array of unhealthy cereals, tea, eggs, omelet makings, etc. I don't cook as often as I could, because I actually really do like the cafeteria, but it's nice to know that if I'm studying a lot and don't have time to walk to the cafeteria, I can stay in and make a quesadilla or chicken salad. All Wolman kitchens come equipped with a refrigerator, a stovetop with two burners, a sink, cupboards, and shelves. At the beginning of the year, all my suitemates chipped in and we bought a coffeemaker, a microwave, and   way too many plates and utensils (that somehow still all managed to go missing and end up in friends' rooms...) so it's a great comfort, and perfect for lazy rainy days. To the left is Katie once again, showing off one of many "essentials": Wheat Thins!

Another Wolman luxury is the one-bathroom-per-4 people, as opposed to the AMRs, where everyone in a hall shares a bathroom. Somehow my suitemates' schedules and my schedule worked out perfectly; we almost never have to fight over the bathroom, because they pretty much all have either earlier or later classes. The bathroom has a shower, sink, toilet, towel racks, mirror, and a couple shelves, and we decided to install a few extra shelves above the toilet. I'm pretty sure my bathroom at home is farther away from my bedroom than my bathroom is here. Wolman spoils us, what can I say. (Don't worry, Katie wasn't ACTUALLY coming out of the shower - we staged this. Note the necklace).

Another great thing about Wolman is the common room - you can see it in the first picture of this entry (Katie is pretending to cheer on her favorite team). Since there are about 30 people on my floor, there's always someone hanging out or doing homework or watching TV in the common room, at any time of day. My RA sometimes throws little parties in the common room, and we all show up for the free food - and, of course, the atmosphere.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Greetings from California!

I write this from the comfort of the [old, rickety] lounge chair on the deck outside my bedroom, I'm basking in as much sun as Northern California wishes to provide in March, and enjoying the leftover cake from my birthday yesterday. Jealous?

Haha, okay, after that little self-indulgent spell, I'll move on. It's really nice to be home for a week - a week, I think, is the perfect amount of time. Some of my friends have longer spring breaks, anywhere from 2 weeks to a month, but a week is JUST enough time to get that much-needed R&R (and maybe a little tan...) and not get TOO used to rejecting the idea of "homework" as an ugly, foreign concept.

The weeks leading up to spring break were incredibly busy and hectic, which is probably why break seemed like it came out of NOWHERE. I spent a couple weeks acquiring every obscure illness known to man: after I had hung on to a persistent hacking cough for at least a month, I found out I had developed pleurisy, costochondritis, an "incidental" kidney stone (this is the part people freak out about the most, but it was really the least painful of any of my ailments) and strep throat. Where did I find out I was a walking carrier of the 21st-century Black Plague? Oh, you know, just at the hospital.

To make a long and brag-worthy story short, I was rushed (all 20 yards...) to Union Memorial in an ambulance a few Sundays ago. I had been sitting on my friend Amy's floor, quietly working on a Philosophy paper (or checking Facebook ... you know, same thing) when I coughed and turned a funny way and all the sudden I was in excruciating pain - I couldn't move or cough or laugh or talk or I'd seriously feel like I was breaking a rib. I spent the rest of that Sunday, 6 hours or so, lying on a hospital bed and getting wheeled through a series of x-rays, cat-scans, and other procedures I don't really remember because I was on loopy-making painkillers.

Luckily, getting sick at school isn't as bad as you might think it is. Although my mom offered to fly out from California (I love you, Mom, but that's a little much) I was pampered enough by friends and even teachers. My friends Amy and Doug stayed with me at the hospital for all 6 hours, and everyone took turns bringing me take-out lunches and watching Meg Ryan movies in bed with me (okay, maybe that part served my friends well, too).

By two weeks before break, I had made a [nearly] full recovery and was ready to, you know, leave my room again. My sorority held a formal at the Mount Washington Tavern on Wednesday, and it was fantastic. It was my first real sorority event where I actually felt like a true member of Greek life, and even my date - who's a wee bit skeptical of the Greek scene - seemed to enjoy himself.

I spent the next week studying for midterms and working on papers and the like. One note of advice for, well, anyone: TAKE SOCIAL PSYCH. You will have the most fun you've ever had writing a paper. Yes, I'm aware of how nerdy that sounded. Social Psych is a cool and very comprehensible class as it is, but our midterm paper topic actually got me excited. We're studying social norms - those unwritten laws of society that dictate that you should say "how are you?" at greetings and not run buck-naked through Manhattan on Saturday afternoons - so our assignment was to BREAK a social norm, and write about people's reactions to it. My friend Cat and I decided to commandeer an elevator in Wolman and become "Elevator Operators". We set up two chairs in the corner of the elevator, blocking the buttons, and whenever someone stepped on we'd ask them which floor they were heading to. At some point in the process, we decided to spice things up by humming the theme song to Star Wars whenever someone came in. We had a blast - and collected three dollars in our "tip jar". Granted, two of those dollars were from friends who pitied us, but still.

After a week of rest, I was ready for my surprise birthday party on Wednesday night. Yes, I say "ready" because I had actually known about it for a couple weeks. It's hard to be surprised when your best friend approaches you to ask for guest list for your "surprise birthday party". Nonetheless, it was a great time - I went out to Holy Frijoles before the party, and then got "surprised" at my friend John's apartment, where we ate cake and danced to cheesy electronica. Beautiful. I really couldn't have asked for a better pseudo-surprise psuedo-birthday.

After those few weeks, needless to say, I was about ready for spring break - ready to do NOTHING, in other words. I flew directly to Los Angeles, where I visited my cousins and their three beautiful babies for a few days, and then flew home just in time for my REAL birthday and a week of lounging around, soaking up that aforementioned sun. It's been great here, but I know I won't mind going back to Hopkins with a week of quality family time, sun, and rest under my belt.

JHU_Stephanie: FAVORITES

This week, the students of Hopkins Interactive have decided to change things up a bit and all present a common blog topic.  Through the blogs and the message board, we really enjoy providing you with a glimpse of our lives at Hopkins while helping reveal to you what might lie in store for you in you decide to become a Hopkins student as well.  In addition to detailing life here at Hopkins, we also all enjoy getting to talk about totally random things that we love. Just like we've done with the Off-Topic Discussion Forum of the message boards, we're taking a break from Hopkins talk and discussing our FAVORITE things! So here we present out personal answers to a common survey of our favorite things about the worlds of books, movies, television, and much, much, more.

Who is your favorite author?
This is a tough question, and one that’s so heavily weighted for a Writing Sems major. I would say Hardy or Dickens or something but that’s just blatantly untrue. I have a very unpretentious taste in authors; if a writer can entrance me and pull me into his or her world, I will respect them. I have to say that I most consistently love Zadie Smith’s writing. She’s such an impressive young author, and she incorporates everything I wish I could incorporate into my own writing – honesty, zeal, a fresh and unflinching insight into human relations. Her novel On Beauty seriously changed the way I think about the subtle complexities of the ways people treat one another. On a slightly more pretentious note, I love Nabokov’s short stories.

What is your favorite website?
Though it’s unabashedly biased, Slate.com is my primary news source. It has the most lively writing of any news website I’ve come across, and it’s not afraid to make fun of itself or balance serious issues with hilarious comics. Yes, it caters solely to the liberal community … but eh, so be it. I also frequent the Wiki-sites quite often; it’s amazing how much time you can waste on Wikipedia if you set your mind to it.

What is your favorite item in your bedroom?
This is easy. I have fairly simple décor in my dorm room, but on the wall next to my bed there are 30 or so Polaroid pictures laid out in a square. Before I left for college, I sought out all the of the people who affected me in high school – my best friends, family members, certain teachers, fellow newspaper staffers – and took a snapshot of each of them, and had them all sign their names and write me a little note in the white part. These pictures mean so much to me, and the personal messages are really encouraging for when I’m feeling homesick – even if they’re just one-line inside jokes or “You’re my Jew.” (Thanks, Anna.)

What, in your opinion, is the greatest invention of your time?
This is sort of obvious, but the Internet. I don’t know enough about technology to list all the ways the Internet has made things more efficient, more convenient, more communicative, etc…but I think we can ALL agree that we’ve benefited from its existence. (And no, I’m not just talking about Facebook.)

What is your favorite news source?
Well, I already answered this with my favorite website – Slate.com – but I also try to read the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle when I’m feeling nostalgic. Also, this might sound silly, but Vanity Fair is a seriously fantastic resource for world/political happenings – and it’s so well written.

What is your favorite movie series?
The only movie series that actually gets better with each sequel is the Harry Potter series. I’m sorry, it’s just true. The rest just go downhill with each new movie. Spiderman should have stopped after one.

What is your favorite time of day?
On the weekends, this has to be brunchtime – which can fall anywhere from 10 am until 2 pm. This is the wonderful time of day that my friends and I meet at the cafeteria and lounge around, piling our plates with omelets and hash browns, and lounge around for hours, catching up and discussing the weekend’s activities. On weekdays, I’m a fan of dinner, for the same reasons.

Who is your favorite one-hit wonder?
Mmmbop by Hanson, obviously. This song brought joy and sunshine into my 7-year-old life.

Which famous person, living or dead, would you like to have a cup of tea with?
Adam Brody. I would convince him that we’re perfect for each other. No, okay, on a more serious note – I would love to sit down with Nabokov. I wouldn’t bombard him with questions about how to improve my own writing (though if he had the urge to share, I wouldn’t object…) but I just think he’d be fantastically interesting. Nabokov had synesthesia, which means he associated colors with particular letters – this is part of what made his writing so vivid. I’d love to just hear him describe the composition of a room and the things in it.

What is your favorite quote?
Beauty is the splendor of truth. Plato.

Are you a dog person?  Cat person? An "other" person? Why?
Honestly, I’m sort of a “neither” person. I’ve never had a real attachment to pets – that sounds awful, but it’s true. I love kittens – I think they’re adorable – but I don’t think I have the patience for pets.

What is your favorite game?
Mmm tough question. I’m VERY into games. I do believe there are different games for different occasions, though. My family is deeply loyal to Scrabble. During Thanksgiving, the entire extended family has a massive Scrabble tournament – much like how other, less-nerdy families have football games in the backyard. I’m fiercely competitive with Monopoly, and I’ve been known to make my 27-year-old male cousin cry when he hits my Park Place hotels. Lately, though, I’ve been very into Apples to Apples – it’s just a great, social game to play with a lot of people.

Who is your favorite TV villain?
He’s not exactly a VILLIAN, but I love Red Foreman from That 70s Show. He’s pretty much the opposite of my own father, but I think his verbal abuse is hilarious.

Where is the one place in the world you would want to visit?
This is a mean question, because I have a million places on my wish list, and my top destination changes all the time. I go through phases – I had a major Icelandic phase, a Peruvian phase, even a Swiss phase. Right now, I would love to go to Israel. Several of my friends have recently returned from Birthright, the program that lets students of Jewish descent travel to Israel for free, and it has seriously changed their lives. I’ve never been religious at all, but I think it’s time for me to trace my roots and sort of embrace my Jewish cultural identity, even if I’m not completely sure of my religious identity.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
This is moderately embarrassing, but I’m addicted to reruns of Dawson’s Creek. It may be the cheesiest show that has ever aired, but it also captures such a pure, Americana sort of youthfulness. And the Pacey-Joey-Dawson love triangle never ceases to be entertaining.

To finish this survey, we will be stealing questions used at the end of every broadcast of Inside the Actor's Studio.  James Lipton, the host of the show, always finishes each interview with a questionnaire invented by the great Bernard Pebo.  Here goes:

-What is your favorite word?
Juxtaposition.

-What is your least favorite word?
Mucus

-What turns you on (creatively, spiritually, or emotionally)?
Really good, truthful, insightful conversation

-What turns you off?
People who don’t have any thirst to learn.

-What sound or noise do you love?
Acoustic guitar. It’s a nostalgic sound, because it reminds me of campfires at sleepaway camp and my dad playing music in our living room.

-What sound or noise do you hate?
Knuckle-cracking.

-What profession would you like to attempt?
Journalism, but I’m not yet sure which type. I’d like to work for a literary magazine…or a creative newspaper…or a travel magazine…we’ll see.

-What profession would you absolutely not like to attempt?
Anything involving mathematics.

-Finally, if Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
“It looks like you had a good time.”

To comment or debate any of my answers, or just to share your views and continue the discussion with me, be sure to head over to my message board thread! I look forward to hearing from my readers. And as always, if you have any Hopkins-related questions, don't hesitate to ask them there as well!

The Unlikely Sorority Girl

Yep, you heard it first! As of last Thursday, I am now a proud (and defensive) pledge of Alpha Phi, one of the four sororities on campus. Half the sorority girls I know say this, but I never, ever planned on becoming involved with Greek life. It just sort of ... snuck up on me.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends Lisa and Katie and I decided it'd be fun to go through RUSH - heck, we'd get to dress up, have an excuse to procrastinate, get free food, etc. My friends from home and I had pretty much promised each other that we'd never become "sorority girls" - thinking, of course, of the bleached-blonde-bimbos that you normally associate with sororities in the movies (or in real life in Southern California).

So my mentality was, "This is just for fun." The first night of RUSH, I still felt a bit distant from it, but as the days went by and the events became much more personal, I felt myself relating a LOT to girls in two of the sororities - Alpha Phi and one other. The older girls were interesting, independent, creative people who had SO much going on besides Greek life. One of my fears had been that if I joined a sorority, I would lose all my other friends, and that I wouldn't be able to be involved in my activities, etc. The older girls compelled dispelled this myth. Each one of them - especially the sisters of Alpha Phi - told me that they lived with / were still best friends with non-sorority girls, that they were involved in a million activities, and that the sorority was just like having a second home ... a group of girls to call for fun or for support, and more than anything, just another connection to the campus.

So the process became pretty emotional and definitely personal, and in the end, I decided that I wanted to be in Alpha Phi. Luckily, they felt the same way about me - and my good friend Lisa got in, as well! (As another bonus, three other SAAB members are coincidentally also members of Alpha Phi - Julia, Laura, and now Lauren as well!) So the past couple of weeks have been PRETTY busy with new-member events; for the last two Fridays, we've had "Bear Hugs", which are basically dinner parties at different girls' appartments for us to get to know the older sisters and the girls in our pledge class. It's been really great, because not only am I bonding with cool upperclassmen, but I'm becoming friends with girls in my year who I wouldn't have known otherwise.

But to expel the stereotype that sorority girls are only involved in their sororities, haha, I'll talk about the OTHER things I've been up to this past week. Last Friday, I went to see Kal Penn speak on behalf of Barack Obama. It was really cool, and I think it's awesome that celebrities can "do good" in this way that they get the word out about politics to kids who might not listen otherwise. My first article for the News-Letter also came out that day! I wrote about the skyrocketing prices of birth control at health centers across the country, and I got some pretty great feedback. For the upcoming issue, I'm working on a piece about the dangers of Adderol abuse....watch out for it! (My article, I mean, not the dangers. But watch out for those too, I suppose.)

Last Saturday, I finally made the trek to Hampden, this AMAZING neighborhood just 20 minutes away from campus. Two of my friends and I walked there and fell in LOVE with the thrift stores, the cafes, just the general bohemian ambience. I didn't want to leave, but eventually, you know, we had to. We also bought pins as a testiment to our "un-sorority" - basically my promise that I would still be loyal to my amazing friends, even with this new sisterhood around. I also bought hilarious presents for my "Valentine" - my friend Amy.

Valentine's Day was pretty lovely. I had time with my first Valentine, Amy, and then my good friend Doug took me out to dinner in Little Italy that night. The place we were supposed to go to - Aldo's - had overbooked and so there was an estimated hour's wait, EVEN with reservation! - so we ended up walking into another random Italian place, but it was still amazing - that's the great thing about Little Italy, literally all of the restaurants are worth eating at.

So, there's my busy, surprising week. I'm off to go get ready for another sorority function ... thinking about bleaching my hair blonde, too ... just kidding.

Homesick? No, more like Intersession-sick.

As my title suggests, I've had a bit of a hard time transitioning from sleeping in every day, having 3-hour lunches in the cafeteria with my friends (our new favorite hangout spot. The cafeteria workers think we're really lame, but that's okay), working for at most an hour each day, and going out every night. Sigh. It was pretty funny to watch the attitude change on campus when all the non-Intersession kids started coming back for spring semester...one of my friends pointed out that Intersession is like a private party, and when non-Intersessioners come back, everyone else just keeps talking about the party and everything they missed out on. This sounds obnoxious, but it gets the point across: DO INTERSESSION. Do it. You have no choice. (Okay, technically you do, but if you want to have the best three weeks of your life, you don't have a choice.)

Alright, after that little ode to Intersession. So classes started up, and in all honesty, despite my previous rantings, I think we were all ready for a little change and something exciting to happen, and for Hopkins kids, this can really mean classes. I'm excited about my schedule for this semester because I feel like fall was a learning curve in a lot of ways, and so this time when I registered I finally knew exactly what I wanted in classes and when I wanted them (aka: nothing before 10 am, and nothing before noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays).

So after much deliberation between Spanish and Italian (Buenos Aires or Rome? Empanadas or gelato? Oh, decisions, decisions), I chose to take Spanish, mindlessly enrolling in intro-level Spanish even though I took three years of it in high school. Erm. After two days of learning how to say "Hi, my name is Stephanie, I come from California" , I switched into the intermediate-level class that I should actually be in. Goodbye, easy A. I'm pretty excited about Social Psychology - there are literally over 300 people in this class, only because EVERYONE at Hopkins wanted to take it; Professor Drigotas is supposed to be amazing. After Psych, I have Modern Philosophy with Professor Williams, this fantastic Scottish man who goes on tangents that have taught me more in three days than a lot of classes did in high school - if that makes any sense. My friends and I started making tallies of his tangents each day, but in a really good way; I love teachers that go on educational tangents.

So thanks to the new schedule, I have those three classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and my other two classes - Introduction to Fiction & Poetry II and Imagining Revolution and Utopia - are on Tuesday and Thursday. When I first heard about this schedule change last semester, I wasn't too thrilled - I used to like having my week divided into two parts, with MTW classes and T/Th classes. But after only a week of this new schedule, I know I like it so much more. It's really nice to have a day-long break between classes, and this way I don't forget everything from my Wednesday class by the time I get back to it on Monday. So Tuesdays and Thursdays don't start until noon, which leaves me a lovely chunk of time to sleep in/have a delightfully long breakfast, and so far these are my favorite days class-wise, too. My Professor for IFP II is Glenn Blake, this incredible Southern fiction writer. He's studied under some of the greatest writers of the past few decades, he treats us like adults, and he's unapologetically opposed to all things Henry James. Needless to say, I'm really excited for this class. My last course, Imagining Revolution and Utopia, was a very whim-decision sort of class. I had one more slot open, and I've always had an interest in the concept of Utopia - and how revolutions have tried to achieve this - but I had never studied it too intensely. I'm really curious about how this class will turn out, but it should be interesting.

Even aside from classes, the past couple of weeks have been incredibly busy. Last weekend, one of my best friends, Lilah, came to visit. She's considering transferring here, so I obviously wanted to show her the best possible view of Hopkins. It ended up being an awesome way for me to evaluate my time here, too. On Friday, we went to a stand-up comedy show that was put on by 16 students as the "final project" of their intersession class. A few of my friends were performing, and so I had planned to come out to support them, but I didn't realize what a HUGE event this would turn out to be - apparently, something like 15% of the student body came to see the performance! All the comedians/students were hilarious, and you could tell they worked so hard on their acts. It was great for Lilah, too, because as she said, it was like "meeting 16 different Hopkins students" - all with completely different personalities, majors, backgrounds, and things to bring to the [comedic] table. On Saturday, we had planned to go explore Hamden - but we ended up sitting in the cafeteria for four and a half hours with my friends, having every kind of conversation (and eating everything the FFC had to offer). What can I say? We're cafeteria nerds. Later, I took Lilah to Donna's, my favorite restaurant on St. Paul Street, and then we ended up having a random and fabulous night out with a big group of people. It was sad to say goodbye the next day, but seeing Hopkins through her eyes made me appreciate it all that much more.

This past weekend has been great, too - we decided to do something a little different on Friday night and check out the Ottobar, which (despite its name) is not really a bar but an awesome concert venue. My friend Kendall, who is from Baltimore and is therefore our source on all hip Baltimore happenings, heard about a techno dance party that was supposed to be (...every college student's dream:) FREE and fun! We got a group together and took the free shuttle to the club, and spent the night dancing away. It was amazing, and we were all so pumped afterwards that we ended up walking all the way back home.

I've gotten REALLY involved with activities since the semester started - for some reason, this helped me transition back into school, knowing that I had other things to do besides work. I picked up writing for the News-Letter, something I had planned to do all first semester and never quite got around to, and wrote my first article on the detrimental effects of the price increases for birth control and other contraceptives. I also joined the Tutorial Project, this great group that meets with local elementary school kids twice a week to tutor them in reading and math. I start training for that next week, and I'm really excited. Lastly - and this is something that I never really thought I'd do until about two hours before I showed up - I decided to RUSH. Honestly, I've never thought of myself as a "sorority girl", but the Greek system at Hopkins is so not stereotypical; none of the sororities have houses, and all the girls are involved in so many activities outside of the sorority that it really doesn't define them. Two of my close friends and I decided to try it out, and even though the first day was loooong (four and a half hours!) I knew at the end of it that it was the right decision. I met so many fantastic girls that day, not just in the sororities but in my pledge class, and yesterday (the second day of RUSH) was the same way. It's certainly time-consuming - tomorrow I have another four hours of RUSH, sheesh - but I'm enjoying it, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Alright, I should really get off to bed since it's after 3 am now...I started this blog at around 10 pm, but got very distracted by listening to old camp songs in my friend Amy's room. Oh, the craziness of Sunday nights.

Good Decisions

I'm currently writing this blog from my favorite comfy spot in Cafe Q, at a table next to the window (so I can see the snow falling everywhere!), while I sip a hot vanilla latte. Perfection.

I know I just wrote a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't help but want to write again. I have so much to say about Intersession, and how amazing it's been! Let me just say that my slightly-spontaneous decision to come back to Baltimore for Intersession was one of the best choices I've made so far at Hopkins. The past two weeks have been the most fun/relaxing weeks I've had here so far. Well, maybe besides Orientation. Come to think of it, both those time periods have something to do with the lack of schoolwork ... hmm, I sense a pattern.

Anyway. In my last entry, I mentioned how I planned to take Italian over Intersession. Fortunately or unfortunately, the dang Registrar wouldn't let me sign up for three credits, so instead I enrolled in a one-credit course called "Writing About Yourself" and planned to switch it to Italian in person on the first day of Intersession. Before I could do that, though, I decided to attend just one "Writing About Yourself class" - mostly because it was January 7th and there was nobody on campus yet - and I'm so glad I did! Maybe it's narcissism, maybe it's fate (okay, probably the former) but I LOVED this class! There were about 14 students in the class, from all different grades, and we focused on writing and reading memoirs, and how to turn personal experiences - even the most trivial ones - into interesting stories.

I decided to stay in the class, and instead of enrolling in Italian as well (that would be too many credits for intersession - you're only allowed to take three, and Italian is a three-credit course by itself) I signed up for the two-credit, ambiguously named "Journalism Institute." I was HUGELY into my high school newspaper, especially in my junior and senior year, and although I haven't had much time to get involved in the News-Letter here (I plan to make time this semester! I'll do it! I will!) I really miss talking about, writing about, and generally being surrounded by journalism.

Once again, I made a great decision! While my "Writing About Yourself" course ended this week, Journalism meets for all three weeks of intersession, every morning from 9-11. I would typically avoid a 9 am class at all costs, but it's been surprisingly easy to drag myself out of bed every morning because this course is AWESOME. The teacher is this incredibly brilliant man named Russell Smith who has been the Editor of four different publications - he started City Paper while he was still a student at Hopkins, and he ran the New York Press for a long time - and, suffice it to say, he has a lot of experience with the journalism industry.

There are only six students in the class, and we pretty much sit around for two hours and drink coffee and talk about politics, sports, controversial medicine, student rights, drug usage, and pretty much anything that you can think of to cover. Russell teaches in a really tangential way, and the first day I was kind of like, "How does this relate to journalism....?" but I quickly realized that this loose, frenetic, creative style of discussion is what inspires most of the articles that newspapers choose to cover. Incredible. Of course it's a much more laid-back environment than any other class I've taken at Hopkins, and that has something to do with the nature of Intersession, but I still feel like I'm getting a lot out of it - maybe nothing tangible, but definitely something.

ASIDE from classes, I've just LOVED being on campus with so few students around. That might sound anti-social, but it's really the opposite. With only about 1/5 of the freshman class on campus (I'm just estimating, that's definitely not an exact figure), I've had a lot of time to meet/get closer with people I didn't spend as much time with last semester. Although my hall is pretty desolate (it's pretty much just me, my roommate Lauren, and my friend Doug) a lot of my friends from other floors/buildings are here. Many of them have been participating in the Wilderness First Response program (I'll let JHU_Rob talk more about this!) and therefore are pretty exhausted by the time they get out of class, but they've still been up for hanging out - whether it's a night on the town, a luxurious three-hour dinner at the FFC, or simply a night of just hanging around the common rooms, watching Planet Earth and playing board games.

While we wait for the rest of the kids to stop tromping around in the "wilderness" of Balitmore, my friend Amy and I have taken it upon ourselves to have a lot of adventures. One day, we decided to dress up in our most ridiculous clothing and take pictures of ourselves in various random places around campus - Cafe Q, Gilman Hall, etc. We even went to dinner dressed like that. We attracted a few stares, but it was a great time. The next day, we dressed up in really fancy clothes for no good reason (have you noticed a theme? We like to play dress-up) and went to dinner at Donna's, this great Italian place on St. Paul street. For some reason, the website isn't letting me upload any more pictures right now, but I'll add those later.

Okay, I'm off to go drag my friends outside for a snowball fight. I'll leave you on this note: INTERSESSION=AMAZING! I never want it to end. Except I guess we have to get around to that whole "class" thing sometime...hmm.