Hopkins Interactive Guest Blog

Guest Blog on Winter Break 2010

A busy fall semester has come to a close bringing winter break and intersession upon us!  For those unfamiliar, intersession is the three-week period in January, during which students can stay at home for an extended break, or come back to campus to take a variety of unique classes or just hang out with friends and enjoy their time off in Baltimore.  For more information and to see some of this year's offerings, be sure to take a look at the 2010 Intersession website. 

While the Guest Blog will be on break during intersession, we're looking forward to a very exciting spring semester and hope you'll be back to join us in February.  In the mean time, check out our blogs from the semester, all wonderful entries on a wide range of topics:

12.24.09: Kristine - Multicultural Groups at Hopkins

"My friends always say that I have more clubs than classes. Many of my activities range from committees, advisory boards, volunteer groups, dance, and multicultural student groups. Spreading multicultural awareness on campus is close to my heart, so I’ll tell you about 2 of them that were created to assist multicultural students—SSS and MAPP."

12.21.09: Julia - Boogie Down in Baltimore

"While I have thoroughly enjoyed my academic experiences at Hopkins, the one thing I look forward to most in the week is dance. Not only is it a great way to keep in shape, but its also fun and it can work to help you unwind after a tough week. Here on campus, there are tons off dance groups to choose from. It was really hard for me to decide, but I ended up settling on Ole Latin dance and Eclectics."

12.17.09: Tabitha - Fun During Finals

"Anyway, I wanted to mention this because I was one of the few people who had finished finals, so I wanted to show you all that people still have fun during finals period!"

12.14.09: Sarah - Balancing Act
"That is the million-dollar question. Sometimes, I don’t even know how I manage to pass Organic Chemistry and stay involved with six outside activities in college. But then I ask myself if I really want to be locked in my dorm room twenty-four/seven studying carbon-carbon bonds and reaction mechanisms. The answer: Absolutely not. And therein lies the answer to the question: Balance."

12.10.09: Daniel - Teaching About the Social Web
"It was excellent teaching the course.  I received a real appreciation of what it takes to build a course from just an idea to making the course successful for all of my students.  This level of experience I personally feel is only available from teaching an entire course."

12.07.09: Hannah - Toward the Saving of Sweatshirts
"If that girl from two years ago, preserved true to emotional form, could see me now, she would wonder at the fact of my existence.  How could it be that I did not simply cease to exist the moment it became clear I was not going to my first-choice school?"

12.03.09: Laura - Hopkins Soccer
"I started thinking that I actually might have a chance of continuing my athletic career and playing soccer in college. I had never really thought about varsity athletics beyond high school because I never considered myself good enough to play at the next level.  Plus, I was supposed to be focused on schoolwork.  But after careful consideration, I finally decided to email the coach."

11.30.09: Anna - Life in Technicolor
"Daydreams are all well and good, but honestly, when I decided to attend Hopkins last spring, I had no idea what to expect.  Looking at my life, I realized that I had spent the past nine years at a tiny independent school in Athens, Georgia and was about to graduate alongside the same 62 kids that I had known for most of my life.  What was I getting myself into? Needless to say, I was terrified at the prospect of moving over 600 miles away to attend a school several times larger than I was sure my comfort zone could handle.  Before I knew it (or could accept it), it was move-in day."

11.26.09: Laurin - Back On My Feet
"An Internet search taught us that Back On My Feet is a group that organizes running clubs at homeless shelters. It started in Philadelphia and now has a chapter in Baltimore. After attending an orientation session, Charlotte and I became official “non-res members” (meaning we don’t live at the shelter) of one of the 4 BOMF clubs here in the city. We get up around 5 a.m. on Friday mornings (sooo early, I know—but it’s only once a week!) and head down to the shelter in order to start running with our new friends by 5:30."

11.23.09: Adam - Notes from a Hopkins Teaching Assistant
"The way I teach is really the way I learn: through problem-oriented, question-driven discussion.  I always try to bring the conversation back to the historian we’re reading: Why did she choose the evidence she chose? How is she using it?  What is her argument?  Do we agree?  Why not?"

11.19.09: Katie - Salaamaalekum ci Senegal (Greetings from Senegal)
"I knew I wanted to study abroad starting in high school, and maybe even earlier. I had imagined myself going to France, given the fact that I started taking French in middle school. I definitely surprised people when I announced I wanted to study abroad in Dakar, Senegal. West Africa is certainly a world away from Europe."

11.16.09: Kim - The Vocal Chords Experience
"A cappella has been infused in every aspect of my college life.  I’ve always been a singer. I planned on trying out for a variety of music groups in college, but I didn’t expect that the one I joined would affect my entire undergraduate experience."

11.12.09: Neha - International Conference on Birth Defects & Disabilities in India
"My goal at the 4th International conference was not only to represent March of Dimes Team Youth, but to relay the importance of “The Power of Youth in Global Public Health.” My presentation offered strategies for mobilizing young professionals in developing countries to help reduce the rates of death and disability from preterm birth and birth defects in local communities."

11.09.09: Sam - London Calling
"After looking at the course catalog (which was essentially perfection for someone with my interests), I made up my mind that instant. I knew that I would be spending next semester in the land of the Beatles, royalty, and – most importantly – afternoon tea."

11.04.09: Kit - L'automne à Paris
"To get to class every day I have to take a 30 minute bus ride. That might sound pretty terrible to you… except I forgot to tell you that I live in PARIS! So, my bus ride isn’t just any bus ride. I get to drive down the Champs-Elysees, cross the Seine, see the Eiffel Tower in the distance and catch a glimpse of the spire of Notre Dame. All on my way to class. No biggie."

Multicultural Groups at Hopkins

Name: Kristine Carter

Year: Class of 2012

Hometown: Baltimore, MD

Major: Civil Engineering

************************************************************************************************ 
Extracurricular activities—some do it to fill up resumes, or to help them get into grad school. I do them because they make life so much more fun and exciting! Wikipedia states that “On average, in the United States, many students participate in a minimum of one extracurricular activity throughout the course of one school year.” But that’s unacceptable for me, because I’m not average. I’ve always known that. I mean what eleven year old says they want to be a civil engineer (random right?!) My friends always say that I have more clubs than classes. Many of my activities range from committees, advisory boards, volunteer groups, dance, and multicultural student groups. Spreading multicultural awareness on campus is close to my heart, so I’ll tell you about 2 of them that were created to assist multicultural students—SSS and MAPP.

The story of me getting becoming involved in SSS and MAPP began the summer before I officially stepped foot onto campus as a freshman. That summer I received a letter asking if I wanted to sign up for two multicultural student groups, Mentoring Assistance Peer Program (known on campus as MAPP) and Student Success Series (SSS), that were intended to help me, as a minority student, have a better transition to Hopkins. Optimistically I replied that I would join both organizations because they sounded fun—and without a doubt, they were. 

For SSS, we moved onto campus a few days earlier than everyone else did, then we attended a retreat where we learned about study techniques, what some typical days in the life of Hopkins students were like, and of course what college retreat would be complete without icebreakers?   Soon after our retreat, the first week of freshman year began, and thanks to SSS I had already formed relationships with many other multicultural students, who were also in many of my classes as well.
 

 

By the second week of classes when I got an email inviting me to a MAPP barbecue, I’d almost forgotten I was in that club too. So what is MAPP? It’s a program aimed at giving incoming multicultural freshmen a mentor for one on one support during the usually tumultuous freshman year. Incoming freshmen sign up for the program and are assigned to a MAPP mentor based on personal interest as well as major. Each mentor is assigned about 5 freshmen, and a group of about 4 mentors and their mentees create what we call a MAPP family. So, I arrived and was introduced to my MAPP mentor, Ryan. And we sat in our MAPP families and got to know each other a bit better. We later had a “family event” where we baked cookies and played charades, our most memorable night of the year. And other MAPP events like freshmen study sessions, trips to Arundel Mills Mall, Laser tag, field day, Relay for Life and MAPP spring formal made my freshmen truly unforgettable. Not to mention I met a lot of my close friends from MAPP. 

   

 
And by my spring semester I knew that I wanted to make someone else’s freshmen year just as fun and unforgettable. So I applied to be become a MAPP mentor, and after many interview processes and training sessions I’m pleased to say that I became one! And this year MAPP is even better than before with new   events like Ginger bread cookie baking and decorating, international cuisine dinners, bowling, study break session (with a ton of food and games) and more. MAPP has definitely made this the best year at Hopkins for me. I can’t wait to see what happens in the upcoming spring semester. 

So if you are ever sitting at home one day and an opportunity comes your way to do something, that maybe you didn’t think you were interested in, you never know, it could be the experience of a lifetime…so try it! My interest in promoting multicultural and ethnic diversity and awareness led me to join these two groups, and I haven’t looked back since!

Boogie Down in Baltimore

Name: Julia Garrison

Year: Class of 2012

Hometown: Nashville, TN

Major: Sociology, Public Health (Social Sciences concentration)

************************************************************************************************
While I have thoroughly enjoyed my academic experiences at Hopkins, the one thing I look forward to most in the week is dance. Not only is it a great way to keep in shape, but its also fun and it can work to help you unwind after a tough week. Here on campus, there are tons off dance groups to choose from. It was really hard for me to decide, but I ended up settling on Ole Latin dance and Eclectics.            
Through Ole, I have not only learned tango, salsa, and meringue, but we also get to perform our pieces around 15 times a year. We perform at the cultural block party, opening and closing ceremonies of La Organization Latina Estudantil, showcases of other groups, as well as a variety of campus events. The thing I have found most rewarding about Ole dance is that we also perform at community events. For example, as a celebration of Latino Heritage month, we went down to a local elementary school in the Latino area of Baltimore and got to perform for the entire school and their families. We also got to perform as a part of a public health project in an attempt to draw more people to the community center for vaccines and other health information. Dance has always been something that’s made me happy, but it’s been great being able to share it with the community as well.            

Eclectics is a fusion dance group that teaches everything from hip hop to jazz, modern, tap, lyrical, and everything in between. This group has been a great outlet because it provides the opportunity to push your comfort zone and try a style you’ve never tried before. In this group, you can also choreograph. I just finished choreographing a 4 minute hip hop piece for this semester and have already begun a musical theater one for next semester. As a group, we also get to perform several times a year and we even have our very own showcase that happens every spring. Last year, we had the privilege of getting to teach dance at a local elementary school and then we invited them to perform at our showcase. We then collected donations to help their arts program at their school.           
Not only are there tons of other dance groups on campus, but there is also a lot of dance in the greater Baltimore area! Recently, the Monsters of Hip Hop came and taught classes at a nearby studio. There was also an event with classes taught by Magic Mike, who appeared on America’s Best Dance Crew as a member of the Boogie Bots.            
Coupled with my love for dance is my love for music. One of my favorite classes that I have ever taken at Hopkins was taught during Intersession as a part of our sociology department. It was called “Pop Music, Pop Culture, and Politics in the United States” and it was about how music was used as a form of social protest and mirrored social movement. We covered everything from punk rock, to Woodstock, hip hop to straight edge, and everything in between. It’s classes like these that make me remember why I chose to come to Hopkins. They really do a great job of providing a way to combine interests with academics and look at things in a new way. Like in this class, I’ve found all my other classes to be just as engaging. One thing that’s also unique about Hopkins classes is that while they are interesting, they also all seem to have a practical purpose. I leave classes here feeling like I can apply what I learned to real life or a possible career, which is really reassuring. Between fulfilling my artistic curiosity and providing me with a set plan and practical application for my life post-college, Hopkins has really been everything I expected it to be. It challenges me in new ways and forces me to grow and learn in ways that I hadn’t anticipated before.

Fun During Finals

Name: Tabitha Moses

Year: Class of 2011

Hometown: Oxford, England

Major: Cognitive Science, Philosophy

************************************************************************************************

So, finals are over for me, and I have a blog to write. I have just got no idea what to write about. I don’t want to ramble about finals; I think there are enough regular bloggers who are telling you all about their finals and what finals are like here at Hopkins.
I am currently going through the post finals clean up and catch up. When finals come I’m sure most people would agree that cleaning (unless you’re procrastinating) and extracurricular stuff go out the window, so now I have to clean the mess out of our living room. I would like to point out that most of this mess is due to a cat who likes to knock all glasses over in an attempt to drink whatever was inside. Needless to say there is a lot of sticky, soggy paper lying around the room.

This is a picture of Oscar trying to look innocent after making a mess.
(and yes, I do like to post pictures of my cats in every blog!)

Anyway, I am glad my finals are over, and after my last final on Saturday afternoon, I came home to finds my house full of people and very good food! One of my housemates was hosting a   Chanukah potluck. Everyone was invited, not just real Jews (lucky for me) and everyone brought something to eat. What was most interesting is that my housemate is vegan, so most of the food was vegan; I enjoyed seeing what sort of food people tried to make! This picture here is of everyone lighting the collection of Menorahs, a tradition that concerned me a little considering we had to leave them lit, and the food table was right next to the Menorah table, and people were very desperate for food! Luckily, no one got hurt, although a lot of people did get attacked by food if they crowded around the food table for too long: I’m not looking forward to cleaning apple sauce of the rug!

Anyway, I wanted to mention this because I was one of the few people who had finished finals, so I wanted to show you all that people still have fun during finals period! On this note, I am going out somewhere else tonight because another friend of mine is having a thanksgiving dinner. You may ask why, but I’m not entirely sure! Originally he was going to have it the Sunday after thanksgiving, but then things got busy, so now it’s tonight. I’m really looking forward to it, he’s doing all the cooking, and making real food: turkey, or eggplant parm (depending on your meat eating leanings), mashed potatoes, corn, salad, garlic bread, biscuits, and for dessert: apple pie, cherry pie, and ice cream. AND for a little bit of festivity, egg nog! For someone like me, who is far to lazy to cook, this is heaven!

Speaking of my very lazy cooking habits, there is something I have to bring up (actually, I have been told by JHU_Jackie that I have to bring it up), and that is my minor addiction to Carma’s café www.carmascafe.com. It’s right next to campus, and is, in fact, on my way home from campus, which is really the only reason I’m there every day! They really do have a great selection of everything, and it’s the only place other than my house that I can actually get any work done, which is good. Anyway, my point is, if you come visit Hopkins, Carma’s is a great place to go to if you want to grab something to eat.

It’s not just me that likes the place. In a recent article, the New York times wrote about them. Actually, if you are planning a visit to Hopkins any time soon and are wondering what you can do in the area, this is actually a very useful article. The article is about 36 hours in Baltimore, and what you can do, and they seem to agree with most of us on Hopkins Interactive that there is a lot to do around Baltimore, and that it is actually an interesting city.

Well, on that note, I’m off to go find something fun to do. I think I should probably start my Christmas shopping! Good luck to all you early decision kids out there.
Stop back at the guest blog for more from me in January when I tell you stories about my great winter break, and how awesome intersession is (not just the classes, but also fun extracurriculars you can take part in).

**Editor's Note: Be sure to check out Tabitha's previous guest blog entries!**
My Jet-Setting Summer, Classaholic, Fall Break, What's Up In Wolman 3 East and Hopkins from the International Perspective.

Balancing Act

Name: Sarah Capponi

Year: Class of 2012

Hometown: New Hope, PA

Major: Writing Seminars, Psychology Minor

************************************************************************************************

One of my favorite extracurricular activities is Blue Key Society, in which I give tours of the gorgeous Hopkins campus to prospective applicants and students. At the beginning of the tour, I stand outside Mason Hall and give this little blurb about myself:“Hi guys, welcome to Hopkins. My name is Sarah, and I’m a sophomore in the School of Arts and Sciences. On campus, I write for the JHU News-Letter, tutor with the Johns Hopkins Tutorial Project, am Social Chair on the Club Tennis Team, am a Resident Advisory Board Director, and am involved with Hopkins Hosting Society!”

At this point, only about a minute and a half into my tour, multiple jaws invariably drop to the floor in utter shock – and they haven’t even seen the Mock Operating Room in CSEB yet. Someone in my group whistles in appreciation, and then a worried prospective stammers out, “How do you do all that and still have time for schoolwork?”    That is the million-dollar question. Sometimes, I don’t even know how I manage to pass Organic Chemistry and stay involved with six outside activities in college. But then I ask myself if I really want to be locked in my dorm room twenty-four/seven studying carbon-carbon bonds and reaction mechanisms. The answer: Absolutely not. And therein lies the answer to the question: Balance.

It’s super easy to get involved in any one of Hopkins’ 320 different groups. Almost too easy, in fact. There’s a huge Student Activities Fair in the Recreation Center on the first Friday of fall semester. I went, and probably signed up for about twenty things, just by putting my name and email address on a sheet of paper. When I started getting zillions of emails from these groups, I quickly realized there weren’t enough hours in the day for me to do all the things I’d signed up for, so I chose the ones I was really interested in and went to those meetings. (I was really sad, though, when I couldn’t continue to learn how to bellydance – my body just doesn’t seem to want to move like that.) My freshman year, I dabbled in a ton of stuff. Some of it, like the bellydancing, wasn’t meant to be – I went to two or three meetings and then just lost interest. That was fine by me – if I wasn’t going to be passionate about it, why bother? Other things, like Blue Key and Club Tennis and Tutorial Project, were perfect for me. They energized me; going to those activities was a break from classes, and especially when I was frustrated, teaching third grade math somehow made my stress level decrease.

I know all the statistics about involved students – they’re more likely to actually do better academically than those uninvolved, and I can see why that’s true. Being highly involved forces me to make a schedule for myself, one where I knock my homework and studying out during designated blocks of time and then dash off to my much more enjoyable activities, like tutoring Monica, my third-grade tutee, or hitting tennis balls with the Club team. Like I said before, if I had nothing to do but sit in my room all day and read my textbooks, I would probably go crazy. Mad scientist crazy, hair and all.

Getting involved is also a really social thing. In every group, you not only have the opportunity to meet new freshmen who share the same interests, but also to meet upperclassmen, who are a wealth of knowledge and advice about classes, professors, and tons of other stuff. Getting involved in one thing and meeting people in those groups also introduces you to other activities you’d never considered, but after talking about a different activity with someone involved with it, you find your own interest piqued, and hear yourself saying, “That actually sounds fun and something I’d like to try.”

Obviously, I don’t recommend six activities as the magic number or anything like that. Six is perfect for me this semester; next semester, it might be five and following, it might be seven. I do recommend planning out a schedule and staying on top of your academic work. Academics always come first for me, and every student’s respective course load dictates much of the level of outside commitment he or she can maintain. But not getting involved at all? You would miss out on so much of the richness within the Hopkins community – and trust me, staring at textbooks and the four walls of your room gets boring after about a month.

I don’t plan on quitting any of my activities. In fact, I plan on adding more to my schedule. I’ll keep up the balancing act, and never think twice about my life without being involved in my dynamic, vibrant community. My life at Hopkins is enriched in countless ways by the extracurricular activities I am involved in and by the people I have met through them.

Teaching About the Social Web

Name: Daniel Mirota

Year: 4th year Graduate Student

Hometown: Flemington, NJ

Major: Ph.D. in Computer Science, focus in medical applications of Computer Vision

*************************************************************************************************************************************************

By now, many folks around campus may have noticed the film crew that was on campus in the first week of November.  They were filming for The Social Network the upcoming film about the start of facebook.  The film crew being around reminded me of the course I taught with Carol Reiley, “Computer Vision Application for Online Social Networks” or informally facebook 101.  I wouldn’t doubt most of the readings of this blog have a facebook account. 

It was my first time teaching, aside from being a TA.  Carol and I worked tirelessly to complete the design of the course and write the curriculum.  We even stayed on campus through New Years to have the course ready for intersession. 

When intersession started, we had ~150 slides for the first week of class.  With this many slides we though the slides would last to entire week.  However, we used them all in the first day and found that we needed to quickly work to keep up with the class.

Our class was the first time, to our knowledge, a facebook computer vision application course was taught at Hopkins.  Teaching a class so fresh and current I found very exciting.  As Carol and I researched the different features of facebook we discovered many interesting parts of the facebook API and what possibilities were available for Adobe Flash and other multimedia application. 

By the end of the course Carol and I were both very impressed by all of the student projects.  We presented a tough course covering a broad range of topics from a brief history of facebook, to basic computer vision methods and developing in a web framework.  All of our students did a wonderful job.

Overall, while taxing at times and requiring some late nights, teaching the course was very rewarding.  Hopkins gave us a great environment to teach in.  Carol and I also thank the Digital Media Center (DMC) for finding our curriculum an innovative use of technology and granting us funds to purchase webcams and wii-motes.  Both of which are available for student projects at the DMC.  So take advantage of the DMC anytime you can.  They have many resources for all of your media needs.  As well as people there to help with their service and don’t forget the game room.

It was excellent teaching the course.  I received a real appreciation of what it takes to build a course from just an idea to making the course successful for all of my students.  This level of experience I personally feel is only available from teaching an entire course.  While my experience TA was also satisfying, it was simply not the same.

Toward the Saving of Sweatshirts

Name: Hannah Reade Joo

Year: Class of 2012

Hometown: Seattle, WA

Majors: Neuroscience

************************************************************************************************************************

I’m on a plane flying back to Hopkins from Seattle, which is a pain because there isn’t a single airline that believes, during non-summer months, that there is a need for a direct flight between Seattle and Baltimore.  AirTran believes it only seasonally and every summer they offer a direct flight.  In four hours, after a plane change in Philadelphia, I’ll land in Baltimore.  I’ll see it out the window before we touch down, and just like every other time, no matter how tired I am, I’ll feel this little thrill.

Two years ago today, I was probably on the Stanford University website ogling pictures of Hoover Tower. I had wanted to go there for college since I was fifteen—I had wanted desperately to go there—and my obsession peaked shortly after I turned in my early application in the Fall of my senior year.  By that time, it had been years since I had started wearing my homemade tank top with ironed-on felt letters that read, “IWGITS,” for “I will get into Stanford,” every night to bed.  I refused to tell anyone what the letters stood for, preferring to keep my obsession secret. I truly believed that if only I wore that tank top enough, if I kept learning and working hard and becoming my best self, everything would work out exactly the way I had planned it. If that girl from two years ago, preserved true to emotional form, could see me now, she would wonder at the fact of my existence.  How could it be that I did not simply cease to exist the moment it became clear I was not going to my first-choice school? 

It was my father’s idea that I apply to Hopkins, and even by my senior year in high school I wasn’t convinced I’d want to actually attend.  I missed the interview date and I neglected to send any of my columns from the city paper, which I painstakingly cut out to send to Stanford; given the relative amount of effort I put in, it’s a small miracle I was accepted.

During my junior year in high school, I applied to the Stanford Summer College program and waited for a group of nameless, faceless St. Peters, steeped frustratingly in the subjective stuff of humanity, to make an objective decision about whether to open their gates to me for the summer.  Meanwhile, my mother took me to the East Coast to look at other schools. I was subtly unkind about all but one of them.  U Penn smelled, Yale failed to resonate with me, I was “saving” Boston for graduate school, the Princeton tour bored me and its thick booklet on its diversity made me suspicious.  The only school we visited that that I liked, and that I have any photographic record of being at, is Hopkins. The night we first drove through campus, I saw people exercising three floors up in Charles Commons and was thrilled at the thought of living there.  The next morning, I heard a student at admissions speak about being a philosophy and neuroscience double major, and since that was what I wanted to do at the time, I secretly considered it a Sign. The classes I attended excited me, and the neuroscience program looked fabulous.  It was the only school at which I could really envision myself; but still, there was Stanford, and I was reluctant to admit I might ever like another school more.  Before we left campus, I bought a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. 

At Hopkins junior year of high school

At the end of our East Coast College Tour, my dad called to tell me Stanford had sent a letter and accepted me to their summer program, which sent me into a month-long fit of general ecstasy. I was obnoxiously overjoyed once I got there, too, which prompted even my truest friend to write requesting, jokingly, that I “please, for the rest of our sakes, tone it down.”  It wasn’t an unreasonable request.  I still can’t comfortably cite San Francisco, the undergraduate neuroscience program, or the people I met there as reasons I wanted to go there and feel like I’m giving a complete explanation of feelings at the time.  For anyone who has ever been truly, madly, unsaveably in love for the first time, that is what it felt like.  My reasons were beyond the realm of reason, and perhaps that made it idiotic—but whether it was or was utterly irrelevant, because it could not be helped. 

At the top of Hoover Tower, Stanford University, summer after junior year

For the most part, I forgot about Hopkins completely.

In December of my senior year, Stanford deferred my application to the pool of regular applicants and in April they rejected me.  I spent an afternoon clipping the letters off the sweatshirt I had bought at the Stanford bookstore the previous summer, until it read not “Stanford,” but “Stand.” Last summer I went at it with the scissors again and clipped away the rest of the letters.  It had finally started looking silly to me.

This year, I live on the ninth floor of Charles Commons.  Some evenings I like walking by outside so I can look up at it from street level the way I did the first time I visited Hopkins. I live in a suite with three other girls, just down the hall from where my boyfriend and some of my closest friends live.  Our suite is always stocked with fat-free frozen yogurt and the best vegetables Charles St. Market had to offer that day, and because we mysteriously have free cable, there are almost always people in our living room.  Down the hall, they’re usually playing competitive Uno with rules they’re always modifying.  They spend evenings doing things like learning Morse code off cereal boxes so they can try, in vain, to communicate with people in nearby apartment buildings via flashlight.  I often walk in to find them the throwing across the room the molecular models we all got for organic chemistry. Cyclohexane is a favorite.   

 My room in Charles Commons

In just three semesters, Hopkins has left me a more concentrated and distilled version of who I was two years ago. I’ve had many truly excellent writing, math, and science classes, and they have made my thought process both cleaner and more creative. I work in two labs, a vision lab in Seattle and a learning and memory lab in Baltimore, and I love both of them. I’ve presented a poster at two meetings, and I’ve discovered that this is one of my favorite things to do. Because Johns Hopkins has been able to forgive me for not recognizing its greatness from the beginning, it has awarded me Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the money from which I plan to use on independent projects in the two labs.  I am also toying with the idea of also using some of my money to travel and work on a fiction-writing project.  Just the thought of any of these projects has me grinning like an overambitious lunatic hovering some 30,000 feet up in the air between Seattle and Philadelphia. Thank you, Johns Hopkins.

 Getting ready to present my poster from the Dacey lab at the Fall Vision Meeting for the Optical Society of America; next to me is the graduate student, Jo, who works in my lab. She is charming, brilliant, Australian, and my hero.

Lest I sound too much like those suspicious people who have terrible things happen to them (loss of spouses, jobs, limbs, etc.) and then claim these were the Best Experiences of Their Lives and they feel no sadness when they think about it now, let me acknowledge that when, last week, I had to sign in on the Stanford website and order an official copy of my transcript from the summer I spent there, I was not exactly filled with joy. When I’m reminded, it still upsets me that I failed so thoroughly to meet one of my longest-standing goals, but I’m also coming to understand how arrogant it was of me to think that I alone could ever ensure they let me in.  As in romantic relationships (of which I had one that paralleled my experience with Stanford and, curiously, taught me some of the same lessons), you’re never completely in control, and, by definition, it all works out.

As I told my academic advisor a month ago, I feel that by ending up at Hopkins and not Stanford, I dodged a very large, very attractive bullet. That is not to say it would be for everyone, but for me it was, because I would have been missing out on Hopkins.  Given the stochasticity and the subjectivity of admissions committees and of all the other forces at work in the universe, I consider myself extremely lucky. 

I guess there are two goals I have in writing this, the first of which is that I can convince people who are unsure that Hopkins could be an amazing place for them and that they should do their very best not to miss the interview deadline.  The second goal is more targeted, directed at anyone out there who, like my past self, has ever looked at a picture of Hoover tower or any correlate and felt that particularly powerful hybrid emotion that results when hope, ambition, wistfulness, and the insecurity of being seventeen are allowed to steep for too long in a very young heart. I very sincerely hope that if things don’t turn out the way you expect or want them to be, you don’t take it out on any of your sweatshirts. If you do, it will be the only remaining scar in a few years, and you’ll regret that whenever you’re looking for a sweatshirt, the first one available makes you look like a hobo because of all the holes.

Hopkins Soccer

Name: Laura Moody

Year: Class of 2013

Hometown: Rancho Palo Verdes, CA

Majors: Neuroscience, Applied Math

************************************************************************************************************************

 When applying to college I had only one thing in mind: academics.  From day one, my parents had made it clear that a good education was top priority.  So when I was making my final decision, Hopkins stood out and seemed like the perfect academic match for me.  Like every other excited incoming freshman, I began to peruse the website and the numerous pamphlets, looking at all the opportunities and campus activities.  After countless hours of research, I came to the realization that Hopkins was more than just an academic powerhouse; it also had a competitive Division III athletic program.  Sure, everyone knew about the famous Hopkins Lacrosse team, but other sports teams seemed relatively unknown.  I started thinking that I actually might have a chance of continuing my athletic career and playing soccer in college.  I had never really thought about varsity athletics beyond high school because I never considered myself good enough to play at the next level.  Plus, I was supposed to be focused on schoolwork.  But after careful consideration, I finally decided to email the coach.  I waited for a reply, hoping that he wouldn’t dismiss me as just another player.  But by the end of June, it was official: I was to come to Baltimore a week before move in day and tryout during preseason.  I didn’t know whether to be excited or scared or anxious.  All I knew was that my plans had changed and I was ready to see what happened next.

I arrived on August 21st.  Stumbling into my bare room in AMR, I half expected to find my roommate already there to greet me.  But upon examining my room and exploring the entire dorm, I realized that I was in fact the only student in the whole building (I later found out that almost all the other athletes lived in Wolman).  It was hot and humid, yet I managed to unload my two enormous suitcases from the car and unpack just enough clothes and bedding to get me through the week.  I didn’t want to completely settle in just in case my roommate had other ideas about furniture arrangement.  It was my first day at college.  I was alone in a half-inhabited room 3000 miles away from home.

The next few days were a blur.  Three practices a day, team dinners, weekend scrimmages; it was a tad overwhelming to say the least.  Not only was it physically demanding, but meeting 25 new girls was also a challenge.  Awkward silences dominated our conversations.  While the upperclassmen talked and joked, we freshmen huddled together and kept to ourselves.  But things got better after a few days as we got to know each other and become more comfortable in our new environment.  The freshmen naturally became friends and the other classes eventually warmed up to us.  The upperclassmen were more than happy to share their traumatic college stories, being sure to add pieces of advice here and there.  We spent almost every waking hour with each other and bonded over our intense soccer schedule and the anticipation of the start of the school year.

The next week was more hectic than the first.  Students were moving in and the hallways were filled with unfamiliar voices.  I started to miss having the whole dorm to myself.  Once again, I had to go through the painstaking process of meeting everyone in the dorm.  But once again, we eventually broke through the awkward phase and became more relaxed around each other.  Before classes began, most of my day was consumed with soccer.  Even during orientation, I had to miss many of the activities to attend practice and scrimmages.  However, my schedule became more consistent with the start of school: class in the morning, lunch, free time, soccer practice, homework.  Balancing soccer and schoolwork was less challenging than I predicted.  I had plenty of time to finish homework and study for tests, and I even had time to play a casual game of Rock Band here or there or watch an episode of Desperate Housewives with my dorm mates. 

By this time, soccer season was in full swing.  Being a freshman, I didn’t expect to play much and at first I didn’t.  I worked hard in practice though, and it eventually paid off.  I’ll never forget playing in my first college soccer game against #1 ranked Messiah College.  We lost, but it was amazing.

I had time to handle my homework and social life, but soccer was still a large time commitment.  We played games at Homewood, but we also traveled.  The 7 hour bus ride to William Smith College was one of the most memorable trips.  We were supposed to leave at 4:00 but the bus had a leak, so we ended up leaving at 7:30 and arriving at approximately 3 in the morning (There’s nothing like going to bed at 3 and waking up for an 11am game).  But spending such extensive periods of time with the team only brought us closer.  Music is playing the whole drive, people are laughing, and the atmosphere is lively.  But it always amazes me that no matter how friendly the girls are off the field, they always switch modes for the game.  The team’s intensity and competitive spirit are what made us the team to beat in the Centennial Conference.

Fast forward to November.  Conference play is coming to a close.  With a 16-3-0 record, we are seeded second in the Conference Tournament.  The season has been good, but a conference title would really be the perfect ending.  Today is the final, Hopkins vs. Dickinson.  We step onto the field confident but not cocky, ready to work hard.  After over an hour of back-and-forth play, a scoreless stalemate seems inevitable.  Yet right when we begin to feel discouraged, we score a goal and the momentum changes.  With only 20 minutes left to play, we hold off Dickinson for the win.  Not only do we win our fifth consecutive Centennial Conference title, but we also get an automatic spot in the NCAA tournament.

So far, playing soccer has been the best choice that I have made in college.  It keeps me in shape and makes me feel like an active part of the school.  The best part is that I’ve made 25 new friends.  The season thus far has been great, but I can’t wait to see what happens in the upcoming weeks.