A Day in the Life

Loving Summer

Summer. I love summer. I don't know how to handle the fact that this is my last "official" summer - with school off and free time... boo!

My sister is a teacher, and is fortunate enough to have some time off during the summer; somehow the thought of a few weeks free from work makes her job sound significantly more appealing.

I always love summertime in Seattle.  And now that it is past July 4th, summer here has officially started. The sun is shining, it's warm but not too hot (yay for mid-seventies), it's super green (the other 9 months of rain), people are out picnicking, boating in the lakes and the Puget Sound, running, biking, shopping at bustling farmers markets and generally enjoying life.

I wrote about this a little bit ago, but this summer I am interning at The Mountaineers Books, a non-profit publishing company based in Seattle. They publish a variety of outdoor and eco-minded books from Guidebooks and Adventure Narratives to cookbooks focused on eating locally and books to raise awareness of environmental issues.

I am interning in the editorial/acquisitions department.  I do a lot of different things at work from researching new authors for projects like new guidebooks to helping proof pages. I also read all of the unsolicited manuscripts that come in--from people who send in their ideas, manuscript pages and work samples, and write up a summary about what I read for the acquisitions editor. Some of the other tasks I've done involve creating an index, contributing to company brainstorms and fact-checking.
I really love the internship and it definitely makes me want to pursue my interest in editing and publishing. The people that I work with are great- really helpful and super interesting so that has been really fun.

Other than working I am enjoying being at home. I've spent a lot of time hanging out with my parents and enjoying being able to cook in our big kitchen and have delicious meals and really really great fresh produce! I cleaned out my room some and got rid of all those pesky science notes I still had from highschool (who knows why...) and a few bags worth of clothing for Goodwill. 

Of course I am also trying to get outside and go playing a lot.

So far I have gone climbing around Washington a few times, on a short road-trip to Smith Rock in Oregon, river-rafting in Eastern Washington, hiking with my sister and family in the Olympic Peninsula and I just returned from river-rafting in the Grand Canyon for a week with my boyfriend and his family. Fun!

Walking to the rocks at Smith. Mike and I took an extra long weekend to make the drive (~6hr) to Oregon to get in some good climbing since it was raining everywhere in Washington. It was a really really fun weekend--and SUNNY!!! However, our theory was to do a lot of hard climbing and then keep it up, and while we improved during our 4 day sojourn, we didn't keep up the climbing so well.... =/ ah well...

  My family took a weekend trip to the Olympic Peninsula where we went on hikes to the beach and up in the mountains! The peninsula is super beautiful--here is a picture of my sister and I on a ten mile hike on the beach!!

I went on a Hike/Climb with Mike and my sister in Washington Pass, and we found both Snow and Mountain Goats!! COOL!!!

  

Just last night I got back from spending a week in the Grand Canyon with Mike his mom and his sister. We went river rafting with a group for five days--it was super fun! We went through HUGE rapids, learned all about the history of the Grand Canyon and the different layers of rock. We also went on a bunch of excursions--we saw Native American Ruins and hiked to a cool waterfall! We played in the surreal blue water of the Little Colorado and rode through it's rapids!  The trip was a ton of fun and we met a bunch of really nice and awesome people. And I managed not to get sunburned .... though I did use almost two whole bottles of SPF 55!!!

After rafting we hiked 9.5 HOT miles UPHILL out of the Grand Canyon. And that was HARD. The day started out super hot. We made pretty good time until we had about 3 miles left and then the hike just got so hard.... Fortunately it started thunderstorming when we had about 2 miles left, so the heat dropped a bunch. Overall the trip was great.

The rest of the summer I am going to continue my internship, hopefully go surfing, mountain biking and get in some more climbing and go on at least one long backpacking trip. I am also trying to go to a handful of concerts this summer ...but I have to work that into my minuscule budget.

Then I get to pack and head back to B'more/Hopkins.

Hope everyone is having a superb summer. Enjoy the sunshine and don't forget the Sunscreen. ;)

I only have one more year at Hopkins?!?!

I can't believe I'm a Senior...!! Even just writing that seems wrong and unreal. I still remember thinking that in high school, so how can I already be a senior in college?

This year has been amazing, busy, and full of new experiences. First semester I got to live off campus, in an apartment with two boys and be an 'upper classman' (i.e. have earlier choices for classes). Second semester I went abroad to Florence, Italy, stayed with an Italian family, traveled around Europe, met an entire new group of amazing friends, and went on AMAZING field-trips with my class =). I honestly can't believe all that I fit into this year!!!

Here is a look back through my Junior year:

First Semester started off in a whirlwind of me finalizing classes and immediately diving into the really heavy workload that I had. (Reminder: Don't take all Writing Intensive Classes; Secretly they are reading intensive too.) I make this mistake at least once a year.... Oops!!

In October I settled into my routine with school, and with my new and amazing roommates, Sam & Matt (and our friend Rena is always there too). One of our favorite traditions is Family Dinners.

My post Ever Elusive Fall really gives a good look into what my semester was like. It covers working at Admissions Open Houses; Reading for school, going to Sun-Rise Yoga, and taking an impromptu break from schoolwork to go catch a movie at the nearby Charles Theatre.

So, Did I mention that I loved living with my roommates?? When my friends find out I live with two boys I normally get raised eyebrows, or "Really? aren't they messy?" (I mean, not horribly. PS, if you've ever seen my room, you'll know it's not an issue). "Are your parents okay with that" (obviously!!) "Is your boyfriend okay with that" (first of all, I'm not dating my roommates! And yes, he lived with a girl his senior year.).  So here is a post about how My Roommates are Awesome.

Midway through the first semester I did some reflecting on my past few years of college--how I've changed, grown, and all of the non-academic things that I've learned.

This December was a really busy and stressful time for me. All of my work piled up on me, as I had huge projects and papers due in all of my classes within about the span of a week--ie STRESSFUL. This page links you to my December posts; although Hopkins is GREAT, sometimes schoolwork does pile up and it does become stressful. This month is a good example of that.

Winter Break was really fun! I slept in, went to Whistler with my family, went Snowshoeing at Mt Rainier and generally relaxed after a stressful month of December.

My first week in FLORENCE!!!!! I spent the spring semester abroad in Italy! Amazing.

Some great Pictures from Florence and a list of things I learned in Italy!

My room in Italy!!

Although Florence was amazing, I got Homesick for Hopkins... Here is a post about a handful of the many things at Hopkins I am looking forward to returning to in the fall!

And lastly I wrote about the exciting Summer Internship that I have in Seattle!! I am currently working and I LOVE it!! So much fun!!

Wow!! So much happened. What a great year =)

I know what I'm doing this summer....

And it's awesome!!

So, just about two hours ago I got finished with a phone interview; and offered a summer internship!!

The company that I am going to be interning for is called  The Mountaineers Books. They are a publishing company based in Seattle, and they are one of the foremost publishers of Outdoor Guides and Outdoor related books. They also have a branch called Grist, an publisher of Environmental Issues etc.

Anyway, anyone who knows me realizes that this is the PERFECT job/internship for me! It pairs both my love of writing with the outdoors--which is ideal, really.

I don't know that much about the actual processes of publishing, editing, and creating books, but I am excited to learn =).  I'll let you know once summer begins what it is actually like ;).

So, how did I get this super awesome internship? Well, I knew that I wanted to try to intern for a publishing company because I think I want to go into some form of publishing or editing. (However, I really wanted to do an internship to make sure that I actually want to go into it!) Then I knew that I wanted to be in Seattle for the summer (well, I want to move back to Seattle too, but that can wait for when I am trying to find a job next year).  So I began researching publishing companies in Seattle.

I found three; and out of those three The Mountaineers sounded best. (The other two would have been awesome also, obviously...). Then I was lucky enough to spend New Years with one of my boyfriends friend's who works in publishing in Seattle (for a different company). She gave me a ton of information on the publishing world in general, and helped me find contacts at the places that I was interested in.

Then I spent 3 days before going to Florence writing my resume and cover letters for the company. This is a TON of work, you may be surprised!! I sent out my stuff before I left, but after a while hadn't heard back from any of the companies.

I e-mailed the Mountaineers Books (because I wanted that job most) to follow up in mid-February. After a slew of e-mail correspondences we set up a phone interview (today!) and at the end of it I got hired!!

(Hired might be the wrong term because I'm not getting paid...ah, internships.) However, I'm still super excited because I think that this will be a really great experience and will give me hands on experience in a field that I'm actually interested in! Whoo!

Here are the things that I learned in my Process.
1. It SUCKS to write Resumes, but doing a good job pays off.
2. START EARLY!! It takes time to find places you might want to intern, to send off your stuff and to make sure you beat all the other potential candidates to the job ;)
3. Follow Up!! While hopefully I would have heard back from the company if I hadn't followed up, you never know!
4. Be really enthusiastic. I'm an enthusiastic person, and I really wanted this job, so that was quite easy for me, but hey, everyone wants to hire someone who wants to work for them!
5. Prepare! Overprepare! Okay, I get nervous really really easily (for interviews, presentations, oral exams...) . Which seems silly, because I don't get nervous meeting new people, in fact I love meeting new people. I don't get nervous GIVING interviews. And I don't get nervous leading OP meetings, talking to a hall-full of prospective students....etc... Oh well. Anyway, I spent a really long time thinking about what questions she could ask me, what questions I wanted to ask, organizing a cheat sheet for myself (yay phone interviews in my pajamas), etc. And, granted, the interview was much easier than the ones that I give prospective students at Hopkins (I mean, she didn't even ask me my strengths and weaknesses or any of those "hard" questions), but I felt a LOT better going into the interview knowing that I had thought about it.

And then I got it! Yay!

Just wanted to share a snippet of the internship finding process, my summer plans, and my general excitement =).

Happy Almost Summer!!!

What I Miss About Hopkins

First of all, Congratulations to everyone who got accepted to Hopkins!

April is SUCH an exciting time of year for High School seniors -- you know where you got in and now you get to figure out where you want to go. A little scary, but now that the waiting is over, it's really pretty exciting.

I'm studying abroad in Florence this semester, and it's a really wonderful experience (so much fun). If you come to Hopkins ... or wherever you choose to go, I HIGHLY suggest studying abroad. But it has also made me realize what I love about Hopkins and what I am really excited to return to.

Perhaps it might be useful to read about some of the things that I love about Hopkins after (ah!) almost three years of being there, and about why I like Hopkins better than school here:

The People: The people at Hopkins are amazing. I have met so many of my best friends at school.  Not only are my closest friends amazing, I am continually meeting funny, kind, brilliant and interesting people. At Hopkins people are very passionate about learning and about what they do in general, whether it be write for the newspaper, work for HERU, play tennis or plan spring fair. People really throw themselves into what is going on and I think it's great.

Also, the people at Hopkins are just very smart -- not just nerdy. It is easy to have meaningful discussions with almost anyone you meet at Hopkins -- being abroad without Hopkins kids has really made me miss the students in my classes, my closest friends, and the random conversations that I hear in Cafe Q are way more interesting than the ones that I overhear at my school in Florence.

The Classes & The Professors: Yes, I admit it, I miss classes at Hopkins. I may not miss the workload of my classes at Hopkins, but I definitely miss the classes.  The professors at Hopkins are wonderful.  I'm always hard pressed to pick a favorite because I have so many -- and they are great for different reasons!

For instance, Professor John T Irwin's (writing sems) classes are incredible because he is able to completely explain / work out the novels that we read in his class during lecture. Listening to him is an absolute treat -- he connects stories, knows all the allusions, and seems to have an encyclopedia in his head of everything ever written. He also knows the in depth biographies of Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway (the authors my class was on), which always made class really enjoyable.

Another one of my favorite professors, Melanie Shell-Weiss is great because she is so passionate about her subject. My class was comparing the South African AntiApartheid to the Civil Rights Movement. She brings so much energy to the classroom.  Melanie really inspires her students to dig deeper into what they are learning or into what they are passionate about.

And those are only two of my favorite teachers, both from my last semester at Hopkins. Others of my favorite professors: Glenn Blake, Stephen Dixon, Maura Tumulty and Aaron Goodfellow, and Steven David to name a few...

Additionally, I really miss the actual classes at Hopkins.  Students are generally active in class participation and interested in what they are studying. I am in a postmodern lit class in Florence right now which has about 20 students in it, only about 5 of whom actually participate in class, 3 I am good friends with. That means of the 5 people that actively participate (I am one), there is only one girl who I don't really know. And since I'm friends with the others, discussing the book in class isn't really that interesting because generally we have talked about it outside of class a little bit. 

In my favorite Hopkins classes there are always ideas jumping back and forth between students, people with different perspectives offering their opinion, and discussion flourishes. That just doesn't really seem to be the case here =/...

The Campus: Hopkins Campus is gorgeous. And filled with people I know. And big grassy quads, and everyones favorite warm-weather hangout: The Beach. The Campus at my school here is also gorgeous, however, it does not have the same community feel as Hopkins. It is a big Villa, which means it has olive groves, beautiful wisteria, flowering gardens etc., but all of our classes are in one teeny building, and people don't really "hang out" on campus.

At Hopkins when I walk around I am constantly running into people I know (which generally makes me late for classes, meetings, coffee dates...), but I really love it! I miss lying on the beach in the springtime with a group of my friends and doing reading / pretending to do reading. I miss sitting on the steps outside the library and drinking coffee.  I miss walking to SAAB (Admissions) meetings through the grass on the beautiful new quad and getting scolded by Admissions Daniel for walking on the grass (I like the grass.) And I miss playing Frisbee in the spring and going Buildering in the middle of the night.

Oh, and I miss the ease of getting to class. My walk to class here is ~30-40 minutes. My long walk to class at Hopkins was 15 minutes.

The Beach in Springtime =)

Running: Weird to miss running, but I REALLY do. I can't go running here, not really. People think I'm crazy (okay, not soooo bad). The streets are too full of people. My run isn't very pretty. Did I mention too full of people? Ugh....

The flipside is my run at Hopkins is really nice. It is through campus, through a park, up through the BEAUTIFUL neighborhoods north of Campus (when I think about where I should live...), and then back by campus. And while I see people on my run, the sidewalks are not packed with people. The route is lovely, and people don't look at me like I'm crazy (most of the time anyway.) And sometimes my friends go with me!

Playing Outside: And I don't just mean throwing a frisbee on The Beach, though I miss that too. I mean going climbing, backpacking, spelunking etc... with the Outdoors Groups on Campus. I really miss going climbing, and I miss all of the other climbers that I go with. I miss leading outdoor trips, meeting new students, and inspiring them to be excited and active in the outdoors.

While I have been lucky enough to do a little bit of hiking / climbing while I've been here, it's only been the teeeensiest amount; and when I'm at Hopkins I get to do quite a bit more! With West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the outskirts of Maryland full of beautiful, rolling countryside, there is a lot of outdoor exploration to be done!
Backpacking in the Cranberry Wilderness.

My Apartment/Apartmentmates: I really miss my living situation at Hopkins. I love the two boys, Sam and Matt, I lived with last semester; as well as the fourth member of our 'family' Rena.  We have such a great time living together -- cooking family meals, having random dance parties, procrastinating, actually doing work together, grocery shopping....etc.

Awww, that just made me really homesick. I am doing a Homestay here, and while in some ways that is really great, I always feel sort of like an intruder/guest in my house (because, well, I am a guest!). Whereas in my apartment in Baltimore, I'm not a guest--I can cook food at any hour of the day, roam through the apartment, hang out in the living room til 3am...etc... Really Quite Lovely.

Coffee Dates, Lunch Dates, Dinner Dates, ...Dates...: And I don't mean with a boy.  At Hopkins I am constantly meeting up  with friends for coffee, for lunch, for dinner, for a study break,  for  more coffee. Because we are all so busy and crazy running around, but it's so much fun to meet and catch up! The problem of course is when I only schedule coffee dates, and thus, only drink coffee all day. But that's not such a problem now.
Dinner Date w/ 2 of my favorite Girls, Julia (Also of SAAB) and Geeta.

SARU, JHOC, SAAB...: Oh, I miss random acronyms. No, I miss the groups that those correspond to! I already mentioned missing outdoor trips, which I lead for JHOC (Johns Hopkins Outdoors Club) and OP (Outdoor Pursuits). I also really miss the work that I do with SARU (The Sexual Assault Response Unit) and all of my work with admissions in SAAB (Student Admissions Advisory Board), and also as an AR (Admissions Representative)--that means I get to give interviews!

There aren't really any "groups" to be involved with here. I mean, there technically are, but they aren't really up my ally, (i.e. I can't Act), so it definitely makes me miss the abundance of things that I do at Hopkins--there is so much to be involved in.

And did I mention my friends? Because I REALLY miss my friends!!!

So those are some of the things that I am really excited about returning to in the fall (not to mention the changing colors of the leaves in Autumn in Baltimore).

Oh I forgot---Being able to wear sweats to class!! MOST important ;)

Hopkins Cribs Abroad: Italian Version

This semester I'm studying abroad in Italy.  I am living in a homestay; I have a host mom, Paola, and another girl lives with me also, her name is Sara.
The house we live in is pretty small, but we both have singles which is nice. Sara and I share the bathroom.

I mostly hang out in my room (unfortunately I feel a little awkward lounging in the rest of the house unless I'm making food in the kitchen or eating); which is quite lovely, or when its sunny in our garden outside.

My lovely bed, laptop and nightstand full of papers, books etc... I don't really like the desk in my room, and I have hardwood floors, so I end up sitting on my bed for work etc....all the time...

My itsy desk, bookshelf and those doors actually lead outside to our garden =)

My huge and lovely armoir which houses all of my clothing and a number of other assorted goods (hairbrush, bandaids, ibuprofren etc, sewing kit...)

And the corner with my chair (which serves as storage for school books/notepads etc...), my all important heater which serves both to keep me from freezing and to dry my clothing quickly, and of course the door out of my room and into my house.

And that is a peak into my housing situation in Florence; I will try to add more pictures but I didn't know how to explain to my host-mom in Italian (she doesn't speak any english) that I was taking pictures for a blog for admissions at my school on my housing situation....thus I felt to weird wandering the rooms with my camera....; but she's not always home ;)

Hope you enjoyed my lovely room.