Fast Forward

Six months later, I'm back in Admissions for the summer shift.

Let's bring the blog up to speed: France was lovely, thanks for asking. Yes, I'm psyched for autumn to arrive and seeing all the Beloise together again. Reintroduced myself to fast food and stick shift and drove 1300 miles last week to get here. Caught a little bit of Blues Fest in Chicago on my way through. That's about it.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, things are good. Sure, sure the Midwest is flooding, but my fridge is full of lettuce and the air conditioning is bliss. As my friends roll back through town on the road between semesters abroad and summer internships, I've had some great lunch dates, but between catching up and unpacking, I haven't got much in the way of blog-worthy news.

Ducking out (as it is a Friday afternoon), but leaving you with the promise of a beefier post next week. Cowabunga!

Off The Clock

It's Wednesday morning on the last day of classes before exams begin. After a week of procrastinating, last night saw some serious progress in packing up my room. Unfortunately, this inspiration hit me at 2am. So, I was running a minute or two late for anthro and there on the corner were the Head RAs, handing out donuts from the Old Fashion Bakery down the road. Angels, these kids!

I'll confess: I didn't take one. Donuts freak me out, but I did appreciate the sentiment. I sat through my first class on an empty stomach in favor of a bagel in the Java Joint (where I am now) and I can't say I regret my decision. I love a good bagel and OJ in the morning.

There was an ice storm in the midwest yesterday and all the sidewalks are nearly impossible to navigate. Still, the trees are beautiful and it's not too cold out. The Java Joint is warm and full and smells like the weak, horrible coffee they serve here. (Clearly, I have no real complaints today.) The fact that there are only a few class periods left seems to have mellowed everyone out, including myself. I am in an stress-free oasis. It's nice here.

This is my last blog of the semester, but also for the year. I'm off to Rennes, France for the spring. Next semester some new SOI will start up a blog of their own and fill it with Beloitian things far more scintillating than the details of the sidewalks and the color of the coffee. Thanks for reading along & good luck with all your college decisions this spring! I think it's time to sign off before I pretend to know anything about giving good advice.

Au revoir!
JuliaBeloit

I Made You Cookies! I Brought You Flowers!

Above: Sean Hershey holding flowers he swiped off the dining room table of the Spanish House at around 12:30 AM. He's clearly swept away in rapture with the spirit of the season. Or maybe just a little tuckered out.


Above: Anacelia Saenz and Ruby Jennings on cookie sheet tectonics. No two cookies may touch.

Last night after the library closed, my friend Danny invited a small crew over to the Spanish House for some much-needed stress relief and a cookie carnival. Admittedly, all cookies were baked from premade dough, but the decoration was all our own skill. My friend Anna has a famous stash of "Hanukkah Cookies" (read: shape of the Star of David, blue frosting, and appropriate sprinkles) she gets annually and shares liberally. There are a lot of cookies to be had on campus. My own family does a great job keeping baked goods flowing my way, especially during stressful times such as these, but sometimes it is necessary to strike out into the culinary world on one's own. Besides, half the fun of holidy cookies is getting frosting on your face.


Above: Anacelia and Ruby showing off their best work. I believe Anacelia has a duck and a star, while Ruby is displaying some perversion of St. Nick and a particularly lovely tree.

Below: Please forgive me for not posting any photos of myself in the wee hours of the morning. Instead, let me present you with my cookies. Yes, those are carrots mixed in with one particularly lovely red reindeer. He's got a little 'tude and a rather confuddling anatomy, but these things happen when you play with cookie cutters past midnight. Some of the shapes we had at our disposal were Easter-themed (hence, the crosses and the carrots and the umbrellas-- not pictured). Whatever the shapes of the cookies and however blue my hands are dyed this morning, it was a great study break to celebrate the passing of Hump Day.



Next week: finals and how Anacelia kicked Calc like a bad habit.

Stop Making Sense

Beloit College students love dance parties. I'm quite partial to them myself. There are some parties clubs hold annually that everyone looks forward to. This weekend, the Outdoor/Environmental Club held their Talking Heads Party. All Talking Heads, all night long.
It's the perfect theme: every song is danceable and it doesn't matter how familiar you are with the jams because the beat is loud and good and steady.

Clearly, I'm a fan.

I could fill this space with stresses or make some quip about the title of the reading assignment I'm currently wading through ("The Dead," James Joyce). I could upload some pictures of the delicious brie and multi-grain loaf I picked up at Cub today-- I promise I don't usually take pictures of my food. The lighting was just particularly lovely on the West side of Porter Hall this afternoon. Anyway, I won't do that. The pictures aren't readily here in Admissions and the stresses are just fine in their place, listed as assignments in my day planner. Besides, if you're reading this with the Common App open on another window of your browser, chances are you have quite a long list of your own to mull over. Good luck with that. I recommend dark chocolate.

Welcome to December! There's not much light, but at least there's good music.

P.S. In breaking out my winter jacket this weekend, I made a startling discovery: it has pockets. It would seem that my brown peacoat is a little too classy for me. The manufacturer tacked the pockets shut, so they seemed to be faux. Just part of the seams on the front. Just another reason my cell phone is always falling out of the back pocket of my jeans. I am in the habit of hooking my thumbs into the small hole that was exposed, but finally broke apart the stitch to claim full function of my coat. It's like a whole new garment.

Thought I would share in the interest of self-exposure. Ho-hum. Dark chocolate, anyone?

P.P.S. Please forgive this obnoxious, crunched format. Blogger is giving me 'tude.

It's Colder

Low and behold! Five-and-a-half hours north of Beloit, Wisconsin, Minneapolis/St. Paul are dusted in snow. I didn't bring my winter coat on my big Thanksgiving adventure because I don't learn from my mistakes (see: contents of my suitcase over Thanksgiving Break last year). It's colder farther north. It's always colder. This is a rule I learned this weekend.

I don't get a lot of chances to get up to the twin cities because rides headed that way are on the scarce side, but one of my dad's sisters does live up in that neck of the woods, so I take the opportunities when they drive down College Street. I spent Turkey Day baking a pumpkin pie with my cousins up in Minnetonka, Minnesota. They were a total blast. I don't spend a lot of time around 6, 4, and 2-year-olds these days, but they were super. I even got to meet new baby Caroline! I must confess that no pictures were taken the whole holiday, so I've got no proof of how cute these kiddos are except my solid gold word: they're adorable and blond and look entirely like the side of their family that I have nothing (genetically speaking) to do with.

I do, however, have evidence of the day I spent with my Beloit friends at the Walker in Minneapolis. We went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit and came out overwhelmed and thoroughly educated in her life and work. Naturally, this warranted a group picture. We were mere yards from the Sculpture Garden, home of the Cherry-Spoon-Bridge-Landmark Thing (pictured above) that every visitor in the world takes their photo with (see Quinn's latest post, where she unknowingly proves my point). So, we faced the cherry and had someone else's mom take our photo.

Above L to R and mostly very far from home: JuliaBeloit, Danny Zipse (Portland, OR), Anna Noyes (Sorrento, ME), Sean Hershey (St. Paul, MN), and Anacelia Saenz (Austin, TX)

No, Anna's sweater wasn't a planned promo. Yes, we were frozen by the time this photo was taken. In any weather, it was a great diversion and now my nose is pressed flat against the grindstone. I've got three weeks to pass all my classes, pack all my earthly possessions, get a visa for France, and get on a plane to Vermont.

Layer up. The pond in the Sculpture Garden is frozen and so is my nose. A hat might not be a bad idea either...

The Use & Abuse of Caffeine

I'm not actually abusing coffee, but the beverage does seem to aid a bit with the waking hours this gray time of year. I'm getting in some of the best naps of my life, but that's not really what I'm here for. So, I've been search for antidotes to November. Here's what I've got to tide me over until the snow flies:

• My big sister came to visit from Rhode Island. Hanging out and scarfing nachos is better with family.


• Knowing that I'm taking off for another Thanksgiving in the Twin Cities on Wednesday afternoon.


• Those cookies mom sent last week. (No, thank you Glad-Press-&-Seal!)


• Running. Walking. Biking. Breathing cool air outside of my admittedly stuffy dorm room. I love my single in Porter, but I'm already going through lotion like water. Also, dodging the geese down by the Rock River. Those birds are vicious.


• Virginia Woolf. No, just kidding. However, throwing myself into work isn't so bad once I get the pages turning.


• Flight of the Conchords. It's a duo and an HBO show and the best way to understand is to YouTube these seriously funny guys or better yet, click this link to my favorite jam.


• Good company. Whether I'm sneaking off from the library to grab a snack at Taco Bell or walking out Colley Road to gawk around the horse farms, my friends are keeping me out and about and almost entirely off of c-c-caffeine. Except right now, when I am sitting in Admissions sipping on the vanilla frapp I picked up when I took my sister out to the bus stop. Little do they know...

I can't believe next week is Thanksgiving. Start loosening your belts kiddos. There's pie and potatoes and even the vegetarians are planning on overeating this year...

The Woman With All The Answers

(There are no pictures to accompany this post, but it took me a while to articulate my thoughts. Please bear with me, although I acknowledge this is a long one.)

Wednesday was International Symposium Day. I would bother to explain why I got up at 7AM on a day when classes were canceled to attend a bunch of presentations in windowless rooms. But Symposium Days are an important part of Beloit. That may seem overstated as they are just one day out of each semester, but I sat through six consecutive symposiums today that touched upon the role of the AIDs pandemic in various African nations. I went to one talk on shadowing a Peace Corps worker in El Salvador and one on organic farming in Germany. None of these students had an easy time going abroad, but what my friends learned enriches our entire campus. Each of these students comes back with an understanding with depth and color that you can't get from in any classroom. That’s the practical reason we bother with Symposium Days. Plus, sharing is fun.

And now I move on to the inspiration for the hyperbolic title of this post: Carol Bellamy. Carol Bellamy is a big deal. Click the link. Read up. She’s got a mighty impressive résumée. Ms. Bellamy attended several of the symposiumsI sat in on today, spoke with our Model UN club, and gave an open lecture on the need for Global Citizens to round out her visit to campus.

She's the kind of speaker who makes you want to change your course of study. I'm not saying I'm about to hop over to the Registrar's Office and change my major to International Relations. At very least, she made me certain that I will go abroad twice. I've been waffling. I've been reconsidering choosing France (as it is a stable, developed nation)-- and she touched upon this as well. Ms. Bellamy cited statistics about study abroad on the global level. In the US-- less than 1% of students (approx. 200,000 annually) go abroad during their undergraduate experience. I'm proud to say just under half of Beloit students study abroad before they graduate, contributing a couple hundred to that annual stat. Let's face it: the NY Times article I linked above runs along many of the same lines Ms. Bellamy touched upon and states them more artfully than I might. To follow this train of thought, click away.

If all the prospective students could have heard her, you would understand why I live on the border of southern Wisconsin over a thousand miles from my family and friends. It would make sense that I want to double major is French and any field that will land me solid communication skills.

In a way, I came here to leave this place. I am comfortable here. I love my friends and my classes and my Beloit Life (shameless, I know). I could have loved my undergraduate experience at many colleges if I chose to, but I remember reaching a point in my college search where I realized that coming to Beloit would push me and provide the motivation to become the a "global citizen." Studying in France is outside my comfort zone and a sizeable hop over the language barrier. Studying in Senegal would be out of my league entirely. So, I'm going to do it. I'm doing it because Senegal is not a country that has the same level of respect for women and their health as the US. I'm doing it because it's likely that I won’t have many more opportunities to choose to live in this kind of transitional climate again in my life. Getting perspective is what we're here for.

I was leaving Pearson's Hall on my way to Middle College for work last night and John Burris, the president of our college, held the door for me on my way out. It was all I could do not to turn to tell him how glad I was to have heard that speech on my way over to talk to prospective students. Some nights, loving this place makes this job a piece of pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting (alla Commons).

In conclusion, when it’s windy on the quad or your visa application makes you want to turn on some Sufjan Stevens and crawl under the covers for a week, a Beloit student has to keep a wary eye on the Student Activities Board in case some amazing person might be on their way through Beloit who will remind you why you ever left home.