Looking at colleges can be a difficult, challenging, and exciting process. You may have parents suggesting possible options, a high school guidance counselor advising you on fit, or your own opinions regarding the qualities that your ideal college should hold.

Southwestern’s academic atmosphere, dorm and social life and extracurricular activities can best be explained by those of us who live here. To allow you to see the many possibilities that attending Southwestern can bring, we want these journal entries to reflect what Southwestern is through our eyes. Each of us posting journals has a unique view of the school - we are from different cities, each involved in different activities, live in different residence halls and have different majors.

Facts and figures alone can’t explain what it’s like to walk around campus on a sunny day, play on one of Southwestern’s athletic teams or make your first ‘A’ in a college course. These are our lives; hopefully they will help you decide how you want to live yours.

I would say more, but that sums it up really well.  Really, really well.

The Monday after the show I went to the Natural History Museum to explore with Sally Hall (another intern/SU student in the NYARTS program).  We explored about half of the museum in about 4 hours.  I’m almost ready to go back again!  There was all sorts of fascinating things (from dinosaurs to evolution of man to the brain to cosmic particles to apes communicating with people, etc. etc. etc.) that I could have spent another 8 hours going over without moving to the other two floors.  So much!

Let’s see… what else… oh yes.  I went to Yankee Stadium again… but this time was a little different. Lets see.  How was it different?  Oh yes.  I remember.  It was the winning game of the world series.  That’s right.  OH MY GOODNESS.  Crazy.  Every out against the Phillies was like a party in the stands.  Everyone was high-fiving, hugging, back slapping and shouting for everything.  And when they won… my hearing is still recovering.  I’m not a Yankees fan, but my goodness, what an absolutely wonderfully exciting experience.

(Setting up for the award ceremony after the big win!)

I have now gone to see a show at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre (3 blocks from the intern housing!) two Sundays in a row.  Free for the 9:30 show! Get in line at 7, wait for an hour, and you’re guaranteed a ticket! Then you hang out back at the dorm for an hour before you go back for an awesome show!  Now let’s see…. why was I excited about this… Oh yes.  Last week, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Jack McBrayer, Bobby Moynihan, John Lutz, Jon Hamm and some writers from the Colbert Report were performing there.  This will be the second time this all capitalized phrase has been used, but not the last.  OH MY GOODNESS.  Absolutely hysterical.  They were amazing.  I laughed so hard the entire time.

I went back this week (hurray free entertainment!) and was absolutely certain it could not be as good as last week.  They read off the list of performers and then went to announce their special “Monologuist.”  I was ready for a let-down.  Then (ready for another use of the phrase?) OH MY GOODNESS Chevy Chase walks out.  That’s correct. Chevy Chase. And, in case you were curious… yes. He is funny. Again, I laughed so hard.  Not as hard as some friends of mine who managed to grab front row seats and sat next to Mr. Chase as the improv based around his monologues unfolded. Again. Hysterical.

Another improv related post: Southwestern’s very own Cooper Street was 2nd in the Southwest region of the College Improv Tournament! If we get enough votes, we will be the wildcard and competing in the next level in February! So there will be a shameless plug and link in the not too distant future….

I left the best for last, though it is not in chronological order.  Eric Feldman, a graduate of SU, the head RA of the NYArts dorm and a very dear (you could say best) friend of mine was in a reading this weekend.  It was wonderful and he was amazing!  He did so well and the whole audience loved him.  I was so excited to get to be there and to see him shining on the stage.  Absolutely wonderful.  And the theatre knew of him because he interned there while he was in this program!

What’s up this week? I’m beginning to PA for a reading for The Vineyard this week and I have to start getting scripts and supplies together starting tomorrow.  Hooray! I’m out of the office (not that I didn’t love being in the office; love everyone in Vineyard’s office! It’s great there! Seriously!) and back in a rehearsal space! But seriously, I don’t have much experience in a theater’s office and it was definitely a wonderful to see what happens behind the “behind the scenes.”

So, now, after a long couple of weeks of fun and frolick, it’s time to get down to the grind again.  Not to mention I have to get back into the spirit of school soon.  Homework starts again in less than two months.

But.. One last thing.  I’ve been with enough shows now to know that when one closes, you are not always sad to see it go.  A Boy and His Soul was one of those I would have loved to be a part of for a lot longer.

We didn’t come up with the idea until a few weeks before the anniversary this year so there wasn’t too much time to plan, but next year, we hope to make a more elaborate wall — with cardboard boxes as bricks or something. Also, we’d like to sell bricks to people and donate the money to charity. The ideas are all still in the works, but we have a year to plan now so whatever it is, it will be awesome.

Until then, here are some photos of the bricks people made and the re-enactment fall of the Berlin Wall.

Close up of the Wall

East and West Berlin

The Wall about the be torn down

Artwork by Dr. Berroth’s Advanced Entry Seminar, Berlin Stories, students

One student’s brick with JFK’s famous “jelly donut” quote

One of the bricks I made complete with a typo. It should say “Wir sind ein volk!” It means “we are one people!”

One student drew “99 Luftballons.” I love it.

The Fall!

Taking pieces of the Wall as memories

(Photo By Liz Newchurch)Can you guess which fairy tale we’re trying to emulate? Because no one else has….Sleeping Beauty! You see it? Princess Aurora, and the three good fairies? It should be a fun and magical evening. I’ll let you know how it goes.

While I have been really busy planning this party, a wrench was thrown in middle of the plans at the worst time: I got the flu. Which was not fun. Because usually getting the flu is so much fun? Anyway due to the recent flu epidemic and the scare of the H1N1 (which I did not have), the school sent me home for 5 days, or until my fever broke for 24 hours. That was not convenient at all. But on the brighter side, I did get to relax at home and catch up with my parents.

Here’s me a apart of an ADPi family.

The next day, fellow blogger and tour guide, Paige, and I worked in the Admissions office in the morning and we decided to come as fairies. It was nice to show prospective students some Halloween spirit.  Here’s me as a fairy and there’s a picture of Paige and I on her blog, check it out.

That night (on Halloween), the fraternity I’m pledging, Kappa Sigma, hosted a Halloween party on campus, Masquerade. It turned out really well and everyone had a blast. The other pledges and I decided to dress up as characters from Harry Potter. Here’s Harry and Hermoine for you.

It’s always fun on Halloween to see what costumes people can come up with. There was definitely a wide variety at Masquerade from Wall-E, Sonic the Hedgehog, to Lady Gaga (that was a good one).  Overall the weekend was tons of fun and I wish I could run around in costumes everyday, or maybe I should.

One of the most exciting things was the culmination of a semester of planning in the Youth Environmental Summit on October 24. My boss, coworker and I planned (and enacted along with the help of awesome SEAK volunteers) an amazingly successful environmental summit for high school environmental groups. Around 160 students (100 MORE THAN LAST YEAR!!) gathered at SU to learn about current issues and how to be more effective activists as well as to just socialize and learn from other high school environmentalists. It was crazy planning for so many people but our hard work totally paid off in the end.

Another awesome development that’s been keeping me busy: SEAK, along with some activists in Austin, has also been running a campaign against a proposed nuclear plant in San Antonio and Georgetown’s recent decision to officially support it. It’s a pretty complicated issue involving government transparency, water rights, and energy rates but SEAK has been trying its hardest to take strategic actions asking the City to reconsider its stance on the plant and on nuclear energy. I’ve been busy making press contacts for that, ceaselessly hounding newspapers, blogs and even the Austin NPR station to cover us. And we’ve had a few hits! Here’s a blog entry from ReEnergize Texas.

A shot of the press conference in front of the WilCo courthouse.

Connor and Harrison posing in front of the ironic fallout shelter sign…

So, I’ve also been running around getting my forms filled out and signed for study abroad next semester. BUT it is now officially official! I’M GOING TO MEXICO CITY!! I absolutely cannot wait to go. If I let myself think about it too long, I get so giddy that I can’t focus. I mean, I get nervous too, no doubt. The program I decided to go on is direct enrollment in a Mexican university, meaning I’ll be taking all my classes in Spanish along with native speakers and such. Ahh! If I’m not fluent by the end of May, I’m obviously hopeless.

And then, on a more fun note of course, last weekend was Halloween! I feel like the excitement of Halloween skips over middle and high school but it’s sort of like Christmas on the SU campus. I absolutely love seeing everyone’s costumes - people here are so creative and most prefer to come up with their own original costumes rather than buy one from the store. One of my friends and her boyfriend were a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle… together (i.e. she was the shell and he was the turtle and she rode around on his back) and another group of friends were the characters from Sonic the Hedgehog.

My roommate Lisa and I as Red Hat Society Ladies. The tattoo is left over from a nineties costume the night before.

My angsty 90’s outfit and Kristi’s Juno costume for Pis In Disguise ADPi date party

Co-blogger Eric and I celebrating Halloween in the admissions office Saturday morning. Yes, I gave a campus tour in fairy wings…

So life has been pretty hectic, as you can see. And now that life is getting back to normal, I’m not really sure what to do with my new found free(ish) time.

BUT all the crazyness… it was worth it. No matter how busy or stressed I get, it’s pretty easy to remind myself that everything I do, I love. My job at the Office of Civic Engagement, working with SEAK and even doing my homework - it’s all stuff that intrigues, enlightens and inspires me and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Not even sleep.

My Paideia is called Food and Cultures. This semester we’ve mostly been talking about corruption within the food industry with particular emphasis on genetically modified foods and the use of corn in everything we eat. We read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which heavily discusses those issues and is actually a good read. I definitely recommend it.

In lieu of discussing food, our professor invited us to his house for an authentic Thai dinner. And I do mean “authentic.” Dr. Mathieu actually took cooking lessons in Thailand!

Dr. Mathieu preparing the Thai dinner

As we talk a lot about corn products in class, one of the things we often discuss is additives in soda. So, before dinner, we had a Coca-Cola test. First, we each had a few sips of Coca-Cola made in Mexico with real cane sugar. We immediately noticed it was much smoother, sweeter and did not have an after-taste like the sodas we’re used to.

Dr. Mathieu’s wife (who is also my French professor) showed us a wicked way to open bottles! She has this wooden plank with screws in it. You latch the screw to the bottle cap and then slam down on the plank like you’re karate-chopping it. The cap comes right off!

Then, we each had a glass of the Coca-Cola we usually drink here in the U.S. We all expected some subtle differences, but were shocked to discover that it tasted HORRIBLE! Drinking it directly after drinking the stuff with real sugar made the normal one taste flat, un-sweet and generally like a much weaker version of what we had just tried.

My friend, Molly, considering the two Coca-colas (the normal one were in the small glasses)

Like the soda from Mexico, the dinner was way more delicious than I could have imagined. Following the main course, we had some ice cream from Häagen Dazs’ new “Five” line, which is ice cream with only five ingredients: milk, cream, eggs, sugar and whatever flavor the ice cream is. No additives means no corn! We ended with tea and excellent conversation. All in all, the dinner lasted for almost three hours! I wish I had the time everyday for such long and rich meals.

I have learned that Halloween on SU’s campus can be pretty epic. During the week there’s a pumpkin carving contest, the First-Year dorms decorate their hallways and hand out candy to the professors’ children, this year we showed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the Friday before Halloween (complete with free dinner and a costume contest), the theatre department does a haunted house and, on Halloween itself, there are a bunch of different parties across campus that different organizations put on. You may think you grew out of the whole dressing up part of Halloween years ago, but EVERYONE here wears a costume on Halloween.

Unfortunately, I somehow managed to miss ALL OF THAT this year. Epic fail. Luckily, I missed the events because I had a lot other interesting things going on. So, prepare for a long post (with lots of pictures!).

I spent Halloween night with my old high school friends at UT. Our main plan was to watch Edward Scissorhands while gorging on a ridiculous amount of candy (and healthy Halloween treats too!), but we also went out to dinner at Kirby Lane so that we could show off our group costume.

Two out of three of our group of Team Zissou interns

Also at dinner with us was Bob Dylan!

Who knew he went to UT?

While we were eating, I found Waldo! He was everywhere that night, but this was the only photo I was able to catch.

Super blurry. Waldo just does not want to be found!

I finished off Halloween weekend by going to see one of my all-time favorite bands, Gogol Bordello, at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin. Gogol Bordello, comprised mostly of Eastern European immigrants and led by Eugene Hütz, is a gypsy punk band and if you haven’t heard of them yet, you’ve got to check out their music.

When I go to Gogol Bordello concerts, I feel like I don’t need to exercise for a whole week after that because the crowd is jumping and dancing for the full hour. It’s intense.

We moved further back for the encore (which was almost as long as the show!)

Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t make it to all of the Halloween activities because the next two weeks will be plenty scary to make up for it. I’ll be busy helping prepare for Homecoming, Founder’s Day, Pirate Bike Appreciation Week and the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. A terrifying list of things to do. I’d take ghouls and werewolves any day.

First, I want to say that I finally managed to use my kitchen! I currently live in an apartment that has a full kitchen, but that I never use it because I don’t really know how to cook (I know, I should have learned by now). Anyways,  my roommate was making cupcakes so I decided to help him out by stirring the batter. Okay, okay, so I didn’t use the kitchen. I used a cooking utensil and a bowl! Hey, at least I tried!

Stirring the batter super fast! Go me! 

I’ve also been focusing on Mock Trial and Circle K International a lot these past few weeks.  Last weekend, I attended our Circle K International Fall Retreat. Since I was also going to be missing my Halloween for a Kiwanis Family Board meeting for CKI, we celebrated by dressing up during our Fall Retreat. Our theme for Fall Retreat was “Trick-or-Treat for Fellowship.” Therefore, we had a lot of candy, a pumpkin carving contest, a costume on a budget contest, and even a Halloween dance! The retreat focused a lot on fellowship and bonding with all the universities in the Texas-Oklahoma CKI District. We all had a great time!

College students make their costumes out of newspaper! 

Freezing cold after jumping a in a lake during 60 degree weather!   

Some members from Southwestern University CKI at Fall Retreat! 

Hopefully, I’ll be able to still have some down time in the near future. I really have to rest up for that finals week in December!  Keep watching out for more blogs and exciting adventures of myself!

I spent Halloween weekend in downtown Austin going out with friends  to 6th Street (at night) and attending author lectures (during the day) hosted by the Texas Book Festival.  My favorites were Barbara Ehrenreich and Willard Spiegelman. This year the festival hosted more than 200 national authors, with local food and live music, and was free to attend both Saturday and Sunday.

I snapped this during the drive down to Austin on Friday.

Last night I studied with a good friend downtown for hours… (don’t ask how late we worked). I was able to get ahead on some writing and reading (before I have two papers and an exam this week, ah!)

Also…I am officially adding a Cultural Anthropology major, and will be able to graduate with both degrees in less than four years! Last week I registered for my spring courses: ‘Visual Communication,’ ‘Ethnographic Methods,’ ‘Rhetorical Criticism,’ ‘Gender & Sexuality,’ and ‘HIV, Poverty & Culture.’ The ethnographic methods, cultural criticism and analysis of both disciplines are very complimentary,  I am quite excited to still finish on time. I just can’t decide on a fitness class for spring: yoga(again), or bowling?!

P.S.  Here is my interview with Dr. Dana Cloud for The Megaphone (her visit to campus last week filled every seat in Olin 110 lecture hall).