Tuesday, March 30, 2010

It's time already

Every year I am caught off guard when the time comes to choose rooms and classes for the next year. That time has come again. At BM we have room draw, a process both hated and loved. I am on the hating side this year as my room draw number is 264 and I want to live in the three most popular dorms. So what to do? Last year I saved a friend from an equally horrible number by doing a hall group...its her turn this year. The problem comes when deciding the actual room. We have floor plans for all of the dorms, yet the rooms never look like they do in the floor plan...it's a nice concept, but in actuality is not really helpful.

As a freshman, I had a nice room, a good size and in a good dorm. My sophomore year I was in a double with a friend that, once we got our stuff in, seemed a lot smaller than when we chose it, but we came to work well with our restraints. This year my room has no real positive side. It is cozy, to say the least, on the third floor, and has no storage room. I somehow managed to decorate it to my liking and now it is home, but I cannot say that I will miss it when I have hauled all of my belongings down the three flights of stairs. But that is life I suppose; you win some and loose some. I have decided this is my year to win some...if all works out.

While everyone on campus is checking out and coveting the few amazing rooms on campus, the task of enrolling for classes for the fall semester comes upon us. Let me just say, this is the one downfall of a small school. I love BM and am generally happy with my classes once I am settled in, but the choosing and the arranging is horrid. First of all, I have found, as a rising senior that I have taken a variation of each and every class offered in my major department. There is no variety. I find myself saying this every year, but I think this time it is actually true. So finding classes that are new and interesting is a chore. Then, once I've found classes I would semi-like to take, they are all at the same time. It always happens. Departments have all their classes on the same days, either Mon. and Wed. or Tues. and Thurs. And, not only are they on the same day, there are only about three or four time slots. I am an Art History major. The lower level classes are in the morning (9 being the earliest, but let me just say I am NOT a morning person and so I have a terrible time waking up for these classes). If the class is not in the morning, it is later in the afternoon (obviously). These times work for me, and as it turns out they are mostly once a week, but that means the class is longer and then does not fit nicely into the time slots left by the two times a week classes. I hate choosing classes.

This year I find myself in an interesting place. I have only three classes before my major is done, and one for my minor...leaving me with four classes to play around with. As I was originally a double major, I have never had time to explore other disciplines as one is meant to do at a liberal arts college. To say the least, I am very excited to start exploring before the end of my free days are done and I move on to law school when there is not an abundance of choice in subject matter. By the time I get all of this figured out we come upon finals. Can I just say summer has never been so attractive as it is right now, sitting in the rain looking over my scheduling conflicts.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Spring has sprung

As today is the first day of spring, I thought this topic appropriate. It is something that struck me the very first time I came to campus and I still find it a little funny (although I must say I now understand the desire). What am I talking about? The mass of students that on the first sunny day after winter don their bathing suits and sun bathe. It happens every year. From the first day the sun is shinning and it is above 55 degrees, girls flock to the greens to get some sun. I now, after a very long and snowy winter, understand the desire to soak up the sun and relish in the delight of it, but at 60 degrees? I still need a sweater at 60 degrees...especially if there is a breeze. It is not warm enough to wear just a bikini. I mean 60 degrees is winter weather for CA (granted a nice winter day, but winter all the same). How can they stand it? I would be shivering. In fact I was, sitting in the sun wearing jeans and a tee-shirt. I see nothing wrong in soaking the sun up, and possibly breaking out the long missed flip-flops, but do so in moderation. I expect to see bathing suits in 90 degree weather, not barely 60 degrees.

Now, I understand that I come from one of the nicest places to live weather wise, CA, and that I am spoiled. But does this race to the sun happen at all colleges? Could it possibly be a BM thing, or an all women's thing? Or do college students everywhere (except good old CA) sun bathe in 60 degree weather? I will never truly be from the east coast.

Monday, March 15, 2010

A place to call home

On my 27 hour way back to school from spring break, I had a lot of time to think about where home is. Was I leaving home or going home? I still can't answer that. My home home, is the same house I grew up in and has been ours for 30 years. It really is my home. Or at least it was until school. I noticed that getting back to my dorm I feel the same relaxed feeling as when I go to my house. It is my bed in the room, all my stuff is there, and it is my natural habitat. But what does that make my house?

As I pondered this, I discussed this with some friends at school. They suggested that maybe since I haven't been at my house for longer than a month at a time since I started school that was the problem and the reason for the shift; though they too felt the shift of their 'home' base and had spent their whole summers at home...so maybe that's not the reason.

Whatever the reason is, it seems to bother me more than others at school. They have gotten used to bm being home and feel like they are coming home at the end of each summer. For some reason this does not settle with me. My HOME is back in CA with my family...at least deep down I feel it should be. I suppose what makes the difference to me is the level of comfort I have in a certain place. I am never more conformable than at my house, but as I visit home on breaks, I am simply a visitor. I come with only a suitcase of clothing and belongings, and put them away in empty drawers and cabinets. I never have everything with me at one place. My room with all my personal belongings, is at my house, but my dorm room has all my important belongings and is my home for day to day life for most of the year. Yet I hesitate to call it my home. I am not from bm, or the surrounding area, so that is foreign, but campus is not.

At some point I like to think that my home is where my family is...after all isn't home where the heart is? But that I find is not right. It is true, my dogs are at home, in my house, but my family can come visit me at school and it does not make it anymore like home than before.

Obviously, from discussion with friends, I am having the most trouble with this...finding a stable place to call home. Maybe it is because my home is my comfort zone, and plays an important part in my life. Can you really have more than one home? (I don't mean a place where your belonging are or an address, but a place that encompasses everything a home FEELS like.)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Not Enough

One thing that I really liked about BM when I first got here was the amount of clubs on campus. The first week of freshman year all of the clubs on campus put on a fair, showing new students what they have to offer. I remember being so overwhelmed with the choices (knitting, crew, greens, democrats, fencing, etc). The options seem limitless coming from a high school which maybe had 5 active clubs on campus. I remember signing up for many and attending some of their first meetings.

The sad thing about reality on a college campus is that most of your free time is not spent in clubs or at the gym, but in the library or your room studying. I should have known, right? After the first weeks of trying to be in three clubs, I had to choose between them. A young, naive freshman, I chose the one which my friends were becoming members of. As a result, I chose a club that, at first, wasn't about something I thought I really cared about. It was interesting, and meaningful, but not something I had previously been interested, and certainly not something I was passionate about.

After the first month or so, my friends stopped going to the meetings with me, but I felt obliged to go. After all, I had been given an appointed position and had a duty to fulfill. As the year went on, I became friends with the older members of the club, and even became interested in what we stood for. The next year I was asked to run for the exec board and I won. I was the new treasurer.

Little did I know that most people, like the few friends I had originally gone to meetings with, become too busy during the semester to be a part of clubs. This is my third year as a member of my club, I am now secretary, and it has become excruciatingly painful. I found something that I was interested in and thought worthwhile and was ready to jump in and start doing some good. But it's not that easy. A club cannot be run by only its exec board, it needs members who are interested and dedicated and actually can come to meetings.

I found out that, as neat as it is for such a small school to have so many diverse clubs, it means that there just aren't enough students to go around. There are few people, in every club that stay committed and come to the meetings and events, but as a whole, the student body is just too small for the amount of clubs and interests on campus. I wish there were something I could do to give people more time and interest, because we really do have amazing things going on around campus...it's just that we are too busy to take full advantage of them.