I Make a Difference

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Annie Brown

I made a difference in the lives of other today, and while it was a little physically painful, I felt great contributing to such a wonderful cause! Why did I subject myself to pain? I wanted to give blood!

McDaniel has at least one to two blood drives per semester, and for me, blood drives on campus are the most convenient way to give blood.

I made an appointment at a sign-up table outside of Glar a few days ago, and at 3:30 today, I was sitting in the Forum reading an information packet about blood donation while hydrating myself with a bottle of water that was provided.

At any Red Cross blood drive, you’ll be screened before you can donate. You’ll have to answer questions about yourself, your health, and even your travel history, and you’ll have to give a small blood sample to check to see if your iron level is high enough to donate on that particular day. I often don’t make it past the iron test, so I don’t always get to give blood, but today, I was lucky! My iron level was high enough on the first try, and I was able to give blood for the second time in my life!

The process of giving blood went well and before I knew it, I was eating tasty post-donation snacks. I was happy to have been able to contribute to such an important cause, and I wore my “I Make a Difference” sticker proudly to dinner, in hopes that it might inspire others to give blood. Perhaps I’ve even inspired you to give : )

Hopefully, I’ll be able to donate some more when the next blood drive rolls around!

The Perks of the Meal Plan

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Amber Slater

Even though I was on campus during this past Jan term, I opted out of a meal plan in order to save some money. Though I love cooking and experimenting with new recipes, I did find that I missed going to our cafeteria, Glar, or grabbing some food at the pub. Now that the semester has begun, I’ve been using my meal plan pretty much everyday.

For those on the fence about getting a meal plan, here are five instances when our dining services really comw in handy:

1. Exhausted mornings- Whether I was up too late writing a paper, talking to friends, or just didn’t sleep well, sometimes I just feel like I need to kick start my day in the cafeteria. My staples are omelettes, which are served until 9:30, and coffee. I’m not usually a big caffeine drinker, but the combination of filling food and a cup of black coffee helps me get through the day when the night before was long.

2. Post-workout- I run cross country and track, so usually after a long workout I’m starving and not really interested in going back to my kitchen and spending time cooking something. It’s nice to have hot food on my plate when I’m tired without any work or clean-up involved.

3. Between classes- There are few things worse than sitting through a lecture while your stomach is growling. Often, I find myself with an hour to kill in the middle of the day, at which point I hit up Glar in order to make sure that I’m full, energized, and able to pay attention during class.

4. Themed nights- Typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays the chefs organize special themes for our dinner in Glar. The schedule for this semester has been posted, and I was excited to see some old favorites like sushi night mixed in with new themes, like a vegan dinner!

5. 11:30PM- You know the feeling. It’s late, and you’re craving mozzarella sticks. With our meal plan, we have meal exchanges that allow us to order food in the Pub until 11:30. Eating in the Pub at night is a great way to take a study break and catch up with friends after a long day.

After living on both sides of having a meal plan, I am definitely glad that I’m able to use one this semester. It allows me to eat with my friends and at times that are convenient for me!

My Jan Term to Italy

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Kaitlyn Vadenais

Jan Term was everything I could have hoped for and more. It was an absolute dream!

For 14 days, I explored all around northern Italy with 30 people, including 13 other McDaniel students, and some alumni. The class was photography and we were all required to have a theme to focus our efforts on something deeper than just the Italian sites. Some examples of people’s themes were dogs, couples, graffiti, doors, and lights.

The amount of territory that we covered and the number of things we saw in those two weeks still amazes me. We traveled to Florence, San Gimignano, Sienna, Assisi, Rome, Venice, Murano, Burano, Vienna, Milan, and Como. Some days we would wake up in one city and go to sleep in another. The price that I paid for the trip and the experiences that I had seem like they don’t add up – I feel like I underpaid for some experiences of a lifetime!

Some of the highlights of the trip:

An abundance of amazing Italian foods, wines, and desserts, including gelato!
Exploring the Scavi underneath the Vatican. Did you know only 10 tours a day get to see this? And our group had 3 of them!
Throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain in Rome, which means I will return someday.
Seeing the Coliseum and Forum in Rome – SO BREATHTAKING.
A water taxi ride from the Venice airport to our hotel.
Taking a boat ride around Lake Como, the deepest lake in Europe and home to George Clooney’s villa.

I can’t wait to return to Italy someday!

I ❤ Day 2

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Annie Brown

Last night, one of my friends wrote “I ❤ DAY 2″ on the whiteboard on my door, and the idea kind of stuck with me (so much so that I decided to redecorate my whiteboard in its honor. It was also time for the drawing of the Christmas tree to go).

It’s been a fun yet surprisingly mellow first couple of days for me. Yesterday mainly consisted of attending my three MWF courses and catching up with my suite mates at lunch and on the fly. I started my morning at 10:20 with Elementary Logic, an introductory logic course offered by the philosophy department. The professor, whom I’d never met, seemed like a pretty cool guy. He frequently quoted hip hop and rap lyrics relevant to his discussions and he’s a big Minecraft fan.

After Logic, I went to lunch in Glar were I ate with a huge group of people. Though I hadn’t eaten with most of them in six weeks, it was as if we hadn’t been away from campus during all that time. (Perhaps I feel this way because I was on campus for Jan Term, albeit with a much smaller group of people.) I took half an hour to decompress in my room before heading off to my favorite class of the day, Growing Up in America, taught by the wonderful and McDaniel-famous Dr. Mary. In this class, my peers and I will be reading bildungsromans (coming of age novels) and memoirs of people of multicultural backgrounds in the United States as they become adults. Though it’s a literature class, I’m one of only three English majors in the class. Hopefully, the variety of majors in the class will diversify the perspectives we have of what we read.

My final class of yesterday was a math class called Adventures in Number Theory. Though I’m an English major, I took the class because it counts as an Honors Program elective and because it helps me finish out the Quantitative Reasoning requirement. I also had the professor for Calc II my freshman year, and he’s a pretty cool guy. Things went well, and hopefully the course material won’t be too scary!

Today, Day Two, I only had one class–American Poetry with one of my many favorite English professors. We read and analyzed a bunch of really short poems (many with only two lines) and I had a great time! Though it was my only official class of the day, I’m also meeting this afternoon with the professor sponsoring my independent study about Harry Potter and Carl Jung.

I’ll finish out Day Two tonight with a mandatory floor meeting and the first Free Press meeting of the semester.

Things have been pretty low key so far, and I’m okay with that. It’s only a matter of days before I start to feel genuinely busy, so I’m going to take advantage of some downtime while I can!

The Boy Scouts

Posted on January 29, 2013 by cwb003

I spent a lot of time over Jan Term doing my on campus job, life guarding. This has been a great opportunity for me to swim, which I enjoy. This year I decided to take on a new initiative and signed up for weekend life guarding with boy scouts. I usually don’t sign up for these hours, but they were posted in advance when there was no one on campus so I decided to sign up.

My first section of guarding for them was Saturday, and it was completely different from guarding for the faculty and students who usually swim. The boys scouts rented out the use of the pool for three hours. There were nearly 20 kids in the water at the same time, and all of them were young boys. Young boys tend to be rowdy, and cheat. They spent the time finding the way to swim the shortest laps possible.

At first I was a bit nervous being in charge of so many children at once, but once I realized their swimming skills were up to par I relaxed a bit. This week they mostly swam laps and used diving bricks to test their ability to get to the bottom of the deep end of the pool. I know nothing about boy scouts, so I am curious to see what other things they have to do in order to ear badges. Luckily I will probably find out because I am guarding for them the next 4 times that they will be using our pool.

The start of a new semester!

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Jess Hague

While everyone else headed back to McDaniel to start a new semester, I was thrilled to see everyone back on campus! Jan Term was definitely fun, especially while I was getting into the swing of Student Teaching, but it was a lot of fun to have everyone move back into my apartment. However, the weirdest thing was that while everyone else was going to start off a new semester, I’m closing out the semester at my high school. Tomorrow starts a new semester for my students, and because of that, I get three new classes of students to teach. I’m really excited, but also really nervous!

As the semester starts, I’m definitely nervous about a few things. The first is what every senior is feeling: the fact that this is our last semester of college. It’s nerve-wracking, simply because I have no idea where I’m going to end up teaching after college. It’s the first time in my life I haven’t had a long-term plan and it scares me, but it’s also kind of exciting at the same time! My advice to everyone: make the most of your college career. I never believed everyone when they said that time would fly by and I should make the most of it, and I should have listened. It definitely does fly by! Also, I’m nervous about making the right impression on my students tomorrow. First impressions are important and I want them to like me! The first day of a new semester is the same for a teacher as it is for students-you’re always a little nervous about how things are going to turn out when you walk into a classroom. I thought that once I stopped being a student, the nervousness would change, but apparently it never goes away!

First of Many Crazy Days

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Whitney Walker

Wasn’t it Mary Poppins that said, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?” Maybe that is a good way to look at my semester. As long as I keep a little sweetness in each day to make sure I can get through all the stress of being busy this semester. Today was the first taste I got of the semester to come. Running around campus and Westminster all day seems to be what I will be doing on a daily basis. After my first class was cancelled because of the ice, I went back to sleep like any average college kid does. I eventually got up and went to my French class. It has been about a year since I was in a French class so it took all the energy I had to pay attention and translate what my professor was saying. Then I had a million errands to run for Vagina Monologues. Afterwards, I ran back to my apartment to change for my interview. I headed down to the Caroll County Chamber of Commerce and was offered the internship right on the spot. I and 2 of my fellow English majors will be working on the project together and I am very excited to get started on it.

Tomorrow I have 3 classes and another post-it note full of errands. I’m looking forward to finding out what the rest of my classes are like. It’s going to be such a busy semester that I am not even going to realize how quickly it is going until it was almost over. It was so great to see all my friends again walking around campus. I got to catch up with lots of people I haven’t seen since finals week when we were all stressed. Everyone seems so relaxed from break, some even super tan (those who went to tropical places for Jan Term classes). I love listening to everyone’s stories and adventures from break. So many things change when you go on a long break from school, but one thing stays the same. That feeling you get when you see one of your good friends for the first time in a while. The first day back is always full of smiles and hugs. There is always that relief when you walk into a class and realize you have a friend or two in that class as well. It’s always good to know you have someone, other than the teacher, to ask for help in a class. The more minds working on a problem, the better.

Returning to the Hill

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Kat

So, today was the first day of classes for the Spring Semester and I had a really good time. Both of my classes today were great although it was a little long after being gone for so long. I am definitely looking forward to this semester and both of my Monday classes look like they are gonna be wonderful. I was really glad to get moved back in and settled during the day yesterday, it felt good being back here and hanging out with my friends.

So for moving back in yesterday, I swear that I always come back with too much stuff and that I came back to school with way more than I did before. Still, getting settled did not take much time and I spent a lot of time chilling with people and playing Guild Wars. I am having my friend Lisa bring my fish back tonight and I will be glad to spend some time with her as well – she was watching them for me over break so I did not have to take them more than three hours away.

Also, one of my biggest project right now is the anime club convention that is at the end of March. We had a meeting about it today and I cannot wait because things are shaping up really nicely for it. We have 3 performers and a bunch of artists and vendors that will be here as well. I am really excited for it and cannot wait.

Fraternity Travels

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Robert

This past weekend I did something that many fraternity members will never do, I attended a leadership conference sponsored by the Alpha Sigma Phi national headquarters. Let me start by saying that if you ever get a chance to attend a leadership conference of any type, you should do it. I learned so much about myself and got so many ideas about what I can brink to my fraternity and to McDaniel. A lot of times we lose focus, getting caught up in our social lives, putting importance on things that truthfully just won’t matter once we graduate, but this conference helped me realize that we can leave a legacy for ourselves if we live everyday being the best men and women that we can be.

Three of my brothers and I flew out to Indianapolis last Friday. It was an early flight. I arrived at BWI at 6am so I would be sure not to miss my flight. The Alpha Sig national headquarters paid for the flight and for the hotel and dinners for three nights. It was a great deal, plus I love flying. We arrived at the hotel, the luxurious Crowne Plaza, only 40 minutes or so before we were supposed to meet down in the lobby so my brothers and I had to quickly get up to our room and change (most of us had traveled in sweats in the name of comfort). Once in the lobby we were quickly filled into a large room with almost 250 brothers from colleges and universities across the country.

There was something cool about being in a room with so many guys who had committed themselves to similar values to your own and been through similar experiences all to find themselves in Indianapolis on this particular weekend. It was nice in making conversation since you already had one major thing in common with every guy in the room. Over the course of the next few days, I met all kinds of guys of different backgrounds and from different states, and together we helped define and strengthen each other’s commitments to our core values as brothers and men.

I know that you’re probably thinking about how cheesy all of this sounds, but it really did make a difference in how I view the world. I’m not saying that if you’re a guy you should come to McDaniel and pledge Alpha Sig, I mean you should come check us out cause we’re awesome, but what I am saying is that you should take advantage of opportunities like these as they arise in college, and they will. Lessons learned: you never stop growing, you never stop learning, there’s always something you can change to make yourself, and the brothers from Murray State know how to have a good time.

Start of Semester

Posted on January 27, 2013 by cwb003

It is that time of year, the beginning of the new semester. Watching the campus transition from the Jan Term quiet to the hustle and bustle of the new semester is thrilling, and also sad. The nice thing about Jan Term is how peaceful it is. There is time to fit in all activities, you can walk the campus without running into anyone you know. There are also no lines at the pub, or at the mailboxes. It is simple. Now all of that is changing.

As people move in there are crowds, walking from building to building takes longer, and there are definitely lines. Picking up books at the bookstore takes time (good thing I did that in advance!) My Facebook newsfeed is also flooded with ‘moving back to Westminster’ statuses.

Here are some of my favorites

- For my ride back to school! (insert picture of delicious food items here)

- Heading back to school for my last semester of college, jeepers! (I know how that feels!)

- On this balmy day… I’m being dragged back to Westminster.

Most people get very excited to come back and see friends. While I am delighted to catch up with everyone, I am always sad to see the peace of the campus disappear. There is nothing like the quiet of Jan Term, that’s for sure. Most are happy to come back, but some (especially those who went abroad to warm countries) are not as thrilled to return and be greeted by snow. I for one just hope that this semester gets underway, all this waiting is driving me crazy. Bring it on, senior spring!

Stories from the Hill

Monthly Archives: January 2013