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!

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.

Volunteering and Bingo fun

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Annie Brown

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is one of the few holidays McDaniel students get off from class (though if you’re not on campus doing a Jan Term, you’re off for the day anyway since you’re still on winter break).

Though I had off from class today, I decided to make today a “day on” by volunteering on campus for our annual MLK Day festivities. For four years now, McDaniel, along with the local Carroll Community College, has hosted a service-learning event for elementary, middle, and high school students on MLK Day. I volunteered last year for it and enjoyed it, so I thought I would volunteer again!

The day included a couple of guest speakers, a talented high school jazz band, lunch in Glar, and a streaming of the inauguration. My favorite part of the day was card making. I got to supervise elementary and middle school kids as they made and decorated cards to benefit members of a local senior center, and I got to make plenty of cheerful cards too.

I had a great time volunteering, but it left me exhausted! I took an unnecessarily long nap before going to dinner, and a couple hours later, I was off to my next exciting activity of the day: Bingo!

If there’s piece of universal advice for college students I can give, it’s to play Bingo whenever it’s offered. Playing Bingo on a college campus is a fun way to be social, but more awesomely, there’s prizes. Awesome prizes. Awesome prizes worth a lot of money prizes. (Like gift cards!)

The last time I played Bingo at McDaniel was in August, and I was very lucky to win a $100 gift card. Which is why I was stunned that tonight, in the eighth and final round of Bingo, I did it again! I couldn’t believe it, but I was also very happy! Several other people were only one space away from a full Bingo card, but with pure chance, I managed to be the lucky winner.

So as you can imagine, I had a pretty fantastic day!

Yoga day!

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Annie Brown

Today was finally yoga day, the day I’ve been looking forward to all Jan Term! I love yoga, and I don’t think a coping with stress class would be complete with out it.

Before Jennifer, the yoga instructor, arrived, our class was visited by a reporter and a photographer from the Carroll County Times, the local newspaper to interview some of us about our experiences in Coping with Stress and with Jan Term. I was one of four people to volunteer to be interviewed, so I’m hoping that I’ll be quoted in the article. The Carroll County Times does a lot of reporting of what goes on at McDaniel, and McDaniel students are able to pick up their newspapers around campus free of charge.

When the yoga instructor came, we pushed all of the desks to the classroom walls to make plenty of space to lie down. Jennifer led us through yoga nidra, a process of yogic meditation. This process involved focusing on our breathing, becoming aware of our bodies and body parts, experiencing feelings of warmth and coolness, and detaching ourselves from any thoughts that entered our minds. Unfortunately, I struggled with this process because since we didn’t stretch or do any yoga poses beforehand, my back hurt lying on the hard floor for that length of time (even with my yoga mat) and the classroom was very cold. However, when Jennifer asked us if we had any questions once the yoga nidra process was over, I asked her to take us through a few yoga poses, which she happily did. I’m glad, since the class seemed to enjoy the poses and we were able to warm up as well. My back felt much better too.

Amazingly, I only have three class meetings left of Coping with Stress. Tomorrow, we’ll be learning about hypnosis, on Tuesday, we’ll be handing in our culminating projects, and on Wednesday, we’ll be quizzed on what we learned in the class. (Since we have off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, there’s no class on Monday.) Taking Coping with Stress has been a pretty good experience, and I hope I’ll be able to use some of the lessons and stress reduction techniques I learned when I dive into spring semester in just a couple of weeks!

Returning from my quilting bee

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Annie Brown

Yesterday afternoon, I was gearing up to go back to McDaniel later in the evening, when my mom and sister came back from the fabric store with a few bolts of beautiful fabric. They had decided to follow up on my suggestion that we make a quilt for one of our family friends who is undergoing chemotherapy.

Not wanting to pass up an evening of quality family and quilting time, I decided to postpone my return to campus to this morning and get sewing instead! I’d say this proved to be a wonderful choice. My mom cut and pinned fabric while my sister and I sewed and ironed. In only a couple of hours, the face of our quilt (the top part with all the different pieces sewn together) was nearly finished! (Some of the pieces weren’t lining up though, so we decided to call it a night.) We also talked about how “back in the day,” it was common for women to make quilts together in quilting bees, and that’s kind of what it felt like.

Spending an extra night at home to have a small quilting bee was wonderful, but it did come at a small price: I ended up being late to class. Since I don’t keep a car on campus, my dad drove me back. And unfortunately, a number of things got us behind schedule, including a 10-minute delay that involved one of the tires of our car sounding funny that resulted in us going back to the house to take our other car instead.

So I ended up getting to class at around 10, thirty minutes after it started. But I didn’t stress, since a lot of the factors that caused me to be late were out of my control. Dr. Mazeroff, my professor, was very understanding when I explained my situation to him during our mid-class break.

Though it’s courteous and in good practice to be on time, most professors at McDaniel won’t get upset if you’re a few minutes late. If for whatever reason you’re really late, apologize to your professor after class or in an email and explain what happened. Professors will often say that it’s better to show up late to class then not at all. Some professors might deduct points from your grade, but you’ll never get a detention–college doesn’t work that way.

I try not to be late, but sometimes time and other things I can’t control have a way of working against me. I’ve learned that it’s best to not let these things stress me out. My lateness this morning really doesn’t matter in the smaller or the grander scheme of things. What’s important is that I spent an extra night at home doing something fun with people I love…and now I know what I need to do to be on time when I return back to campus on a Monday morning : )

Home for the weekend

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Annie Brown

The way I see it, Jan Term is kind of an extension of my winter break. My only class, Coping with Stress, doesn’t involve a lot of work outside of class time, so I have a lot of time to do what I please, like reading, blogging, and surfing the web.

Since I have so much free time, I thought this would be a good weekend to go home. I’m doing everything that I would have done had I stayed on campus but in the company of my family and the added bonus of home-cooked meals. Most of my friends who are on campus for Jan Term went home this weekend too, so I would have been pretty lonely had I stayed.

There haven’t been as many activities on campus as I would have imagined. Last weekend, the Office of Student Engagement screened Superbad a couple of times, and this weekend, they sponsored a bus trip to the Columbia Mall so students could get some retail therapy. Luckily, it looks like the number of activities will increase in the second half of Jan Term. Off the top of my head, there will be a recreation night, a movie theater night, an inauguration watching event, and the day of service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Amazingly, there’s only a week and a half left of Jan Term, so while I may get bored at times, I’m going to cherish all this down time while I have it!

Coping with Stress, week one

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Annie Brown

I’m halfway through my first full week of being back on the Hill for Jan Term, and tomorrow is my last day of class for this week! (Coping with Stress doesn’t meet on Fridays.)

Over the past few days, I’ve learned a variety of stress reduction and relaxation techniques in Coping with Stress, and hopefully, I’ll be able to incorporate some of them into my life.

We spent a lot of time over the past couple of days talking about healthy sleeping habits and sleep deprivation. I never realized that having a consistent bedtime routine could be so important in getting a good night’s sleep, so it’s something I’ve started working on, especially since I need to do a stress reduction activity for two weeks for my culminating project for the class. I’ve decided to create a bedtime routine centered around yoga. I now end my night with cleaning my room to make space for yoga, preparing myself for bed, and then practicing yoga. I don’t think this has helped with my sleep deprivation yet, but my body definitely feels good and less tense after doing some of my favorite poses, like child’s pose, pigeon, cat, and cow.

We’ve also listened to a lot of relaxation tapes. We’re allowed to lie on the floor for these, so I’m glad I brought my yoga mat to campus this semester! We did some guided imagery tapes yesterday and today we had tapes guide us in meditation and progressive muscle relaxation. I had done some of these things in a class I took in high school called Dance and Lifetime Fitness, and I think I want to reincorporate meditation into my life. (It might by hard though. My suite is on the louder side.)

Similarly, we also learned a couple of breathing techniques. The one that I found to feel particularly relaxing was one in which you cover your left nostril, breathe out of your right, then cover the right and breath in and out of your left before doing the same with the right and continuing to repeat the process.

Lastly (and most unexpectedly to me), we learned about assertiveness. Sometimes, it’s easy for people to be passive when they interact with others, resulting in them not standing up for themselves and their rights to their feelings and saying no. There’s nothing wrong with being assertive, and it’s not the same thing as being aggressive.

Above all, we’ve learned that the two best stress management techniques are having social support, even if it’s just one person that you talk to support and guidance, and getting exercise. Tomorrow, we’ll be going to the fitness center as a class to learn more about the equipment and what services they offer. I went to the gym for the first time since my freshman year yesterday, and while I got some good exercise in, I know I definitely need a little guidance when it comes to using the fitness center effectively, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s class.

Though Coping with Stress isn’t intellectually challenging like most of the other classes I’ve taken at McDaniel, following through with the stress management techniques we’ve been learning presents its own challenge. Hopefully, I’ll continue to find more things that would benefit me and I’ll be able to make them a part of my lifestyle!

I’m back!

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Annie Brown

Happy New Year!

After a lovely winter break that seemed half as long as it actually was (21 days), I arrived back on campus last night for Jan Term! (Technically, people were supposed to move in from 2-4 yesterday, but I arranged with Res Life to come later in the evening so my parents wouldn’t have to leave work early just to drive me back to school.)

Things have been pretty low key so far. Last night, I had a night in all to myself that I spent watching TV and beginning my unpacking. (Unfortunately, I’m not done unpacking yet, since I brought a whole bunch of groceries to last me throughout much of the spring semester.)

I had thought I would be alone in my suite over these next few weeks, but I found out late last night that I’m not. We now have a new suite mate, a transfer student who’s living in the previously unoccupied room in the loft upstairs (my suite has two floors). She seems pretty nice, and we’re taking the same Jan Term, so hopefully I’ll get to know her a little better in the coming days.

Today was my first day of Coping with Stress. I’ll be taking this class four days a week for two and a half hours a day for the next two weeks and two days. We’ll be learning and trying out a lot of relaxation and stress relief techniques, which I’m really excited about. On Monday, an acupuncturist is coming to speak to us and perform acupuncture on willing volunteers. And later on in the month, a yoga instructor who specializes in restorative yoga is coming, which I’m especially looking forward to because I love yoga and I have a bad back.

After class, the day was mine to do whatever I wanted. I went to lunch to eat and catch up with friends, took an inappropriately long nap afterward, and went to dinner after that. Tonight, I need to get a few things accomplished before I go over to a friend’s dorm to watch Looper with friends.

So far, I’m digging this Jan Term lifestyle!

Let it Snow!

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Annie Brown

It’s snowing here in southeastern Pennsylvania where I make my home away from my home at McDaniel! The ground and everything else exposed to the outdoors is becoming blanketed in fluffy snow and I suspect that soon enough, the tips of the grass will no longer be visible.

It’s apparently snowing in Westminster too! Even though everyone is on winter break, Campus Safety is still diligently posting to Facebook winter weather advisories and reminders for people not to travel unless necessary. It’s nice to see that Campus Safety cares about our safety and well-being even when school is not in session. After all, plenty of McDaniel students and faculty live in and near Westminster.

Since I pretty much won’t be going out today (except when my puppy needs to go outside–that should be interesting), today is a perfect day to start packing up my things for Jan Term! While most students won’t be returning to campus until the end of January, those of us who are taking on-campus Jan Term classes have to move back on January 2. This may seem really soon, but for the most part, I don’t mind it. Over the past couple of days, sitting around and doing nothing has started to become incredibly boring. I think I’ll welcome the change of scenery and social interaction of being back on campus!

Of course, I probably won’t do much packing though–at least not yet. Today seems like the perfect sort of day to get a bunch of blankets, stay in my pajamas, and curl up with a good book : )

I Am Thankful: McDaniel Edition

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Annie Brown

Over the past few years, I’ve come to realize that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. I love the combination of lots of great food and lots of great family, and it’s a really warm, cozy, and fun holiday. I’ve also taken time over the last few years to reflect in writing about what I am thankful for each Thanksgiving, and I would like to share with you all of the McDaniel things I am thankful for this year.

I am so very thankful to be having such an incredible semester. I’m taking great classes with fabulous professors, and I live with such wonderful people.

I’m thankful that my suite mates are not just the people I live with but have also become my friends. I could not have imagined my suite being such a family unit, and I am truly blessed that we are.

I’m thankful to have strengthened my relationships with some of my friends who live outside of my suite. I am so lucky to have so many great people to rely on.

I’m thankful that I pushed myself out of my comfort zone a little to take a badminton class. My physical education requirement is now a quarter of the way done, and I got to learn badminton and get to know some people within my major because I took the class.

I’m thankful to have some great opportunities coming my way next semester. My schedule looks pretty good at the moment, and I’m adding in a course about working in the Writing Center and working on a presentation about Harry Potter and the Hero’s Journey to present in April at a Jungian conference.

I am thankful for the ever-supportive and amazing faculty at McDaniel College.

I’m thankful that in three weeks, the semester will be over. I’m going to miss this semester a lot, but after all of the stress that the next few weeks are going to bring, I’ll be so glad for things to wrap up so I can go home for a little extended down time before I get to return to McDaniel for Jan Term!

Lastly, I’m thankful to have such a great job at Admissions blogging for you guys, the prospective students. I truly enjoy sharing my stories, and I hope that some or any of the posts on this blog have helped you get a feel for what McDaniel is like.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful, and I hope you’ll remember to be thankful too!

Stories from the Hill

Tag Archives: Jan term