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 A view of Little Baker Chapel and the theater – typically the area where tours begin It was a beautiful day for Fall Visit Day on Friday! The morning was even a little bit too cold! But nonetheless, families poured into our parking lots coming to tour McDaniel and find out more about what we do here! In the morning, I directed traffic, helping families to find parking spots in our lot and directing them to the next meeting point. As I mentioned, it was chilly – a little too chilly for just the bright yellow “Ambassador” tee I, and every other tour guide, was wearing. But luckily it warmed up and all of the tour guides, including me, filed into Decker auditorium to start the tours. While we waited for tour assignments, I have to admit, I did a little munching on the beautiful breakfast spread they had out for the event – shhh, don’t tell.
 Dorm room 🙂 I was assigned nine prospective students and a co-tour guide and we were on our way. In and out of the academic buildings, the gym, the registrar’s office area, but obviously the most important were the dining hall and the dorm rooms – food and sleep, always crucial :).
While I conducted a student tour, other tour guides were taking prospective students to different classes, chatting with them at lunch, and taking parents on a separate, parent-oriented tour. The entire campus appeared “yellow” with all the yellow-shirted tour guides mulling about. After all tours were complete, the yellow shirts started to slowly disperse and calm blanketed the campus again.
Cooking on a college campus is always an interesting prospect. I know I have a lot of allergies and dietary restrictions so it has been interesting coming up with innovative ways to overcome these hurtles. I lived in dormitories on campus for the first three years of my college experience and each year I got a little better at adapting.
My first year was a lot of microwave macaroni and cheese and leftover pizza and of course food from Glar, our dining hall. However in my second year I became an innovator, by midterms of my fall semester I had learned how to make a five course meal including cake for dessert using my micro fridge. Although this year I am grateful I have a kitchen. I learned to cook long grain rice, steamed vegetables, and even pasta was not hard to make by the end of the year.
This year I get to wow my housemates with chicken tacos, apple pie, buffalo dip and chocolate chip pancakes (for breakfast this morning), yum! I also get to make my own homemade pizza and mac and cheese although there are days when I miss the microwavable kind but I would not give up the ability to have a kitchen for the world it makes such a difference. For example two Thursdays ago I was able to bring a homemade apple pie to a club meeting for a snack! It went over beautifully and I was so happy.
Family’s weekend is a wonderful, busy, and crowded weekend on The Hill. Family’s weekend includes a lot of events such as a football, softball games with tailgating, the bookstore is open extra hours, seniors start thinking about buying class rings, and in general a lot happens. There also happened to be a wonderful acappella group on campus this past weekend.
However not everyone can have family on the hill to spend their weekend with, I am one of those. My family is from Pennsylvania and works weekends so they could not join me for the wonderful festivities. However my time at McDaniel has allowed me to make wonderful friends. These friends I consider my adopted college family. Those are the people who I spent my weekend alongside.
As a senior this is the last year I will see family weekend and it is so weird to look up the hill at Whiteford one of the freshman dorms and see all the parents, students, and cars crowding the driveway. It makes me nostalgic, I remember family’s weekend my freshman year was the first McDaniel football game I attended. I love all the events and magic that happens on these weekends, there is so much hard work put in by the staff at McDaniel and I applaud them.
 Such great weather on the Hill! This weekend was Family Weekend, and even though my family did not come visit me from California, I had the best time ever! It was nice to meet some of my residents’ family members. They were all so nice! Now I can put faces to the stories they tell me about their families.
One of my suitemates had over her little cousin. It was great to see so many kids on campus. I miss them so much, so it was fun to play with them in my free time.
On Saturday, I worked in admissions as a tour guide, which was enjoyable because it was such a beautiful day. It was the perfect day for visitors and parents. That evening, I went to an a capella concert. It was (dare I say it) better than Pitch Perfect just because it was cool to be able to see a real a capella group live.
 The a capella group: Ball in the House The bass was so low that I could feel his voice reverberate in my chest. We also learned how to beatbox; it is not as easy as it looks. They sang songs from many different genres, and my friends got up and danced away to the music.
 My friends and I at the concert! This morning I went into downtown Westminster with my friend; we got breakfast at the Cup. The Cup is a cute café in town that has really great flatbread and interesting tea options. It is also a nice off campus study spot. It was really busy today. I met more of my friends’ family members because they all went off campus for breakfast too.
 Sam studying at the Cup Family Weekend is always a good time even if your family cannot make it.
In a weird change of pace, I’m not taking any reading heavy or paper heavy classes this semester. Instead, I’m in Digital Photography, New Media Writing, Chinese, my FYS, and Grammar and Usage.
Digital Photography is all about learning to use the settings on my camera, taking pictures, and editing those pictures so they look the best they can. Our assignments are all taking photos to fit a certain category or aim. This week is all about taking photos of light (not light sources, but the effect light has on things). It’s strange for me, but I like it.
New Media Writing involves blogging, tweeting, and using various sites for curating and socializing to learn and practice how to brand ourselves using logos, taglines, color schemes, etc. and get people to pay attention. It’s a really fun class with Dr. Muhlhauser that I would recommend to anyone interested in having their own online presence.
Chinese is a lot of fun, although just like learning any language, it’s difficult.
I’m not a freshman, so I’m not actually taking an FYS, but I am a peer mentor, so I go to the class sessions of the FYS I’m mentoring for. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s great to be able to do the readings, listen to the discussions, and then not have to write any papers. It’s like auditing a class, only I get internship credit.
The last class I’m taking is Grammar and Usage, which is one of two choices required for the English major. It sounds boring, and the readings are pretty dull, but the class discussions are usually interesting. We debate the uses of words, regional slang, the logic of how words are created, what category words are in sentences, and once had a long discussion on whether or not “gust” can act as both a noun and a verb.
As you can see, I have a wide range of classes this semester, which I’m really excited about. They’ve all been pretty good so far, and I’m hoping that continues.
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