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When you stay in the library for long periods of time, you start noticing things other than books. If the mood strikes me, I will take roaming study breaks through the first and second floors. Something I had never noticed before is how much art there is in the library.
With my nose in my books, I had been missing some real gems. I am not really great at analyzing art, but I find that I can still gather inspiration from it. Looking at the artwork in the library allows me to refocus my mind.
After studying for a while, it is good to let your mind wander and take a break. The art in the library often allows me to do this.
My favorite piece is on the second floor near the study area in the back. It uses really bright colors and has so many inspiring figures on it. I just enjoy getting lost in the art, and every time I look at it again, I discover something new.
I think it’s nice that we go to a school with talented alumni who leave things behind that inspire future generations. Every time I turn around, I can find something beautiful and new at McDaniel.
 Artist and dedication  Full piece of art  Right panel  Middle panel  Left Panel
FYS and SIS are two of the most common acronyms you can expect to encounter on the Hill. For McDaniel students, these three-letter terms roll right off the tongue, but for people who aren’t yet a part of the McDaniel community, these terms are probably unfamiliar, at least in the contexts in which McDaniel students use them.
Let’s start by defining the FYS. An FYS is a First Year Seminar, but that term also needs to be defined. The First Year Seminar is the first course you’ll ever register for as a McDaniel student. All first year students have to take an FYS, but the good news is, it’s one less thing you’ll have to worry about in completing the McDaniel Plan. Soon after you’ve enrolled at McDaniel, you’ll be asked to rank your preferences from a list of cool and fun-sounding FYS classes so that McDaniel can work its magic and put you in one that will be interesting for you. These courses are designed to introduce first year college students to what life and academics at McDaniel College are like, all while exposing you to fascinating topics and all sorts of resources on the Hill.
My advice to students in ranking their FYS choices is to choose carefully but not stress out about it. Once you’re registered for your FYS, you cannot change it, so make sure your list includes classes that interest you, not your friends, not your parents, and not other incoming McDaniel students you meet on Facebook. You should also feel free to choose an FYS that’s completely outside of your discipline, particularly since almost none of the FYS classes count towards any particular major. For more advice on choosing an FYS, check out this guide that I wrote for last year’s incoming first year class.
Examples of FYS courses include From Grimm to Disney, Scientific Revolutions, and Alexander on the Road. My FYS was called Gender, Literature, and Culture. In that class, we read books and other works from the 20th and 21st centuries and discussed how these works portrayed gender and sexuality. At the end of the course, everyone got to write a paper on the topic of their choice, so I wrote a paper about the portrayal of women in Harry Potter.
I also had a lot of fun with my FYS outside of the classroom. My FYS professor, Becky Carpenter, arranged outings for my classmates and I to go to Baugher’s, a produce store and restaurant within walking distance from campus, to eat ice cream, and for us to carve pumpkins at her house. Some of my classmates had never carved pumpkins before so to see them delight in an experience I had taken for granted was truly wonderful.
 My FYS had some serious pumpkin carving prowess! So now that you know what an FYS is, let’s quickly discuss the SIS. In your sophomore year, you’ll take an SIS–a Sophomore Interdisciplinary Studies class. The goal of the SIS, which is also a component of the McDaniel Plan, is to expose students to a variety of academic disciplines by showing how they can be applied to a particular topic.
SIS classes also have a lot of cool names and topics. This year, there’s a professor offering an SIS on the Hunger Games, and McDaniel is well-known around the internet for having an SIS about South Park. Not all of the SIS classes have to do with pop culture though. Students can also pick from courses such as Southern Appalachia and the Arab World.
For my SIS, I took a class called the Hero’s Journey. This class was about the ideas of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and had to do with archetypes, the collective unconscious, and (you guessed it) the hero’s journey. Throughout the semester, he had guest speakers come in to teach us about shamanic drumming, art therapy, and astrology. We read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Wizard of Oz and did projects on the Hero’s Journey in the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. My professor liked the research a classmate and I conducted on Harry Potter so much that he invited us to put together a more in depth presentation on Harry Potter and Jung to present at a Jungian meetup the next semester.
 Here I am giving a presentation on the Jungian elements in Harry Potter at the Baltimore Jungian Working Group meetup in April 2013. The FYS and the SIS are some of the coolest components of the McDaniel Plan, and with so many interesting topics to choose from, they’re part of what makes McDaniel unique!
Hi guys!
One thing that every college student worries about is food. There’s simply no way that the food at a college is going to be the same as home cooked meals—you try cooking for 1600 students! Though, coming from a summer with Employee Dining Room meals in Yellowstone, Glar is practically gourmet to me, I’ve found some ways to liven up meals even more.
 My friend thinks that french fries taste better when you break them into small pieces. Glarshakes are my favourite. Most of the time, Glar had two flavours of frozen yoghurt out—chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. I take a cup, fill it halfway with chocolate or strawberry frozen yoghurt, and then fill it with chocolate milk. I use a knife to mix it, and ta-da! A glarshake. These are absolutely delicious, and I’ve probably had too many across the year. I’ve heard you can also add peanut butter, though I haven’t tried that yet.
Another frosty thrill I’ve learned how to make is spiders—root beer floats, but with any type of soda instead of root beer (though if you want to use root beer, go for it.) Glar has ice cream. If they don’t have small tubs, they have ice cream sandwiches, with vanilla ice cream in the middle. Plop the ice cream into a cup of soda, and poof! You have a float.
 And sometimes we have ice cream sundae bars! Glar has a panini press, which a lot of people use to make sandwiches into hot paninis using ham and cheese or plain bread and cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich. One thing that all New Zealanders like myself know is that pineapple and cheese taste amazing together. It’s just like a Hawaiian pizza! Though the sandwich station doesn’t have pineapple, you can add pineapple from the salad par. Put it in the panini press and you have a delicious hot sandwich!
This is less exciting, but when there’s tomato soup, I take shredded cheese from the salad bar and add it to the soup. The melted cheese is really yummy and the soup warms me up on cold days.
Ema
Dinosaur Land can be defined as a place full of dinosaur replicas, some life-size, some not, designed for children to be fascinated by these early creatures and learn a few things in the process.
So of course, as college students, my friends and I wanted to go, and we did last Sunday.
It was the first time I’ve ever been to Virginia, and the first time I drove into West Virginia, so it was nice to be able to add to the list of states I’ve been in. Mostly, though, it was fun to see the dinosaurs and pose with them, pretending to be buds or prey or sometimes predators.
There was also a 25 foot King Kong, just for fun. The hand was reinforced for people to be able to stand on it, so we each climbed into it for pictures.
It wasn’t much, but it was a good way to spend the day, and the gift shop allowed me to get a fake spear, fake sword, little dinosaur excavation kits, a hat for my dad, a little flower and unicorns for my mom, and a little dinosaur skeleton.
And later that night, I was sitting at home, petting my puppies.
It was a good day.
Hello everyone! Before pouring in my experiences I had in and out of McDaniel, I would like to give a short introduction of myself first, otherwise you all would be wondering who is this person coming all of a sudden with a flight route. So my name is Lamia Rhymee. I come from the opposite side of the world as you can see from Dhaka, Bangladesh (It is a whole day flight. Trust me, it’s not easy especially if you have motion sickness.). I joined McDaniel in Fall 2013. I got to know about McDaniel College from two of my cousins who graduated from McDaniel College, one in 1996 and the other in 1998. The main reason I wanted to come here in US for my undergraduate years was because I found liberal arts approach of teaching a valuable one; this learning approach has not been successfully established in my country yet. The curriculum is rigid there and you need to know what specialization you are going to do beforehand when you start college. But I wanted my options to be flexible. I found liberal arts curriculum necessary because it targets a student’s holistic growth- personal, social, professional and intellectual. I was in search of a place where I could fulfill this motive and satisfy my diverse interests. McDaniel College with its own McDaniel Plan seemed to be the place for me. This college believes in that growth. I liked the idea of fulfilling this McDaniel Plan as a graduation requirement. It ensures that a student is taking courses from multiple diverse fields.
Other reasons for choosing to come to McDaniel were its affordability- receiving a full tuition scholarship from McDaniel took a huge financial burden off of my family and is really making my education possible here, a community which gives off so much warmth and positive vibes, small and beautiful campus and talented professors. Currently I am undecided of my major but I am following a pre-medicine track as I have plans to go to a medical school in future. I am becoming more inclined to major in Chemistry though. I find McDaniel’s Chemistry Department really strong. So far as an international student, I am transitioning well here. I am actually thankful to my first year seminar peer mentor and my international peer mentor. They have been a huge support to me. So this is my short (not really short) formal introduction. I have loads of stories to tell. It will be an interesting exploration as you will get to know about my hilarious transitioning experiences in this home away from home and will get to know more about the place where I come from and how different it is from US. So keep following!
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