This year we started classes a week later than usual, while that meant summer was a tad bit longer, it also means we do not get out for winter break until December 21. Given the fact that we will all have such a short time at home before Christmas (3 days), my roommates and I decided to decorate our common room to make it feel like home!

Over Thanksgiving break we all planned to bring in as many decorations as we could fit in our suitcases back to Haverford with us…the result was the creation of a winter wonderland in our common room. While 2/3rds of our housing on campus is singles, that doesn’t mean Haverford is trying to isolate us, it means that we have our own space, but also these awesome common rooms that we can all share. It is the place where we can all hang out, relax, watch TV, and avoid homework ha-ha.

I currently live with 5 other seniors (and a hamster named Barry) who actually all lived in my Customs Group with me freshmen year. We decided to start and end our college experience together. So last week we all came together and went on a decorating spree. We put up lights, a tree, cut out snowflakes, and put out nutcrackers. Now every time I come home from a long day I get to sit in my wonderfully Christmas decorated common room and I couldn’t ask for more.

This semester, I am taking a class called Case Studies in Chemistry. The class is a non-lab chemistry course for non-science majors- for those of us that are looking to learn the basics of chemistry through our own research into various “case studies.”

To supplement the course material, my professor assigned Michael Frayn’s play, Copenhagen. This famous play speculates on what occurred during a secret meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two influential scientists in the mid-twentieth century. As our class had looked at the development of atomic theory and key chemistry and physics discoveries, the lives of these two scientists were particularly relevant to the class material.

While the play was relevant because it referenced scientific theories and discoveries we had learned about, the class in which we discussed the play stood out to me for a number of reasons. As a History major, reading a play that placed incredible scientific discoveries in the historical and personal context of the scientist’s lives made concepts, such as atomic theory, come to life for me. Our class discussion around these ideas and their impact on society was lively, as everyone brought their perspectives from different majors and classes to think critically about science. My classmate even shared several of her ideas for her senior thesis on cultural memory as we discussed how Bohr and Heisenberg’s discoveries and inventions are remembered today.

One of the most striking elements of the discussion, however, was the number of ethical issues surrounding science. Looking at chemistry and physics in the context of World War II opened up a debate that each of us could participate in, even with varying levels of expertise in the sciences. This assignment and discussion was one of the highlights of the class for me because we broke outside the boundaries of a traditional chemistry class. Not only did we look at why these scientific issues are so important today, but also had the opportunity to hear different opinions from each other.

On November 4, our Women’s Soccer Team became the Centennial Conference CHAMPIONS for the first time since 1995 and for the second time in history of the program. They upset the powerhouse for the past 5 years Johns Hopkins University 2-1. I was unable to go to the game since Baltimore is quite a trek from Haverford for someone without a car, but I, along with 5 other friends, streamed the game live in the new study room in Kim Dorm on the big screen TV. When they won…I started balling, tears were everywhere. It was a true demonstration of what my best friends have been working for over the past four years.

I played soccer at Haverford for my first two years and being a student-athlete here is a truly amazing and wonderful experience. I remember meeting my 5 best friends on the first day of preseason in August 2009, geeze its already 2012. We were the 5 freshmen. We were terrified. But within a day, I had made a group of friends who would stick with me throughout my 4 years at Haverford. When they won, it was amazing to see my best friends accomplish a goal they had been fighting to achieve for four years.

The story gets better… not only did the girls win, but so did our men’s team. Haverford Men’s Soccer also became the Conference Champions on November 4th for the first time in program history.

This past weekend Haverford hosted the NCAA Regional Playoff Tournament for the women; rounds 1 and 2 were played on Walton Field. The men’s regional tournament was played at Arcadia University. On Saturday the women’s team played MIT and the number of fans at the game was incredible. Alumni, students, parents, and faculty were everywhere. People flew across the country. The stadium was packed. The cheering was out of control. Later that afternoon, the fan bus took about one hundred students to Arcadia where the men were playing. Not only did the fans travel to cheer the women on at Haverford, but they also traveled to Arcadia to cheer on the men.

It was a true demonstration of the community that exists at Haverford. Our Honor Code says that Haverford is a community, but oftentimes people will ask me on tours…well is this true? Trust me it is. This weekend was a true representation of those connections that exist between our students, our alumni, and our facility. When something is important to a group of us, we all go out to support them. Could you ask for more?

Let me tell you, the location of Haverford College is ideal. You really couldn’t ask for more. You get the best of both worlds– a suburban setting that is 15 minutes from Philly.

In college you get this wonderful thing called fall break…you get a whole week of vacation in October…incredible right? This year I decided to stay on campus for fall break to attempt to work on my grad school applications and my thesis. So far though, I have no been as productive as I wished, sleeping has been my priority ha-ha. The only complication to staying on campus over fall break is that the dining center is closed. Therefore, I have to look elsewhere to feed myself. Luckily, Haverford is not located in the middle of nowhere. The Mainline is just a 3-minute walk away.

The Mainline, also known as Lancaster Ave, is a popular street filled with activities, restaurants, and everything you could want. If you watch Pretty Little Liars, it is commonly referenced on the show. Within walking distance from Haverford College you have a CVS, a Starbucks, a Saxbys Coffee Shop, an Apple Store, a Trader Joes, and every possible kind of restaurant you could want. I have never had a problem getting anything I’ve needed to survive the college life.

This break my friends and I decided to order take out from a different restaurant each night for dinner. The food in the area is really well priced and affordable, which is key when you are a college student. So far we have eaten Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and tonight we did Thai and it was incredible. We have been trying to experience the Mainline to the fullest and have been successful. It is really great to be so close to an array of shops and restaurants and never feel isolated. We are able to get the things we need but at the same time be in a suburban setting.

Could you ask for more?

This whole college admissions process thing is really, to be overly reductive, a series of decisions: Do you want a big or small school? Urban, rural, or suburban? What’s the student body like? I’m sure there are many more questions percolating in everyone’s applying heads… Within my own traversal of these questions, however, I always had one answer: my junior year, I would be leaving whatever fine institution I attended.

Not permanently, of course, but study abroad was always a given for my undergraduate career. I grew up in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual household that heartily emphasized the experience of the multicultural. My father was born and raised in Germany, but has spent much time in Southeast Asia; my mother was born in Taiwan, grew up in upstate New York, and studied in Germany and Denmark; I was born in Deutschland, and have been lucky enough to have returned to my birth-country many times, to visit relatives in Asia, and grow up bilingually. It was always my expectation – probably from my middle school days, honestly – that I would embark on my own independent excursions come junior year in college.

Fast-forward to that junior year and all of a sudden, expectation had become reality, and a big decision awaited me. Where to??? I had fantasies of slurping noodle soup and finally learning Mandarin in China, sipping coffee in Rome, watching the sun dip and then immediately rise in Sweden… I even entertained Africa and South America and the thought of embracing complete de-familiarization.

Well, it didn’t help that Haverford offers about 60 programs in roughly 40 different countries, so many of these visions actually had the potential for enactment (all of these programs are also pre-approved so I didn’t have to worry about credit transfer or anything like that). And by that, I really mean that it is amazing that there are so many opportunities for study abroad – even if that means that the decision-making process takes a little bit longer. So for a while, a lot of programs swirled around in my head. Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa? I stressed about making the “right” decision. I talked with my family, friends, professors, and skimmed through program descriptions before finally came to a wonderfully specific criterion: my bilingualism is hugely important to me and I wanted to reaffirm my German fluency while I was abroad. That narrowed the field nicely to Freiburg, Berlin, and Vienna.

Even within my international imaginations, I had kind of written off Germany precisely because I already speak the language and feel at home there. I guess I was committing myself to at least some of that de-familiarization early on. Being able to re-evaluate and double back on some of those initial tendencies is important to any sort of decision-making process though. Trust your gut, but let your brain have some say too. So now I was committed to a language, at least.

Once I had sufficiently excited my relatives in Germany with the prospect of my being in or very close to the country, I did have to pick a specific program. That’s where I got into the nuance: Did I want a big city, or a small college town? How close do I want to be to my family? What classes does the program offer? When does this program actually take place?

Being able to digest options in this manner allowed for the distillation of exactly what I wanted from study abroad. I want to speak German, have easy access to, but not be right on top of my family, have the option of taking Literature, Sociology, and Education classes (in addition to stuff outside my major and minors), be able to travel easily, and make it back to the U.S. to see my Haverford friends graduate. Well, within that very specific rubric, the answer became very clear.

And now that I’ve made you read through a big blog post on big decisions, I’ll finally divulge; I am going to be spending my spring semester in the very beautiful Vienna! Seriously, look at this city:

It feels amazing to know where I’ll be next semester – to finally concretize those long-held hopes. That fulfillment comes from a decision-making process that can sometimes be stressful and a little scary. The college admissions process is like that too, but there is absolutely light at the end of the tunnel. My best advice in any big process, particularly college admissions, is to keep yourself and your interests firmly in the driver’s seat. You will receive a lot of information from a lot of people in this whole process; a lot of that information is illuminating and helpful, but making sure you champion yourself as you wade through all of that is essential for that ultimate feeling of affirmation.

I am unbelievably excited for my time in Vienna (and will now already promise blog posts from abroad!) and share in the anticipation and excitement of all my readers in the process of their own big decisions! You can do it!!

I guess it is time to face the facts… I am a senior. What? I feel like I can remember being in the position all you people are in now 4 years ago: applying to college, trying to find the right school, trying to pick the right school, and this being on top of handling the course work of senior year and everything that entails. Oddly enough, I am in this position again. I am in the process of applying to Graduate School. Who knew I would have to go through the college process again? Haha. So I know how it feels to be in the midst of this hectic time. But I can promise you that you will get in somewhere, you will go to an amazing school, and this process will be over sooner than you think.

The past 3 years at Haverford have been incredible and I am in shock that I have to currently to think about leaving this glorious place. For many of you the concept of there being something after college is not on your minds, but it is a reality. Good news, Haverford has an amazing Career Development Office that is there to help you with that “after college” part of life. Since arriving back on campus, I have met with the Career Development Office 3 different times in the past month. They willingly and eagerly help you compose resumes, talk about the future, help with graduate school and job applications, and provide you with terrific advice. We are each given a Career Counselor who is in charge of getting to know us. During the first meeting their intention is to simply learn about our interests, talk about our background experience, and to get the basics about us. From then on, they are our own personal contact in the office. They help us pick schools to apply to, if graduate school is what is going to be the next step, or they help with finding jobs and setting up interviews. The Career Development Office has been a resource that I couldn’t survive without this last month. Having such a small school means people are taking the time to get to know you, to care about you, and to help you plan what will come next.

I know that for many of you this will not be the most interesting blog post ever, but I know that this is on the minds of your parents so show them this!