Looking ahead
by Raye
Greetings and salutations, readers of the admissions blog. I’m writing from my room, which is currently masquerading as a meat locker. I returned from class to find ice bobbing around in my teacup. Note to Crosby: heat is beneficial. It’s difficult to write essays when one cannot feel one’s extremities. That aside, I was surprised to be pleased at the prospect of returning to campus. Of course I love it here, but I’d spent break mostly staying with one of my best friends, whose mother fixed us macaroni & cheese with roasted red peppers and bought us cider donuts and made us tea while we marathoned Criminal Minds with her dog, the world’s most adorable West Highland Terrier. After fall break work starts returning with renewed vigour, and though the material is almost always interesting (I think we’re starting gene regulation in genetics today *squee,* and my chem. professor told me where to find some extracurricular reading on computational chemistry *squee again*), it’s not necessarily what you want to jump into following a relaxing break.
Strangely enough, I’m excited to be back in class. I generally have more fun in chemistry than I do interacting socially, and even though the library doesn’t have a copy of The Fractal Geometry of Nature, it does have the sort of nonfiction my tiny rural library doesn’t. Then again, according to their card catalog Tolstoy doesn’t exist, but that’s another story for another day. Seminar has dived back into political and historical analysis, though I’ve managed to skew every paper scientifically so far. Darwin pervades my consciousness and invades my ‘scholarly output’ (directly or indirectly). Got away with a pinch of Richard Dawkins and a dash of Herbert Spencer as well. Clearly, I am incapable of thinking within the social sciences. Then again, I was writing the first draft while waiting for the nylon membrane to dehydrate during a Southern blot, so it makes more sense.
The best news I’ve gotten recently is that I’ve received an unconditional offer to read biology at the University of St Andrews next year. Unfortunately, this means I’ll be departing the verdant New England countryside (aka, endless wasteland of frozen tundra after November) for the bonny bonny banks of Scotland. However, this reminds me of two trends I’ve noticed: 1) the increasing number of students studying abroad and staying, and 2) the increasing number of students transferring back to Simon’s Rock after an unsatisfying brush with the status quo. One theory to explain the former would be general economic collapse, but that’s occurring at a global scale. Some places on the expat Rocker’s itinerary I’ve heard are England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and China. In some cases the destinations are relevant to people’s majors—Asian studies, Celtic studies, modern foreign languages, classics, even culinary arts—but more often than not it’s just a desire to get out of North America. Personally, I’ve wanted to live in Britain since I can remember. As for the latter trend, as I said in a previous blog, people miss the first-name basis, the individual attention, the weekly advisor meetings, the low professor:student ratios, and the personalization that a microscopic campus allows. Teachers have time to read every answer on an exam and write thoughtful critiques, instead of skimming and scanning for the ‘right’ answer and ticking it off as correct or incorrect. They take the time to learn how each student’s mind works. That’s one of the reasons I chose St Andrews—the biology department is relatively small, and there are tutorials with professors in pertinent subjects. It has the closeness of the Simon’s Rock community, but with more…reliably functional lab facilities.
Will update from Honors Convocation this weekend. Over & out.
