Eye on the Storm: The Official Undergraduate Admissions Blog of the National Leader in Experiential, Hands-on Learning

Greetings!

Well, finals ended last Wednesday 12/10 so our campus is now extremely quiet! Here at Admissions we are already missing the students.

Most of you are probably getting excited about your holiday breaks as well. Between the holiday shopping, cookie baking and visiting family and friends, I hope you will be able to attend one of our live chats that will be taking place during the break.

Tuesday 12/23 11am-3pm

and

Tuesday 12/30 11am-3pm

The chats will be done via College Week Live at:

http://www.collegeweeklive.com/

For those of you unfamiliar with College Week Live, it was a virtual college fair that took place in November. The booths are still open for you to browse, download information and chat with us. If you participated in College Week Live, then your login and password are the same. For those of you who didn’t all you need to do is register on the homepage.

Once you sign in, look for Keuka College in the booth index. We have a video as well as all our brochures for you to look at. If you want to chat, click on the live chat button. I will be taking questions during the day on both Tuesdays so feel free to stop in, say hi and ask me about Keuka!

Happy Holidays!

There is one day left of this semester. One more final to get through and then the grade report will come. However, here at Keuka, we complete Field Periods. The Field Periods are the perfect way to find out if what we think we want to be, really is what we want to be! So, during December and January, we go out “on location” to take part in our own learning! I have done my previous two in my major of Education (one in a third grade classroom and one in a fifth grade classroom; I lived at home during both).

However, this December, my Field Period will not take place in my hometown or New York for that matter. I am taking part in a Group Field Period to Italy! Our supervisor is Dr. Diamond, a professor of History here at the college. There are students, family, and faculty members coming on the trip. We are leaving five days after Christmas. We will welcome in 2009 in Rome. Then…we will travel the country, from Rome to Florence to Venice, down the Amalfi Coast to Assisi, and back to Vatican City. I am looking forward to this wonderful experience of traveling abroad. (I hope to include pictures of the trip and possibly blog entries while in Italy!)

Stay warm and enjoy the holiday season!

When I was in high school I was a little bit of an overachiever, at least when it came to picking a college. No one can really blame me though, everyone just wants to get into their top choice . . .

I looked everywhere to find where I wanted to go, every Web site that my high school gave me to find where I wanted to go, and what we were going to major in. I kinda went a little overboard, and needless to say my parents flipped when I told them that I was going to apply to 32 colleges, and that I needed money for applications.

One night my parents and I decided what we both wanted from a school together, which is smart to do ahead of time, because they normally do help out with the bills. I narrowed my choices to six colleges, plus two my parents liked, that I had no interest in.

I ended my junior year with eight folders, which had everything that all of these colleges had ever sent to me, placed in order of which college I wanted to go to the most, to the least. On top was Siena, followed by Keuka.

You’re probably wondering how I ended up at Keuka, when I wanted Siena. Did I get rejected? Nope, I have only been rejected by SUNY Oneonta. That summer I visited a few of my top choices, with a notebook and a list of expectations, a good idea if you’re indecisive. I visited Siena first, and I fell in love with it. There were flaws, it was too big for me, I wanted something small, and it was too close to home. I got less interested the more I thought about it.

Then I visited Keuka. I’m sure anyone who’s visited Keuka knows that it is beautiful, small, perfect in just about every way. After I visited Keuka, I lost interest in the other colleges, including Siena. Even my mother told me she liked Keuka better than Siena, which really helped to solidify my ideas that Keuka was perfect.

After a few more visits, I started senior year, and applied to five schools the schools my parents wanted me to apply to, and a few others. I never even filled out an application for Siena, because I realized it’s not where I wanted to be. None of the other applications mattered to me except Keuka, once I got accepted in December, and I didn’t apply anywhere else, I achieved what I had wanted the whole time, which was getting into my top choice.

I am the youngest member of our blogging crew here at Keuka, being only a sophomore. So I remember probably the best just what it was like before I got to Keuka, and how unbearably nervous I got. I remember on August 21, 2007,  I couldn’t sleep, and I was in a hotel, so that I could get there early to unpack and get the bed I wanted. I couldn’t wait to meet my roommates, and to meet all the people I had been talking to online on the Keuka 2011 group on facebook.

Transition Week turned out to be the best week of my freshmen year. Looking back I can’t help but smile, my mentor was amazing, and all of the freshmen in my mentee group ended up being some of my closest friends, and the freshmen had the whole campus to ourselves. My mentor group was all undecided majors, just like me. Some of them ended up being majors that share classes with me a lot, like one of them is a communications major. It was amazing. I skipped a few of the events because I thought they would be boring, and I ended up regretting it, all the freshmen talked about some of the events in such a positive light I wish I could go back in time and go to everything.

I loved it so much I decided to become a mentor myself.

Transition Week sophomore year was totally different, but I got the same feelings the night before, not being able to sleep, excited to meet my mentees, and one of my roommates, who transferred into Keuka. I was even excited to live with my roommates that I picked, because I never lived with any of them before that. My mentees and I clicked very well, and some are still my very good friends, even at the end of the semester, I still eat lunch at least three of them a week. They still come to me for advice, especially about their new schedules, like what classes they should take, and what teachers they should avoid.

I did get very frustrated though when they missed things, and I felt bad for my mentor, knowing that just a year ago I was doing the same thing.

I am so glad I got to experience Transition Week twice, from both perspectives, as an incoming freshmen and as a mentor, because it made me realize that every single thing that is planned is important, and to skip them is really dumb, because you learn so much from everything. We don’t ask you to just go to things for us, everything is for you. So when you get here, go to everything you’re required to go to. When we say it’s very important for you to follow the Transition Week schedule to a T, we mean it.

Not to scare you, because it really was a great experience, honestly. I plan to be a mentor again next year, just so I can experience it again.