Time of my Life!

The last weeks of college were so much fun. The time went by way too fast! This post will get you up to date on some of the best happenings at Coe, before and after graduation.

This year I had the opportunity to plan one of the best days of the year at Coe, Flunk Day. Flunk Day is a dream come true: it is a surprise day in the spring when classes are canceled and for one day you can do whatever you want! As Student Body Vice President, I worked with the Kevin, the SB Pres, and Greg, Coe’s Dean, to plan a day of sun, food, fun, and no class for the entire student body. We spent the whole semester booking bands, ordering food and activities, and keeping it a secret from everyone. Kevin and I sent the Flunk Day Committee out at 7 am to wake campus up. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to rocking out on the quad! The picture is of me and two of my friends dressed in our committee costumes—the theme for Flunk Day this year was “lifeguards.”

The last weeks were also full of dinners, awards ceremonies, and celebrations. The next picture is from the Senior Dinner at the Cedar Rapids Country Club. To celebrate the graduating class, the President of the Coe and his wife invite everyone to this dinner as a gift. It was a beautiful location, the food was great (chicken AND steak!), and it was fabulous to be with everyone before we graduated that weekend.

Graduation day was a whirlwind! It was a perfectly sunny day and the ceremony was held outside on the quad. Tom Harkin was the commencement speaker and gave a hilarious and pertinent address to the graduates.

After graduation I stayed in Cedar Rapids to take a May Term class called Business Sustainability and the Environment. The subject is right up my alley—I love environmental studies—and I have been enjoying it. We went to Colorado for a week to visit sustainability directors at Aspen Ski Company and New Belgium Brewery. The picture is of me and a few of my classmate in downtown Aspen, CO. It was a great trip!

Next week I am back home to Minneapolis for a few weeks before moving to Washington DC to begin my Teach for America training. Here comes “the real world!”

Tri-Delta Senior Week

Today marked the first day of the last full week of college classes. Woah! Just typing that sentence proved a bit of a shock. It is hard to believe how fast the time has flown. Today also was the beginning of Senior Week for my sorority, Tri-Delta, so my friends and I have been reminiscing non-stop about all the great times we have had over the past four years. From dance parties in Charlie’s (Coe’s coffee shop/convenience store/dance floor) to President’s Balls (a formal dance hosted by the college President every winter) to simply hanging out on the Delta wing ordering gyros (my favorite!), I have so many great memories of this place. Tonight the Delta chapter hosted a formal dinner in Coe’s Alumni House to recognize all the seniors, and tonight they will read us “senior letters” in the chapter room. I will probably laugh a lot and hope I don’t cry too much. The picture is of me and three of my best friends and fellow Delta seniors on the wing in Voorhees where we live. It was taken last weekend before we went out for wings and cheese sticks at the Tic Toc… our fav!

time is flying by!

The last week at Coe has been awesome! It is hard to believe I have only one month left of college. Where does the time go?

I had the opportunity to eat dinner with Gary Trudeau, this year’s speaker for Coe’s Contemporary Issues Forum. Mr. Trudeau is the creator for the cartoon Doonesbury. It was so interesting to eat dinner with such brilliant company! The picture is the current and past Student Body Presidents and Vice Presidents at the dinner. I’m on the right in the blue. I love that a small school like Coe gives students every opportunity to participate in some of the college’s most exciting events.

In other news, I passed my thesis defense! The defense committee consisted of my advisor, thesis advisor, and two other faculty members. They spent an hour asking me questions about my paper, deliberated, and announced that I had passed! It was a great feeling. On Wednesday I presented on Coe’s Student Symposium—a day entirely devoted to student presentations about their theses, projects, and independent research. I loved sharing my project with my friends, who had watched me stay up long nights working on it, and faculty in other departments.

Tonight I’m off to a Cedar Rapids Rough Riders hockey game with a few friends. Go Riders!

a much-delayed update

Hello world! Sorry I have not posted in a while. Life has been keeping me busy! Here are the highlights:

Thesis: I finished my senior honors thesis! After countless rewrites, revisions, and edits, I can finally say that I am done. It’s a great feeling. The titled ended up being “Levels of Exposure: The Lives and Poetry of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop,” and it is biographical and literary criticism about these two American poets. Since it is an English thesis, for the defense, I met with three English faculty and one non-departmental faculty member who gave feedback on my paper and asked questions. If you had told me at the beginning of my college career that I could successfully pull off such a large project (140 pages!), I would have been shocked. With the help of my advisors and great academic support I Coe, I am proud to say that I did it.

Spring Break: For my Spring Break I went to New York City Washington DC. It was an awesome week! I stayed with a high school friend who lives in NYC, and we took in the sites, went shopping, and ate lots of sushi together. The picture is of Martha and me on an apartment roof, checking out the city skyline. I also visited my aunt and uncle in Washington for a few days to look at apartments for next year. I will be starting Teach for America in Washington in June and will need a place to live. My aunt and I checked out lots of cool neighborhoods around the city, and I am so excited to make DC my new home! Also, I had a true “geek moment” later in the week when my friend Martha I went to visit Marianne Moore’s house in Brooklyn, New York (pic above). It was so cool to see 260 Cumberland Street where Moore once lived after spending so much time writing about her for my thesis. I loved it!

lots and lots of delicious desserts!

If you follow my blog, you know there are a lot of things I love about Coe. One of those many things happened this weekend-- it was my sorority's annual Dessert Gala and Silent Auction. Every year my sorority, Tri-Delta, puts on a formal gala to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. It is an amazing cause. All of the children who are treated at St. Jude are treated for free-- no medical bills, whatsoever. Because St. Jude provides all free care, it costs over $1,000,000 a day to run. St. Jude is Tri-Delta's national philanthropy, and our chapter has made a goal of donating $64,000 over the next ten years. Our Dessert Gala last night kicked us off to a great start! Our philanthropy chair and all of my sisters did a great job coordinating the events of the evening, and it went off without a hitch. Everyone in attendance (our biggest turnout ever, I might add) filled up on delicious desserts, learned about St. Jude, enjoyed live music performed by Coe students, listened to speakers, and bid on the auction items. It was the first year my mom has been able to come to this event during my four years at Coe. I was so happy to have here there! The pictures are of me, my mom, and friends of the family who also came to visit. When all was done, my sorority made over $4,000 to donate to St. Jude. Awesome!

the weekend!

Some of my favorite times ever at Coe have been lazy Saturday afternoons! The week is over, you have slept in, and there still is no class the next day. Today is one of those great days. After sleeping in until 10 this morning, I did some reading for class and went to lunch in the "U" (Coe's caf) for brunch with my friends, Hallie and Leah (check out the pics of us hanging out).

We reminisced about the the fun comedian on campus last night, Pete Holmes. He is on VH1's "Best Week Ever," and he was hilarious! Our Student Activities Committee always has awesome, free events planned on the weekend-- and as a college student, you cannot beat the price of $0 entertainment.
Look up SAC's website at www.coesac.com if you want more info about the types of events they bring to Coe every week.

As for plans for tonight, I'm not sure what I'm doing yet, but I hope it involves sushi! Mmmm....

study, study, study...

I apologize for lack of new posts this week. I had three tests this week (English seminar on Monday, Business Law on Tuesday, and Macroecon today), and so my time has been spent highlighting my notes and flipping through flashcards. Though it was an intense couple of days, I think all of the tests went well! We'll see next week when I get them back. It has been snowing and snowing in Cedar Rapids and so I have been keeping close to Voorhees Hall, except for nightly study breaks at Charlie's coffee shop to grab a Starbucks latte to keep me awake. Tonight there was an acustic singer/songwriter, Ryan Horne, performing in the coffee shop. He was really good! The picture is of me and a couple of my Tri-Delta sisters, just hanging out and avoiding the cold. Brrr....