Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Top Memories from Junior Year


Another semester has been completed. Only 3 more semesters left of college, 2 at Saint Mike's and 1 in Coleraine, Ireland. Saying some see you laters last week to my best friends put a lot of things into perspective. I won't be seeing most of them until August since I'm studying abroad next semester.  Definitely a lot of emotions going through my mind as I have less than a month at home before I go to Ireland for 5 months.

With lots of free time at home, I decided to keep up with my tradition of doing some of my top memories from the year (or in this case, the semester).

  • Hanging out with my SMC family. Without writing a crazy long novel (because I could go on and on about how great everyone is), this is how the section can best be summed up-- great times and wonderful people. 
boat cruise with Brendan, Dennis, and Lauren, who I have been friends with since the first week of freshman year

picture with some of my favorites (L to R): Dennis, Hanna, Brendan, Christine, and Mike




some awesome bloggers (from left to right): Alex, Brendan, Lauren, and myself.
my roommate Kristen!


Lhanzi, my roommate from last year!





group of Lauren's killin it
  • MJD bonding. It felt like a good chunk of my semester was spent in Bergeron working on editing documentaries and writing articles. I do have an extreme love-hate relationship with Bergeron. I usually dread going there, but as soon as I walk in, I always see a lot of familiar faces which makes everything better. Along with missing a lot of my classmates, I'm going to miss the MJD department as a whole. I had two great professors this past semester (Jon Hyde and Allison Cleary) who taught me to think critically and work hard.

 Juliana (L), me, and other Lauren (R) bright and early for our Magazine Writing class



  • Orientation Week. I enjoyed spending a lot of time with the group of orientation leaders and connecting with my orientation partner and our group (group 18, wooohoooo!) It was nice to come back a week earlier and be involved in the whole orientation week. Excited to be doing it again next year!
my great orientation partner, Richie!

junior orientation leaders!
all of the orientation leaders!



  • Her Campus. Alex and I started a Her Campus chapter for SMC our sophomore year. All of our group meetings have been really fun and I'm going to miss them a lot. Since Alex and I are both going abroad and have a busy senior year ahead of us, we decided to step down from being the managers of the chapter. Still, I'm hoping to play a smaller role in it senior year!

me and Alex!

Her Campus group

I'm gonna miss Saint Mike's a ton, but I'll be blogging with updates about my time in Ireland next semester. Be sure to be on the look out for those posts!

Thanks for reading and happy holidays! 

Sunday, November 10, 2013

What Community Means to Me

Before committing to Saint Mike's, I toured it twice to make sure it was the school for me. On both of my tours, two different tour guides tossed around the word "community" a lot. They said that community was their favorite part about Saint Mike's and it was a big reason why they chose Saint Mike's.


It's one thing to hear about a strong community, but to be a part of it is indescribable. I don't think I really understood the true definition of community until I came to Saint Mike's. I see everyone everywhere making connections with other students, professors, and other employees of the school. People are on a first name basis with the dining hall workers and the shuttle drivers, and they even try to remember your name, too. People hold the doors for each other, even when the other person is a mile away. The small things mean the most.  

Last year, I went on LEAP, a religious retreat hosted by Campus Ministry. On the retreat, the word "community" was once again brought up, and I thought about Saint Mike's as a whole and how it is has this awesome community, but my whole definition of community changed when someone brought up how you make your own communities everywhere you go. Think about it. You have your Religious Studies class community, your on-campus club community, your sports team community.. the list goes on.

It's great to know you have these smaller communities within the big supportive community of the campus. I'm going abroad next semester and this has brought on a lot of emotions of being nervous, excited, and scared. One thing for certain is that I know that with a strong community like Saint Mike's, I know that all of the communities I'm a part of right now are going to be there for me when I come back.
MJD community

Her Campus

Ryan Hall community

Orientation group/ First year seminar group

Tour guiding

LEAP community

Ethan Allen

Student Association

Pontigny Hall

Orientation Leader community