Campus Conversations

Where will you be next Fall?

February 23, 2012

Dear readers, You may have expected this to be a post all about the 6 softball games I had this past weekend, or about the excitement of formal Greek recruitment which happened a few weeks ago. This is in fact what I was planning to write about. However, at this exact moment, as I am sitting in my bed finding ways to not do my Health Psychology homework. This has led me to think, a lot. That's always a bit dangerous. Anywho, here's what's on my mind: Right now I think we all have a lot in common. We are both trying to figure out what city, state, and country we will be spending the Fall of 2012. For you all it may be a question of going to college in California versus a school on the East coast. (Trust me, it is 77 degrees and it's February, choose California!!!) For me, it's a question of whether I will be in California or Amsterdam. Yes, that's right, I said Amsterdam. On February 6th I turned in my almost exactly 900 word application to the International Programs Office here at Oxy. When I clicked send I thought I was mostly done. However, today I got an email asking me to dig a little bit deeper and write basically a whole new answer. At first this email scared me, stressed me out, and made me nervous. But as I thought more about it I realized that this meant that they were considering me for the program, and that they think that perhaps with a bit of tweaking my application is good enough to get accepted. Which is exciting!!! So, after softball practice and class I went to the International Programs Office and met with one of the advisors. She gave me some great tips on what direction to take my essay to make it most effective. Sure, this may be one more thing I have to do, but hey, it will be worth it if it means I will get to spend next Fall travelling around Europe!!! ~~~ Now back to my usual updates. As I briefly mentioned earlier, this past weekend (which was a glorious 3 day weekend for most) the Occidental Varsity Softball Team had 6, yes SIX, games!   We entered the weekend with an unfortunate 0-4 record. On Friday we played two non-conference games against La Sierra. We won the first game in extra innings but unfortunately lost the second (the game got called short, but we were preparing for a comeback!!!) We were excited to win one, and we knew we were capable of more. So, on Saturday, we won BOTH games against Cal Lutheran (they're in our league!!!) These were our first conference victories! Sunday we played again at the University of La Verne. We lost both of these games, but not without a fight. As a team we faced a lot of difficult situations - one of our best players broke her hand during warmups before Fridays games so we only had 11 girls for the 6 games. Our shortstop has bicep tendinitis in her throwing arm, our catcher pulled her groin and can barely run, and I almost shattered my shin by fouling a ball off of it. The bruise, as some have pointed out, is the size of a softball ;) Even through all of these obstacles I thought our team put up a great effort. These teams won't know what is coming to them when they play us later in the season and we're 100% healthy and ready to kick butt!!! I know I promised a bit about formal recruitment, but I really ought to get going on some of this homework. However, if anyone reallllllyyyy wants to hear about Greek Life feel free to volunteer to do my homework and then I'll tell you all about it! :P I'll make sure to write about it in my next post. Until then, I hope you are all thinking hard about where YOU will be next fall--and I hope the answer is here at Occidental College! =D -- Lisa G