Articles by 1800 Society Scholars

Three years later, I still find myself feeling a little ridiculous.  My mind blamed my gut, the same gut that as a first-year responded do the loud yelling coming from the halls of Battell that had kept me from getting into bed. 

The source of the noise was a member of my first-year seminar, but no more than an acquaintance.  She was sporting a bright pink bikini, a ski helmet, goggles and the furriest boots I had seen since arriving at Midd as a first-year not more than two months before.  It had already been a non-descript week night, the kind where Chinese homework, 5:00 dinner and astronomy lab all mesh together to form one long block of time capable of sufficiently making me exhausted to the point where it was not hard to want to pass out for a good week.  So yes, it was my gut and not my common sense that responded to the voice instead of tuning it out.

  Read the rest of this entry »

I imagine that being a college student during any election is interesting, but the election this year was particularly exciting. The campus buzz during midterm elections two years ago was definitely not as loud as it was this year. Most of us voted in our first presidential election. It seemed like many students thought the stakes were higher this year than they were two years ago or in other recent presidential elections. Well before the election, many students had settled on a major candidate, and most Midd kids seemed to be supporting Obama and Biden.

Even after the election is over, the trend towards one political consensus, at least among my friends, does not mean that we have any shortage of conversation or debate over the issues. Somewhere in the middle of schoolwork, loads of clubs and teams, students here find time to read about the different policy proposals and to keep up with post-election developments. During the election, many canvassed for the ticket that they supported. It was not uncommon to hear about students who drove to the battleground state of New Hampshire on the weekends to knock on doors and encourage people to vote for their candidate of choice. A lot of Middlebury students were active in calling undecided voters to talk about why their candidate deserved and needed that voter’s support. The College Dems weekly phone-athons in Hillcrest, and on Election Day, they made 6143 calls from Coltrane Lounge during their “All Day Phone Bank for Barack” event.  

  Read the rest of this entry »

I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t provide yet another account (although albeit more fair and balanced than many you may see) about the Quidditch phenomenon here at Midd.  I’d like to at least pretend that my perspective is different from most!

In the fall of 2006, my first year at Middlebury, a group of us got together on Sunday mornings to combat the ill-effects of a Saturday night by putting on rather haughty clothing and our best British accents as we competed in a rousing round of croquet.  Soon we began to brainstorm about other ways to ensure that we could drag ourselves out of bed before 11:00 and before long, under the leadership of Xander Manshel, we found ourselves with capes on our backs, brooms between our legs and running around Battell Beach chasing our hallmate cross country runner/wrestler Rainey Johnson dressed in yellow. 

  Read the rest of this entry »

The semester is off and running! As I anticipated, I am thinking about Middlebury in different terms than I did in previous semesters. Many of my friends have returned from living abroad and we are all spread out on campus due to the changes in the Commons system. While I was a fan of the original Commons, I am thrilled to live in a new place with friends from other dorms—an option that was not as accessible before.

The Middlebury community feels both bigger and smaller with these changes. I have met new people, even in the space of a few days on campus. These new acquaintances traveled the globe with my friends or are simply the neighbors of my old Ross hall-mates in dorms with which we “Ross Rhinos” were previously unaffiliated. When you consider how many people there are to meet each year, it is astounding, even at a relatively small school. People who were abroad all year seem to feel particularly unfamiliar with the campus community because they know, at best, only half the school. (No small feat!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Somewhere in the mountains of Tibet I forgot how fast life can be.  It was either the macaque monkeys making valiant attempts at capturing my lunch or the ethereal mist that hung over the monasteries dotting the cliffs, but perhaps both were instrumental in helping me lose my complete sense of time. I remember thinking then that despite what appeared to be my total departure from life at home, in a few short months I would be back in Middlebury surrounded by those who also had made the seemingly impossible journey from the ends of the earth back to the figurative center of it all. I remember that while excited for whatever lay ahead I also dreaded again facing the very things that had originally driven me away to a land of monkeys and mountains. And yet it felt like merely a short breath had gone by when I found myself back at Middlebury. Having lost my sense of time long before my return, it was pretty easy to feel lost.

For one, I returned to find a Middlebury College that physically in many ways did not resemble the home I had stored in my brain as a reminder of my roots. A new building had come to life, a construction site that magically had become a center of liberal-arts life. In that building, a room where time appeared to be playing a joke on itself as first-year fiddled with their new iPods and Blackberries under the watchful eyes of Julian Abernethy (a reference I hope you alumni get).

  Read the rest of this entry »

Summer always goes by too quickly. Whether or not you live by the academic calendar, Labor Day seems to mark the end of relaxed living, even if you are just as busy in the summer as you may be during the rest of the year. At a barbeque tonight, I was asked a few times where I go to school, always followed up with, “do you like it there?” The answer to me is a no-brainer: I love it. So why do I suddenly have that old “back to school” feeling?

I had a great summer, but spending all of my time outside of small-town Vermont made writing for this website challenging. After all, it is a blog about Middlebury, as told by me and Sam. Looking back on the last three months as a whole, however, made writing a blog entry much easier. I was far away from Middlebury—spending most of the summer with family in Maryland and in New York—but my thoughts often drifted to life and friends at school. (And not just because I unexpectedly ran into Middlebury graduates in College Park, Maryland, at the Washington Nationals Stadium, and in mid-town Manhattan.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in Brooklyn, I unexpectedly ran into a friend from Middlebury on my block yesterday. It might not seem so strange; a lot of Middlebury students hail from the Big Apple as I do. This chance encounter caught me off guard though because I had just been thinking about how good it felt to be walking around in a city—the noise and smells, the sights and the pace—how different it was from Middlebury. How different the busyness of urban life was from that of life at school, how strange it felt to look at the people I passed and not recognize a single face in a neighborhood that otherwise felt so familiar.

As I turned the corner, I made eye contact with the next presumed stranger. Instead, I saw a face that I recognized. Sylvia and I chatted for a few minutes, I met her mother, and we walked away with tentative plans to meet up soon. It was so nice to have the familiarity of both of my “worlds”—Middlebury and New York—all in one moment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight I made a comment to my sister that she should use her backyard more. As a graduate student, she told me that she would love to get outside more and “take advantage of nature,” but lately she has not had the time. For someone who grew up in a city, in a land of high-rise buildings and attached houses, this idea of nature is not so strange. David Rakoff summed it up best: if a New Yorker wanted greenery, he should order a plate of spinach.

I chuckled as I looked out at my sister’s fenced-in plot of nature. At Middlebury, I have been “introduced” to nature firsthand. I spent my first few semesters admiring the natural beauty from afar—from my room in Ross, overlooking the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks to the west. I had a few outdoor labs for my first-year seminar, but I think I was too wrapped up in the newness of school to realize what a fantastic opportunity the surrounding areas offered. It was only this year when nature and I finally had a real introduction. I went on my first hike—a great hike—up Camel’s Hump, part of the Green Mountains in Huntington. From the peak you can look across from New Hampshire to New York. It was one of the best days I’ve had in Vermont.

Read the rest of this entry »

The greatest challenge of a student representative of the College to Middlebury’s alumni is to capture in writing what makes Middlebury such a special place, finding the right words to evoke simultaneously both the alumni’s memories of the past and a current student’s impressions of the present. Although our Middlebury experiences are separated in time and, especially because Midd alumni are spread all over the globe, our day-to-day lives are now separated by great space, the common Middlebury experiences we all share are no less substantial. Middlebury enjoys change, in its students, teachers, and building, but the longer that I am here, the more I appreciate that there is nonetheless a constant to Middlebury that is truly special.

That I even think of myself right now “here” at Middlebury underscores how Middlebury is more than just a beautiful campus and cozy dorm room looking out at the Green Mountains in Vermont or even a discrete time period of a time. At this moment, I am in Hangzhou, China, spending my winter and spring terms at the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in China. Though thousands of miles from Middlebury, Vermont, I feel no less a part of the Middlebury campus, and no less close to my friends spread over the globe, much the same way Midd alums are. No doubt being away from Vermont makes me especially appreciative of how for alumni the Middlebury experience can stay with you long after graduation.

  Read the rest of this entry »

I recently returned to the United States from one of Middlebury’s J-term trips abroad. Our group traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania and Odessa, Ukraine, spending one week in each city. I was eager to participate mostly for personal reasons; my family originally came from this corner of the world. I quickly realized though that I was in for much more than a heritage tour. This experience would really change my academic outlook too.

As a history major, I was struck by the power of oral history—studying history through firsthand, oral accounts of the events—and of the importance of geography in shaping how a community deals with its history. In my opinion, the two are inextricably linked. If a story is told well, the retelling feels as vivid for listener as the experience was for the storyteller. This usually involves giving the listener a sense of place, such as in a city, or even in a specific building. It is important to know how the surroundings looked and felt to the person in that moment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello! I’m Alex, one of the two current Middlebury 1800 Society Student Scholars writing for the Midd:day blog. I wanted to introduce myself so that you have some idea of who I am as you read these posts. Like many Middkids, I am originally from New York City, specifically Brooklyn. I am a pre-med history major and a Junior Feb this year (translate: I will graduate at the end of J-term 2010). I try to do different activities each year, so here’s the run down for 2008: the Student Global AIDS Campaign, Hillel, the Academic Judicial Board, and a talk show with friends on the campus radio. The show is called “The Blooming Onion” and you can tune in to 91.1 FM to hear us on Friday afternoons from 12:30 to 2pm. (Alternatively, you can listen online: http://wrmc.middlebury.edu/) Some friends and I are also trying to start a Story Time project, but it is not yet up and running. We hope to bring students, faculty, and staff together once a week in an informal setting where one person will share a personal story of his or her choosing, which others in the community might now hear otherwise. I’ll keep you posted (pun intended!) on any developments with that.

As for the writing in this blog, I am eager to hear any thoughts/comments/questions you may have. I’ve never “blogged” before. My hope is that you find the entries interesting and even thought-provoking. There is no concrete structure for entries, so I anticipate that they will vary. Sometimes I think these posts sound quite personal, and at times I feel like a reporter writing an article about what is going on at Midd in general.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Thanks!

- Alex