community

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 »

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 »