Anders
The Power of Small
The sun is shining!!! As the end of senior year comes near, the sun is another great excuse to procrastinate on long term projects. However, learning from past experience, I planned ahead this year and made it a point to study absurdly long hours when it was rainy to allow for ample shenanigan time once it turned sunny. Whelp, now is that time I guess, so let the shenanigans begin! This weekend was filled with minimal studying, and long hours of frisbee tossing, bench reading, and laying out in the grass. I think today I will drive to a nearby town to check out a summer job at a vineyard, and then come back for a lecture on American Politics and an intermural softball game at 4:00. *Sigh* It is a hard life being a college student… Truly though, it is. In three weeks I will turn in my final thesis, stand in front of a panel of my economics professors and answer any questions they may have about any concept I have learned in the past four years, take a couple other finals here and there, and then parade across a stage to receive my diploma.
It’s funny… Only in my senior year, have I become fully cognizant of the immense opportunities I have been given, and the world class education I have received. I have studied abroad twice, ran NCAA DIII track, presided over a club, expanded my mind, and recently beat MIT, NYU, and Harvey Mudd in an international competition in math modeling. Linfield may be a small college way up in the corner of the US, but its vast resources and distinguished academics have quietly moved it up the lists of some of the nation’s top academic, environmentally friendly, and community service oriented undergrad institutions. As I reflect on my time here, I recognize the influence all this has had on me, but the thing that I am most thankful for, is my ability to call Linfield home, and always remember it as it is today: sunny, smiling, and with an air of playful curiosity. This is the power of a small college.
Post Spring Break
The students are back on campus and have brought back an air of revitalized enthusiasm from their spring breaks. Some of my friends conducted Alternative Spring Breaks in Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington, helping out communities in need. Others traveled to wherever the sun was in an attempt to soak up some vitamin D before returning to the erratic spring weather in the Northwest. Unlike my more ambitious friends, I decided to spend my spring break at home planting trees, eating good food, and reading Pride and Prejudice. My home town of Brownsville is smaller than the college itself, but the strong community opens the active person up to a wide variety of opportunities. While I was home, I caught up on some long term assignments, and attempted to get a head start on my summer employment by revamping my resume and applying to local wineries and vineyards. Since I will be taking a year off before going to graduate school, my goal is to find full time employment through winter and then travel abroad in the spring for as long as possible. Spring break is the perfect time to set aside the immediate stress of classes and daydream about these more long term goals.
While I was home for spring break I also discovered my team’s paper for a math modeling competition received the rank of “meritorious!” While we did not win first place, we placed in the top 12% of over 1,000 teams all around the world, of which only 26% were from the US. Even more evidence that my education at Linfield College has prepared me to tackle real life applications outside of the classroom setting!
The Prospect of Spring Break
Spring break is about to arrive and campus is buzzing around the images of road trips, tropical beaches, and the prospect of no homework. The reality, however, is a much different picture. While we would all like to picture ourselves on an island oasis, an equally appealing location, and probably a more realistic one, is laying around at home eating all our parents’ food. Some more ambitious students, who have not been completely enervated by the weight of midterms, will continue on to partake in Alternative Spring Breaks, or holidays in San Diego and Las Vegas. Linfield offers many options for its students to get the most out of their spring break. Whether it’s providing students a ride to the airport to enjoy a week at home on the couch, or creating the opportunity for students to engage in community service projects around the country, Linfield attempts to offer students the greatest support it can to ensure students a restful spring break.
For me, this next week will comprise of catching up on homework, getting ahead on my senior thesis, job searching, and possibly some shorter road trips around the Northwest visiting friends and popular sights. Originally my friends and I planned on going to Mexico or a road trip to look at grad schools, but sooner or later, reality set in and most of us decided that more productive endeavors would be the most stress relieving in the long run. While this may not sound appealing to some with more wild expectations of college spring break, I don’t think I could imagine a more perfect spring break for my senior year. Endless home cooked food, friends and family, the slow pace of home, and maybe a pilgrimage to Powell’s, the legendary city of books in Portland. Needless to say, my peers and I cannot wait for the adventure of spring break to finally arrive.
Anders: Oh the Weather…
Yesterday, as I rolled out of bed to catch up on some “History of Economic Thought” reading, I opened the blinds to find a winter wonder land. As I read I kept my email open hoping for a snow day, but alas without avail I trudged off to class. By noon the sun was shining, all the snow was melted, and campus was back to business as usual. So begins the Oregon spring. You see, unlike springs experienced elsewhere in the world, the only constant in an Oregon spring is its tendency to change multiple times throughout the day. While running track my first two years at Linfield, I remember meets where I received a good drenching, sunburn, and bone chilling shivers all in a matter of hours. While most people from different climates around the U.S. may imagine Oregon weather to be something like a monotonous mist, Oregon spring weather gives a whole new meaning to “March Madness.”
Anders: Math?
When I first declared my math minor at Linfield I surprised myself. Before college I always considered myself mathematically impaired, and a casualty of the underfunded high school education system. I was finally coaxed into taking my first math class at Linfield my sophomore year, but experienced something I did not expect. My math professor, Dr. Stephen Bricher, was the most enthusiastic professor I had ever met and the way he presented the material felt like the directions to a board game we were all about to play. Sometimes at the end of lectures, Professor Bricher would actually be sweating from running around, circling answers, drawing smiley faces, and handing back homework. Thoroughly enjoying my experience, I continued on to Calculus with Dr. Hitchman. Here I found much the same experience with quirky side notes, interesting applications, and always having stories to tell under the headline: “Guess what happened in math today!”
I’m now in my senior year, and while I am enjoying the combination of my math minor and economics major, considering where I was four years ago, I never imagined I would participate in an international math modeling competition. However, I had more fun in that one weekend of the math modeling competition than I ever thought possible thorough mathematics. I was on a team with two of my peers and we had 96 hours to address one of two questions prompted by an online administrator. The question we agreed on asked us to make a mathematical model predicting the leaf mass of a tree, how leaf shape related to tree shape, and why leaves have the shapes they have. Having absolutely no clue how best to tackle the problem, we started off by researching in Nicholson Library with ample help from the librarians. By the end of the second day, amidst empty pizza boxes and soda bottles in the Taylor Hall, we had two working mathematical models drawn up on three chalkboards around us, which we had created out of pure innovation. We went on to write a 17 page paper to present our models, but that first moment when we realized we created something out of nothing was profound. This was the first time I was given a real world problem without any guidance or suggestions on how to tackle it. Emerging from Linfield, I look back and see the progress I have made intellectually, as well as personally, and cannot send enough thanks to the institution or the individuals who influenced me.