Let’s meet… Wait, where?

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It happened to me last Friday. I was just going about my usual day, finishing my classes and stopping in the hallway of an academic building to text my best friend the location of where we could meet before heading off campus to devour some gourmet deep fried fast food when, all of the sudden, it dawned on me that what I was texting was amazing. Well, okay… maybe not amazing. My texting skills aren’t legendary and I wasn’t having an enormous life-altering epiphany or anything like that.  But, when I reread my text to ensure that I wasn’t about to send something overflowing with crazy convoluted typos, I realized that what I had just written truly testified to how unique my education experience at Rice is.

I had asked my bestie (yes, my best friend gets to endure horribly embarrassing nicknames, including bestie and, more frequently, bestido) to meet me at the Berlin wall. The Berlin wall.

And it just hit me. I attend an institution that exhibits a portion of the Berlin wall—something so monumental and a piece of history that most people don’t ever have the opportunity to see. It was not just that though; I had requested my bestie to meet me there like it was nothing special. Like, “oh hey, let’s meet at that one big tree by the Humanities building” or something.

That’s when I had to stop and remind myself what a privilege it is to be here at Rice. Where everything—the architecture, the courses, and even a portion of the Berlin wall—uniformly expand my horizons and push me out of my comfort zone, often without me even realizing it. Rice University has inserted me into such a culturally and academically rich environment that I will never be able to fully leave behind. Even though I am only a sophomore right now, it is beginning to sink in that my time at Rice is halfway over… or like I keep trying to tell myself, that I only have two more years of immense personal growth to achieve. I’ve changed so much during my time thus far at Rice (experimenting with different majors, joining so many different organizations, scoring unique research and fellowship opportunities) and I cannot wait to see how I am at my graduation ceremony in 2014.

–AM

The Sunrise

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With only ONE WEEK of my freshman year left (AH), I cannot believe how fast this year has progressed! I can’t even imagine what the seniors are going through (Matt) if I am already getting nostalgic about leaving Rice for a couple months in the summer! Those of you who regularly follow the blog know that we bloggers try our very best to paint a vivid picture of the amazing and unique life we have here at Rice, however, these posts will never be able to come near the real thing. Some features cannot even begin to be described, most notably: the feeling and true presence of community. Each Rice student is unique in a very special way, however, we are also alike in one major way: everyone here will go out of their way to reinforce the culture of care about Rice in an organic, unforced way. This is not an overnight realization, but a realization comprised of a thousand little events that made me realize Rice students are here for each other.

Good morning Houston! Lovett Hall is in the bottom left corner.

The above picture was taken from the 6th floor of Fondren Library at around 6:30 am one morning. No, this is not a common occurrence for me to be in the library that early in the morning, however, I had a chemistry test at 7:45 am, so I made the decision to cram my heart out and stay in the library all night studying. Naturally, since I become delusional without any sleep, around 2:30 I went down to the first floor, pushed two extremely big, comfortable chairs together and made a little “boat” to catnap in until 5:30 am. “Rested,” I went back up to the quite chambers of the 6th floor and continued to study material I easily could have studied before this hour. There were a couple other people on the 6th floor this early and at 6:30 they came over and pointed to the front big windows to look at something. I was in an extreme mental study zone before this, so I had no idea what was going on around me, but they led me to the huge windows on 6th floor with the other people who were in the room to see the sunrise. It was one of the most glorious, magical, amazing moments ever. An unforced community where people unthinkingly look out for each other.

CCD Loves You Too!

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Good Morning Future Owls!

So last week I told ya’ll a little bit about my favorite building on campus: The Wellness Center.  However, the Huff House, which holds Rice’s Center for Career Development is a close second.  I’ve worked as a student assistant here all semester, and it’s been a fantastic way to start my Monday and Wednesday mornings.

I like to think of the CCD as the “middle man” between Rice students and employers.  The counselors and advisors work hard to find career and internship opportunities for rice undergrads, grads, and alums, as well as encourage potential employers to come check out what we Owls have to offer. They also offer career counseling, resume advising, and host tons of information sessions and workshops for everyone on campus.  And when the time comes for Rice students to seek employment, a lot of it will take place through the CCD’s career website: RiceLink. The CCD is a wonderful resource – so when you’re here be sure to look out for their announcements and flyers and take advantage of some of the cool stuff they bring to campus.

Actually, the CCD has found an awesome opportunity for you future owls too!

If you’re still looking for summer plans and you think your future may lie in the computer sciences, Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute could be the program for you.

“Up to 60 aspiring computer scientists will be selected to attend one of the all-expenses-paid CSSI sessions at either Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California or Google’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our first session will take place from June 24 – July 12, 2012, while the second will take place from July 22 – August 10, 2012. This special institute will include an interactive and collaborative CS curriculum, as well as a unique residential experience in which students can build a network with other attendees. They will meet alumni from their schools and other Google engineers while immersing themselves in daily life at Google. Students will also enjoy technical talks by Googlers, lectures by guests from across the technology industry, and local area social activities.”

If this sounds interesting, I definitely encourage ya’ll to apply here: www.google.com/jobs/cssi by this Friday (April 20th).

And if computer science isn’t quite your thing – the CCD caters to everyone’s needs. So be sure to check them out for some career tips and resume advice when you get here.

Visiting the home of William Marsh Rice

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Pop quiz time….

Who is William Marsh Rice?

Please tell me that you have a few guesses. Heck, the word “Rice” is even in the name. So, if nothing else, you should be able to reason that William Marsh Rice has something to do with Rice University. And, if that was your deduction (but I will accept close answers as well), bingo! You just won some of my forever devoted and eternal love! Because, yes, William Marsh Rice has something to do with Rice University—in fact, he actually founded the institution!

I will save the entire story of William Marsh Rice for the on-campus tour guides to explain to you when you come to visit; only they maintain the ability to tell it perfectly. I merely want to briefly narrate my experience of viewing his home during a field trip (yes, those exist in college!) in my HART 360 class, which deals with early American decorative arts. My professor was kind enough to drive a portion of the class to the site, so transportation was super simple. Also, our class visits to local museums throughout the semester have all been free! I’m not sure if it’s because we are Rice students or because we go on Mondays (museums are typically closed to the public on Mondays), but that part of the class has been pretty much amazing.  I’m not stingy—just a college student. The William Marsh Rice house is a gorgeous example of Greek revival architecture and I would highly recommend anyone who is in the area to go and check it out! If you haven’t noticed from any of the Rice websites, our centennial celebration is fast approaching and touring Rice’s home is a great way to get into the spirit!

Psssstt…. My HART 360’s tour of the home was featured in the Rice news! Check out the full article with the link below. In case you don’t know what I look like, I’m the girl in both of the photos wearing white shorts and a grey cardigan.

http://news.rice.edu/2012/04/06/the-house-william-marsh-rice-called-home/

-AM

“Welcome to Rice. Now go away!”

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While that might normally sound like a rude greeting, that’s how Rice’s International Programs office eagerly greets new students in the hope of turning all owls into internationally experienced scholars.  What does that mean?  As International Programs will gladly tell you, “international experience” doesn’t just have to be your parents’ old study abroad anymore.  True, a lot of Rice students will go abroad like Allison and take classes in another country.  But universities have realized there’s a lot more other countries have to offer aside from their classrooms, and so now you can find internships, fellowships, research, and service opportunities in other countries.  Rice fully embraces this expanded view of study abroad, and has lots of resources you can consult to find the the experience that best suits you.  This post is about that expanded view.

What I love about this set-up is that it also makes it easy for almost any major to go abroad.  Four years ago (that went by fast…), when I was looking at schools, I had two basic requirements:  1) it had to be good at physics, but I could still be able to change my major (and man, how many times that almost happened at Rice) and 2) I had to be able to study abroad while doing something related to physics.  I quickly tweaked goal 2 when I came to Rice and learned about the other things I could do.  The sophomore after sophomore year, I got to go to Japan for 10 weeks to learn Japanese and do nanotechnology research through a Rice-sponsored program called NanoJapan, and it was an amazing experience. One of my friends liked being abroad so much, she decided to apply to go abroad the semester after she came back.

Or you can be like one of my more policy-minded friends.  While I was in Japan, he participated in a Baker Institute trip to American University Cairo where he got to meet Egyptian students through the Public Diplomacy and Global Policymaking program.  He enjoyed that trip and learning about public diplomacy, and this year he helped organize a student trip to Qatar to meet with Qatari college students and attend a science policy conference.

When people ask me if I’ve studied abroad, I always kind of struggle to answer with something along the lines of “Technically…”  While my friend and I may not have had the stereotypical international experience, I found my experience more valuable than just taking classes in another country.  And it definitely makes for a great spot on a resume.

Pancakes for Parkinson’s

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Wow. That’s really all I have to say about the month of April. With so many activities, events, research projects, and interviews on my horizon (or, for the small part, behind me) April has transcended into a month defined by a very clear lack of sleep. I cannot blog about everything that is going on, so I promise to keep writing during the summer and recap all of the fun things that I forgot to mention previously.

Enough of that digression. It’s time to get back to the topic of today’s post: Pancakes for Parkinson’s! As some of y’all already know, I am serving as the RSVP College Representative for Lovett this year. Sadly, the school year is coming to a close (we only have two weeks left!), so this will probably be my last post regarding RSVP for quite some time. Next Saturday, on the fourteenth of April, Rice University’s Pancakes for Parkinson’s event will take place at the RMC Grand Hall— I just let you guys in on that top-secret information in cause you’ll be in the area. Delicious pancakes will be served and all of the donations that are raised during the event will go toward Parkinson’s disease research! Pretty cool, right? Well, it gets even better. The Michael J. Fox Foundation approached Rice about hosting the event after learning that Rice student Austin Lipinski had produced a short documentary about Robert Flatt, a Rice professor who has Parkinson’s disease. The documentary won the Grand Prize in the Rice University 2011 Student Film Contest. See? Who says that Rice students can’t start something big?

Here is the link to the event page:

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rsvp/pfp.html

–AM

My Favorite Place on Campus

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Nestled deep within the hedges of Rice University, past the hustle and bustle of the RMC and beyond the sweaty maze of bodies in the Rec Center, there lies a magical oasis, a land of peace and tranquility.  I call it paradise, but you may know it by it’s more formal name: The Wellness Center.

It's Tea Tuesday!

At first, The Wellness Center and I were just a fling.  I came on Tuesdays for the free tea and relaxation, and often found myself venturing there throughout the week for a few moments of bliss petting Jack, the Australian Shepherd that calls The Wellness Center home. But soon, my infatuation grew. As Valentines day approached, my involvement with this glorious place intensified while I coordinated the Love Your Body Monologues (check out my past post for a full description).  When February drew to a close, I was determined to ensure that our relationship remained strong. Throughout March, I participated in The Body Project, a Wellness Center workshop devoted to combating the thin ideal and building self esteem in young women.

We’re reaching the end of the semester, but I have no fear for my future with this magnificent building.  I know it holds many more resources and opportunities that I have yet to take advantage of.  For example, The Wellness Center offers massages and acupuncture to students for a heavily subsidized price.  And, of course, Maria Tsakalis, our registered dietitian, is available for consultations along with awesome pieces of advice for college campus healthy eating. Plus, I can always check out any of the educational books and movies that line the walls if I want to learn more about yoga, meditation, or living a healthy lifestyle.

I almost hate sharing my little secret getaway with you, but it’s just too great a place to keep to myself.

To check out the website: http://wellbeing.rice.edu/

 

My Summer Plans

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I will spend my summer in Seattle working with Microsoft Research!

Earlier this year, as I was applying to many internships / summer programs, I asked the professor who I have been doing research with this year for a recommendation letter. He said he would be fine with writing me a recommendation letter, but he also gave me a counter-offer which I could not refuse: collaborate with him at Microsoft Research in Seattle, Washington this summer for about 3 months. I would be fully paid to live there and travel, plus make a little extra to enjoy and explore Seattle. I of course accepted! How could I not? I will be getting research experience, connections with Microsoft, money, and an amazing time in Seattle (which is apparently a very fun town and beautiful in the summer).

Before coming to Rice, I never knew how many opportunities there would be for freshmen. Furthermore, I did not realize how easy it would be to access all of these amazing opportunities. I am honestly surprised at how great Rice and its professors have been to me. They really do care about undergraduates and want us to succeed. Rice students are really lucky to have all the opportunities that are presented to them. All of my friends are doing something really cool this summer as a result of attending Rice.

Over the Hedges…. And Down the Road

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Outside of the museum!

Everyone at Rice knows the term “hedge-hopper.” No, this has nothing to do with cute little hedgehogs or anything animalistic. It actually refers to the hedges that surround campus. Now, what do those shrubs have to do with anything? After all, it isn’t like most Rice students are particularly interested in landscape or gardening.

But, perhaps to your surprise, the hedges have to do with everything. Those plantings happen to define the Rice student: inside them, we are enclosed in this little Rice universe with everything academic at our fingertips, but, once we venture beyond them into that big new place called Houston, we have officially crossed the hedges. Or, more precisely, “hopped” them.

It sounds so so simple, right? How can leaving campus be a big deal? Well, for whatever reason, it is. It symbolizes everything exciting and wondrous to the Rice student: new restaurants, new clubs, new study places, new internships, new Friday night hang out spots, and even new research possibilities. Last Friday (or, at least I think it was last Friday… my days are beginning to blur together as the semester gets so hectic!) I accompanied one of my really good friends to the Houston Science Museum in Sugarland, Texas. It was a bit of a drive, I’ll admit, but we really needed to see an interactive exhibit first hand for a specific research project. Although “interactive” should give it all away, I will elaborate slightly more. Two twenty-year olds just had the time of their lives touching every little thing in a room designed for elementary kids. Enough said.

Enjoy the photos!

 

 

 

 

 -AM