Category Archives: Student Perspective

January 20, 2012 · 2:26 pm

5 Easy Ways to Stay Happy, Healthy, and Warm at Penn this Winter

Author:  Mari Meyer, GSE ’12

The holiday break is over, and if yours was anything like mine, your pores are still oozing with the smell of oil and onion from your mom’s famous latkes:

My mom always says that a little blood, sweat and tears make the difference between a good latke and a great latke.

YUM!

The post-holiday and new year months are always the hardest. Despite all of your resolutions and plans for staying active; despite the surplus of new gloves and socks and all those cute recycled gift bags that just beg to be made into a scrapbook collage of holiday memory cheer; despite all of your best efforts to reboot your routine and productivity now that the smorgasbord of family gatherings and dessert buffets have quieted down: the chance that you will still want to revert into winter hibernation mode and “power off” for the next three months is almost inevitable.

The family couch after one of my mom’s famous holiday meals.

But we’re on a college campus—one of the greatest in the world, no less—and in the spirit of studenthood I commit this year to dragging myself out of my post-holiday slump and radiator-overheated bear cave to take advantage of the infinite opportunities, activities, and events happening at Penn even in the dreariest of winter months.

With that in mind, here is a list of the top 5 ways to have a happy, healthy, and warm winter at Penn this year.

  1. Aqua Zumba classes at the Penn Rec Center. Who said you have to be in Boca Raton for some good, ol’ fashioned water aerobics? Check out all of Pottruck’s other body-heating offerings by clicking here!
  2. Seeing RUBBERBANDance Group unite hip hop and ballet at Annenberg this weekend, or at least one of the many phenomenal performances and concerts happening weekly throughout the year.
  3. Becoming more mindful through meditation and other community health programming at the Penn Program for Mindfulness.
  4. De-stressing through the “Stitch Therapy” group at the Penn Women’s Center (open to all).  Sure, I don’t know how to knit, crochet, or sew, but nonetheless, it’s a great opportunity to meet new people.
  5. Get involved in a writing group at the Kelly Writer’s House. Also, did you know that they offer an online book club for Penn alumni and their families?

So much to choose from, and you may not even have to leave your house for it!

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January 19, 2012 · 3:40 pm

My Trip to Columbia University

Author: Jonathan Cousins, SEAS’14

Last Friday, I went to see Penn Basketball play at Columbia. It is always a unique experience to watch your hometown team in another city.  For one thing, the crowd is rooting against you. It is especially hard to deal with by yourself, because if there is only one of you, you stick out.  At Columbia though, there were ten members of the Red and Blue Crew, and we were sitting right next to the Penn Band.  Between the two groups, we basically owned a corner of the gym. And, it was fun to have a bunch of us cheering against the majority of the pro-Columbia crowd. I also noticed that there were a lot of Penn alumni present, especially in the section right behind the Penn bench.

Getting to and from the gym was an adventure. We took Bolt bus from 30th Street Station to Penn Station in New York, and then rode the subway from there to Columbia’s campus. However, the gym is underground, and once you step on campus, it is not easy to find. I bought the tickets for the group ahead of time, and so I had to be the one to pick them up at Will Call Office.  I booked a bus that left at 3 PM and arrived at 5 PM, thinking that would give me plenty of time before the 7 PM tipoff.  I didn’t anticipate that my bus would leave an hour late, and I found myself scrambling to get to the gym on time.  In the end, I made it, arriving in plenty of time at 6:30.

The game remained close through the first half, with Columbia taking a small lead into the break.  We surged back at the beginning of the second half, and led by nine points with two minutes to go.  We watched the lead quickly evaporate due to poor fouls and turnovers. Columbia even had a chance to win the game with a three at the buzzes, but thankfully, it clanked off of the iron as the horn sounded. The final score was a close 66 to 64 with Penn winning. You can read the full press release here.

Tyler Bernardini hit four clutch free throws in the final minute Friday at Columbia. Photo courtesy Mike Mahoney.

On the way back home, our group stopped for pizza, and then took the long ride back to Philly. I really had a great time taking half a day and going on an adventure to another city. I got to get out of the Penn bubble, see another Ivy League campus and watch a Penn victory. I have also found that you get closer with the group of people that go on trips like this. In the future, I hope we find funding to send groups of students to the road games, Ivy or otherwise. Even if only 5-10 students went on each trip, if we took 3-6 trips a year, every season ticket holder would at least have the opportunity to go on one. This also discounts the bi-annual trips to Temple and La Salle, which are located right on the Broad Street Line. I hope these trips continue to exist, and expand in number, so that more people get to have the type of fun experience that we did.

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January 3, 2012 · 2:57 pm

Winter Break: Not for the Faint of Heart

Author: Dan Bernick, SAS ’14

Winter break is supposed to be relaxing.  Time off from school and away from campus; time spent with family and friends at your home; time for vacation or movies or shopping.  Winter break is supposed to be relaxing, but then again, I’m a Penn student.

Winter break is for cleaning out your email.  My inbox gets especially full during finals because I “never have time” to actually read and sort email.  Worse yet, it takes a long time to respond to them (sorry if I have not gotten back to you yet).  Once the inbox is clean, it’s worth taking a look at all the folders and label systems I have, deleting useless ones, and creating new ones for next semester.

Winter break is for filling out applications.  Programs and clubs and positions all have applications due the first few weeks in January.  The good student has been working diligently all semester on these.  But I tell myself all semester that I will have tons of time over winter break to work on them.  It means writing essays (uh-oh, writer’s block), getting letters of recommendation (sorry I forgot to mention its due in a week – thanks!), and trying to make yourself look good on paper (as long as I don’t attach a photo I should be okay).

Winter break is for preparing for next semester.  Classes need to be dropped and changed and dropped again, and I need to quadruple check that all of my courses fulfill at least six different requirements each.  This meticulous search of PenninTouch is not for the faint of heart.  Then I need to work on housing, textbooks, and, of course, finding a summer internship.  Done well, preparation makes the next few months smooth sailing.

But, like I said, I’m a Penn student.  I make my to-do list and hide it in a drawer until the last few days of break.  Then (hopefully, fingers crossed, I promise I’ll be better next break), I will take out the list and start getting things done.

Winter break is for relaxing, and. for better or for worse, that is exactly what I have been doing.

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December 22, 2011 · 4:02 pm

Sunrise

Author: Sabrina Shyn, C’13

I’m getting ready to leave campus for winter break to visit my family in Korea.  Before I leave, I wanted to share with you all this photo I took  at daybreak on Locust Walk.

Best wishes to all my friends, teachers, and staff at Sweeten Alumni House! See you next year…

 

 

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December 22, 2011 · 1:47 pm

Top 4 Things I’m Looking Forward to Next Semester

Author: Jonathan Cousins, SEAS’14

As this semester quickly draws to a close, I know that as soon as I get home, I will love being there, and will wonder what Penn has in store for me upon my return.  So, to remind me about what is coming, I am going to list my top 4 things I am excited about for next semester.

#4 Spring Fling

Last year, a combination of being sick and rain caused me to miss out on some of the best parts of fling (namely, the quad).  This semester, I will get a fuller fling experience, and everyone loves the time of the year when the entire campus could care less about school work.

#3 Classes

Many people will disagree with me here, and argue that classes are the main deterrent to returning to campus. However, for me, classes provide order to my life and add obligatory social interaction to my day.   No matter how boring the class, if you are sitting with a friend, you can find a way to make it interesting.  This leads directly into…

#2 People

It is great to be able to hang out with my friends, but I also have good interactions with my advisor and my professors.  I have created a great network of people here, and I look forward to deepening the bonds that already exist and creating many new ones.

#1 Sports

The primary thing I get at Penn and nowhere else is the student section, especially at basketball games.  Last semester was pretty good, but there are some great promotions and new activities coming from the student section in the new year.  I can’t wait for Big 5 games, and of course the HUGE matchups against Princeton and Harvard.

What are you guys looking forward to in the next semester? I’d love to know!

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great break and a happy holiday season.

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December 20, 2011 · 4:00 pm

To Sleep or Not to Sleep?

Christine Uyemera, SEAS ’13

As the end of the semester draws near, students have to make the ultimate decision: to sleep or not to sleep?

Finals week is the most stressful time for everyone (minus those few lucky freshmen or seniors who got away with taking only three classes, pass/fail classes, or classes that give the option to drop the final exam grade). Between projects, papers, gift-buying, hanging out with friends before going home, and the finals themselves, it often feels like there aren’t physically enough hours in the day to get everything done that we need to. How can we possibly make good grades and still be sane? What is the right combination of sleep and other things? There are three main approaches that three different types of students take to solving this equation:

1. Sleepless Sallys: One option that some  students consider is to give up as much sleep as possible to make time for everything else. This is normally manifested in multiple all-nighters, sometimes consecutive ones, with 1-2 hour “power naps” sprinkled into the schedule and taken only when absolutely necessary (typically these naps are involuntary). Sleepless Sallys can be found with a Vente Starbucks coffee at any given time. Although they might complain about their workload, friends of Sleepless Sallys can see it in their eyes. They have semi-permanent setups in Van Pelt/Houston Hall/ Huntsman and will probably be living there 20-24 hours of the day. A typical day for a Sleepless Sally begins at the library during either day or night and has no clear end, despite the so-called sunrise and sunset.

2. Balanced Bettys: Despite students’ constant insistence that they have no idea how so much work piled up, and there’s no way they could have ever gotten it all done before now, there are always students who actually started the project the day it was given out/read the chapters every week before lecture/followed the timeline for the research paper. At least enough to where Reading Days and Finals week is manageable. Finals week is truly no big deal at all to Balanced Bettys, who spend a scheduled, moderate 2-4 hours per day working or studying and are free to do their Christmas shopping in the mornings and go to end-of-semester BYOBs with their friends at night. Balanced Bettys are probably in the College, and will almost certainly protest that they are just as stressed and busy as anyone else.

 

3. Party Pats: Finally, there are the students who put immediate happiness before all else. Party Pats pull all-nighters in a different way. They wouldn’t be caught dead staying up late for schoolwork and spend ample time on their holiday shopping and end-of-the-year friend-visiting. They will spend a few hours here and there looking at course material when they can’t find anyone else to hang out with or they need a break from the TV show marathon they’ve been watching. However, the majority of any project-doing or exam-studying is done the night before or the day of. Party Pats can exists in either extreme academically: they will either make the A+ on the exam regardless of the amount of time spent studying or fail the class completely. Either way, Party Pats live by the phrases “oh ,well,” and “whatever…”

All three of the these student types have their pros and cons. The choice is really dependent on what kind of student you’ve been all semester, your personal expectations, and how much pressure you can take before going insane. Freshmen will be struggling to decide who they are going to be while upperclassmen have known from day one of finals week. Regardless, come December 22nd, it will ALL be over and we students can go into hibernation mode for a few weeks before starting all over again.

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December 16, 2011 · 4:39 pm

Holiday Spirit at Sweeten

Author: Mari Meyer, GSE , C’12

As my first semester as a graduate student at Penn winds down, I recall fondly the days that my brain felt like THIS, instead of like THIS.

Fortunately, campus is glowing with festive holiday cheer, and all of the wonderful people here at Sweeten make this extra tough time as a student feel just as lovely as ever.  Not to mention that they do a really good job of feeding us student staff (as you’ll see below). Here is just a quick sampling of the festive holiday spirit that’s alive and well throughout Sweeten.

Ben and wreath welcome visitors as they walk through the door.

Holiday treats appear on the second floor as if by magic, fattening us up like geese.

 

Chrysanthemum + Piano = Joy

Popcorn Tin! As usual, the caramel and cheese-flavored pieces disappeared first.

Mini tree decorated with Rubik's cube.

From all of us at the Sweeten Alumni House, have a happy, healthy holiday season.  See you in 2012!

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December 1, 2011 · 2:51 pm

State of the (Union?) School

Author: Dan Bernick, SAS ‘14

“Madame Speaker!  The President of the United States.”

The State of the Union address always begins this way, followed by the President’s report on the state of our union.

Penn had its own version this week.

State of the School (SOTS) is an opportunity for the six branches of Penn Student Government to discuss what they accomplished over the past year and what their plans are.

This year’s theme was “Moving Forward.”  As a member of the Undergraduate Assembly, I interacted with people who may (or may not have) voted for me and got to hear what new projects they needed me to “move forward.”

The event was held at the Penn Museum and students wore business casual.  Admissions Dean Eric Furda spoke and we listened to presenters from each branch.  But the best part – as always – was the food.  Students mingled while eating a tantalizing array of appetizers including lobster bites, vegetable pizza, pita with hummus, and mini burgers.

Photo Courtesy of the DP, 11/29/11

I am glad that, unlike in the real world, student government can all agree on one thing – how to have a good time!

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November 23, 2011 · 2:46 pm

Room with a View

Author: Sabrina Shyn, C’13

This is the view I get to see every night in winter when I look out my window at dusk from Rodin College House.

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November 17, 2011 · 2:52 pm

Midwestern charm meets the Ben Franklin Bridge: A Chicago Girl in Philly

Author: Mari Meyer, GSE,C’12

I love Philadelphia: the trolleys, the cheesesteaks, the tree-lined, cobblestone blocks and multicolored row homes—it is a one of a kind city and, without a doubt, one of the best places to live in the world.  But wherever I happen to live, I’ve generally found that my itch to explore has got nothing on my love for my hometown, Chicago.

It didn’t help that on my very first week here, I made the tragic mistake (which I now consider to be a significant rite of passage for any new driver in the Philadelphia area) of losing my way on these ravenous East Coast highways, ultimately finding myself on the Ben Franklin Bridge’s “Four Lanes to New Jersey,” without so much as a clue as to how I got there, where I was going, or how I might get back. Not to mention not realizing that they make you pay $5 just to essentially turn around.  Not the most heartfelt welcome, Philly, thanks!

That said, there’s something about this time of year here that has captured my heart.  There’s an old saying that Chicago has two seasons: winter and construction season.  Though summertime in Chicago is very clearly the reason why people stay through its unforgiving winters, I’ve never quite seen autumn really last long enough to enjoy it—it’s sunset-tinted leaves, it’s cool, dry air and never-ending sunny Saturdays at the farmers’ market—until coming to Penn.

I am also not the first to feel compelled to gush about Philadelphia’s food trucks, the art, the BYOB restaurants, the live music, the block parties, the bike lanes, the big city feel with the real community heart.  The locals are warm, the rent is cheap, and a whole new neighborhood to explore is only ever a short walk away. Even on campus, you can’t help but feel alive as you make your way down Locust Walk at lunchtime—the calls for participation, for activism, for learning, for joining in, for petitioning, for dancing, for debating—it sends a buzz through me every time I venture across campus.  That’s when I’m most aware of  how lucky we all are to be here as students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community members at this moment in time.  For anyone who watched the cheerleaders and pep band break it down on College Green during Quaker Fest at Homecoming Weekend, you have to admit that you couldn’t deny the energy surging through your body!

Still, there will always be things to miss about my Midwestern Mecca: deep-dish pizza, Lake Shore Drive when the sailboats are out, ordering a “pop” without the risk of being persecuted for the use of regional language, the “el” during express hours, Chinatown at Hanukkah, chairs in the street to mark your parking territory, garlic naan on Devon, the skyline at sunset, free comedy and BYOB improv, Wicker Park’s six corners on a Saturday night, Michigan Avenue when the Christmas lights go up, and access to killer Mexican food on at least every block til at least 3 AM, and then again for breakfast.

But for now, I am forever grateful to be here in West Philadelphia, walking to and from my classes, my neighbors saying “good morning” and “good evening” in each direction.  Philly is a gem of a place to call home, and my time at Penn is a gift.  Now, if I could only figure out a way to stay off these treacherous roads…

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