Goshdarnit

Today, while I'm in transit from California to New Jersey, crammed in coach with no prospect of a decent beverage, this is happening:

Tea!  Hats!  British accents optional!  And Jeep's e-mail promised cake and biscuits!  What with the hammocks, the cookies, the events, and the people, South dorm has it all.

Now I'm dreaming of a well brewed cup of English Breakfast . . . and cake would be nice too.

Skills you don't learn in school

I went to Orange County for work last Tuesday and got lost.  (Who's surprised?)  I was sure my trip would be easy-peasy.  First visit, Troy High School, Fullerton, 9 am.  Google's predicted drive time: 27 minutes.  I left at eight, and still arrived late.  At least that one I could blame on the traffic.  Second visit, Fountain Valley.  The directions looked foolproof, since, as you'll observe below, there were only two right-hand turns standing between me and my destination.

Easy, right?  Well, this is what I actually did:

Somehow, despite those idiot-proof directions, I nearly ended up at the beach.  Sheesh.  When you apply for a job in admission, a standard question is whether you have a valid driver's license -- nobody ever inquires if you can successfully navigate yourself from point A to point B within the normal life expectancy of a mosquitofish (two years, in case you were curious).  So directions are perhaps not my strong point.  But I do have one unexpected skill up my sleeve.

Present me with a choice of three near-identical strip malls, like so:

And I can tell you, with unerring accuracy, which one contains the Starbucks (hint: in California, it's usually next to the Jamba Juice).  Granted, this won't save the world anytime soon, but it sure comes in handy.  Who says suburbanites don't have survival skills?

Images 1 and 2 from Googlemaps; image 3 from http://www.crcconstruction.com/



President Klawe makes headlines!

There's a great article about HMC president Maria Klawe in the latest Bloomberg/Businessweek, including a photo of her riding a skateboard (and yes, she really does wear all that protective gear -- just one of the reasons she's an excellent role model!).  And just in case the skateboarding wasn't enough to convince you that the president is actually a friendly, approachable human being, may I present exhibit B:

This is a vignette from the day students turned Maria Klawe's office into a preschool, complete with child-size tables and chairs, a tricycle, educational materials, and helpful labels like the ones above -- including a designated space to line up for recess.  I think she was impressed.

Lilian also got a shout-out in the article (yay Lilian!) and there are quotations from Professor Dodds and Dean Cave.  It's a regular Mudd party, so go and check it out.  And if you want to learn more about women in computer science, Mudd's CS department has a page linking you to helpful resources, including the Grace Hopper conference, which an incredible proportion of the first-year women attend annually.  Mudd blogger Xanda went to Grace Hopper a couple of years ago; her description is archived here.

Campus since commencement

What with the construction on campus, things aren't quite business as usual this academic year.  Although there's been a disappointing dearth of dramatic skateboard/freeline/unicycle crashes thus far (you have reality TV; I have my office window), the students have found an upside to the construction: an administratively sanctioned chance for creativity.  Here are some recent photos:

The construction area for the new building stretches right up to Kingston Hall, even though the finished product will be located a decorous distance away. 

While the sunny, grassy area outside Kingston is temporarily gone, never fear -- there is still plenty of green for sports and lounging down at the residential end of campus.

However, since all campus foot traffic is directed through this narrow passageway, there's one small problem . . .

Problem (mostly) solved.  There are a few renegades (ahem, Johnson), but in general pedestrians are safe from marauding bicycles.

Nobody was initially fond of the endless expanse of white construction wall, but the students made a purse out of a sow's ear (or a shelf out of a Pooh posterior, if you recall your A. A. Milne).

Dorm pride, math jokes, Harry Potter references, and COLOR.  It's festive!

Gratuitous photo of trees and sunlight.  This path is the first thing I see when I arrive at work each morning -- stately, no?

The students also commemorated Orientation 2011 on the construction wall . . .

. . . including a portrait of Superhero Liana (seen below, in the middle between Elly and Julius).  It's not a bad likeness, actually.



So that's a snapshot of life here on campus at this particular moment -- minus, of course, the coffee (the coffee cart is back, huzzah!), the classes, and the general hubbub of seven hundred and fifty students going about their daily business.  It's lovely to have them here again.

The arrival of the interviewers

Chances are, if you come to the admission office to interview during the academic year, you'll meet one of these seven individuals -- our talented, articulate, eminently reliable senior interviewers.  While our full-time staff is traveling during the fall and at home reading applications during the spring, these senior students will be the front line of the admission office.  And seriously, we couldn't leave the office in better hands. 

Introducing our 2011-2012 Senior Interviewers, in the order they happened to be photographed:



Lowell Reade

Engineering

High School: American School in Japan

Likes: tweets, trombones, and tech magazines

Campus Leadership Role: Proctor

 Srishti Nayak

Off-campus major in Neuroscience

High School: Desert Mountain, AZ

Quote: "If the 5Cs were a film festival, HMC would be the science fiction booth."

Campus Leadership Role: Proctor

Lindsay Hall

Math/Computer Science

High School: McDonogh School, MD

Likes: Google, grutors, and (tour)guiding

Campus Leadership Role: Co-Social Chair

Sarah Ferraro

Computer Science

High School: Crescenta Valley, CA

Quote: "This is really a community where a passion for science is celebrated and people are accepted because of all the crazy things they do, not in spite of them."

Campus Leadership Role: Founder/President of the FIRST Robotics Mentoring Club

Roxie Bartholomew

Engineering

High School: Lake Forest High, IL

Quote: "As a senior interviewer I get to look at the incoming class as more than just percentages and numbers on a spreadsheet (i.e. the dreaded SAT score) and see who they are: people with interests outside of studying and school."

Campus Leadership Role: HMC Treasurer 

Hayden Hatch

Chemistry/Biology

High School: Friends Seminary, NY

Likes: ghost hunting, lizard catching, and j-boarding

Campus Leadership Role: Muddraker Editor-in-Chief

 Alexa Noxon

Engineering

High School: South Mecklenburg, NC

 Likes: hammocks, capture the flag, and Mazdas

Campus Leadership Role: Proctor

The hardest part of compiling this list was the editing -- because, good grief, there were so many activities and leadership roles to choose from.  Dorm Mentors.  Orientation Sponsors.  Dorm Presidents.  Summer Institute Mentors.  President's Scholars and Finalists.  Class Presidents.  Honor Board Representatives.  Inner Tube Water Polo Champions.  Club Presidents.  And don't even get me started on the research and internships these seniors have done -- including my all time favorite, Sarah's Dance Dance Revolution for the elderly. 

So if you're lucky enough to meet these Mudders, please, interrogate them about the awesome things they've done on campus.  Ask Alexa or Sri about Science Bus.  Get Roxie or Lowell to share a story or two about their adventures in their semesters abroad.  Ask why they chose Mudd, because they'll tell you, honestly.  I hope to share more of their insights into Mudd, Mudders, and the interview process in the coming year. 

But until then, I leave you with Alexa's assessment of her new role: "I remember what I wanted interviews to be like, and how nervous I was going into them.  I want Mudd's interviews to be the ones that feel like a great conversation."

And that's our sincerest hope for all of you who will be applying this year, and why we hired this particular group of senior interviewers: may all your college interviews feel like great conversations.

Travel planning & other mysteries of life

It's the start of the school year, which means in just a couple of weeks my colleagues and I will hit the road to bring Mudd to the masses at various high schools and college fairs across the country.  Even though this is my eighth (gulp) year working in college admissions, I find travel season daunting every single time.  It's not surprising, when you think about the logistics of planning, in my case, two days of college fairs, five blocks of interviews, and fifteen days of high school visits, for a grand total of twenty-four days on the road (which is actually light by HMC standards). 

Recently I was feeling incredibly productive and important when I managed to book about ten high school visits in a row.  I proudly recorded each confirmed appointment in my notes, highlighting the start time in bold Book Antiqua font.  And then deflated when I realized how many more schools I had to contact: fifty.  Eeesh.  So I'm taking it in stages, and trying not to panic that Oregon is so far a big blank space on my calendar.

So where am I off to this year?  Well, here are the regions that Assistant Director Smith will be gracing with her presence:

Logically, these territories probably don't make a lot of sense as a group, and maybe even less so when you learn that I decided to lump New Jersey and Michigan into the same excursion since, as you can see from the above map, they're so close and all.  But a variety is actually nice, especially since I'll ultimately read applications from these states.

And as for the individual schools that I'm visiting?  These are determined largely by data: travel notes from years past, the number of students on our mailing list from a particular high school, whether we've seen applications and/or matriculants from an institution.  Sometimes a counselor will contact me about a potential visit, or I'm lured by something intriguing, like a championship all-female Science Olympiad team (go St. Mary's!) or an up-and-coming IB program.  And, of course, we tend to cluster our visits in major metropolitan areas; even though we have some awesome Mudders from Ashland High School in Oregon, it simply doesn't make sense to drive five hours from Portland (each way!) to pay a call at a single school. 

Sometimes the decisions probably do seem a bit haphazard to an outsider.  For example, after visiting Minnesota for nearly a week four years straight, I'll be skipping the state entirely this year.  We simply haven't been yielding many students, so it's hard to justify the time and expense.  It helps, of course, that there is a team of talented and articulate alumni to conduct interviews and offer an HMC presence in the Twin Cities (thank you, 3M, for hiring our graduates).  And I'm replacing Minnesota with Michigan, because we've seen an increase in interest and applications from that state, and, you know, they both start with the same two letters, they're both located in the Midwest, and they both border Canada.  It makes perfect sense.  I'll miss the extraordinarily gracious and accommodating counselors at the Twin Cities high schools, though -- and my hotel Starbucks.  Please observe:

The proximity to Brit's Pub and other Minneapolis amenities didn't hurt either, but in my mind Minnesota will always be associated with pumpkin spice lattes.  Michigan, you've got a lot to live up to.

PS Not from Oregon, New Jersey, Michigan, the East Bay, or Orange County?  You can see a complete list of our staff travel territories here. 

Image credits: 1) USDA; 2) Googlemaps

Xanda's College Survival Tips

As you embark on the new school year -- whether it's your first year of college or your sophomore year of high school -- it seems like the perfect time to recap Xanda's complete list of school survival tips, including one of my personal favorites (and still mighty relevant to me, as a supposedly fully-functioning long-graduated adult):

14. Take the length of the paper you have to write, in pages. Multiply by the amount of time it takes you to write a page (in hours), on average, when you’re concentrating. Add 1 hour. Multiply by 2. That’s how long it’s going to take if you don’t CLOSE YOUR DAMN INTERNET WINDOWS. Your webcomics will be waiting for you when you’re done; but if you are the sort of person who can’t resist them, that’s how much time you should give yourself to write.

Read Xanda's complete list of 25 Life Lessons.  You won't regret it.