Hamilton College Admission Journals: Sarah Downey

Ode to the Writing Center

Thu, 10 May 2007 00:26:50 GMT

This is what I just wrote in the tutor journal:

5/9/07

Well, I just had my last conference ever, and it was kind of anti-climactic because A, the paper was only six pages long and really good, so it took me like three seconds to read it and go over it, and B, no one is scheduled for my next slot. Usually when that happens I'm like "YAY! I get to do my homework and get PAID for it!" But the thing is, I don't HAVE any homework... cause I'm DONE WITH COLLEGE. If I didn't have three years of law school on the horizon, I'd be legitimately sad that I just wrote and handed in the final paper of my collegiate career. Luckily I have MANY more to go. I'm only being half sarcastic here-- I don't think I could ever take a job where writing was not an important element. And I really learned a lot about writing at Hamilton, both in my courses and at the Writing Center. And man, did I learn a lot about people, too. Of course you see some people at their misspelled, grammatically-incorrect worst here, but then you also get people who truly learn from you and improve, and that's great to see. Well, my hand hurts from writing this, so that's a good indication that I'm done here. It's been a good run; I'll miss it.

So that was my entry and my official parting words to the Writing Center, which has been a source of grammatical and stylistic knowledge, candy, a second mom in our director, Sharon Williams, tons of paper for printing out those electronic reserve readings, $8.50 an hour, and a distraction-free environment for me to write those last-minute papers due at 4 PM. Writing center: you will be missed.

Al Gore brings "An Inconvenient Truth" to Hamilton

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:59:34 GMT

First of all, I tried all week to catch "An Inconvenient Truth" when it was showing on the movie channel (channel 54 at Hamilton shows a cycle of several movies on a loop each month; this month's movies are "Casino Royale," "Airplane," "Free Willy," "October Sky," "An Inconvenient Truth," and I'm pretty sure there's one more I'm forgetting), but I missed it literally every time I checked. I was REALLY busy and the last thing I should have been doing was watching a 2-hour movie, which I finally realized and gave up and looked it up on Wikipedia instead. Plus I'd heard that his speech was almost exactly like the movie, so I figured I'd avoid some repetition that way. I just didn't want to be the only one meeting Al Gore who was an idiot and had never seen his movie. Luckily, his speech outlined everything he covers in the documentary version, with some additional Hamilton references that really personalized it. Gore's business partner in his investment firm, Generation Investment Management, is David Blood-- a Hamilton graduate and an EXTREMELY generous donor. We have Mr. Blood to thank for our amazing new fitness center (Gore made a joke about it being "where students go to bleed").

Now, onto the speech. First of all, anyone who criticizes Gore for being "boring" is an idiot. I was literally moved to chills from his speech. I also laughed really hard several times, not in a "I'm laughing quietly to myself in an academic setting" way, but the legitimate kind of laugh a good comedian can wrench from you. For example, he was using a Mac computer to present his slide show while he spoke, and he used a "drop" feature where an icon of Greenland fell down from the top of the screen and bounced a bit. He did it a few times and said how much he loved this feature and got several laughs, at which point I remember thinking that I know he's on the board of directors of Apple, and this was pretty much shameless promotion. And then he said something like, "See, they took this feature out in the OS X version, but one of the perks of being on the board of directors of Apple is that I got it put back in" and clearly poked fun at himself.

The speech itself was great. I turn off everything electric when I leave the room; I try to recycle; I drive a Toyota Corolla; I turn off the shower when someone leaves it dripping; so I consider myself somewhat environmentally friendly. But I had no idea how much CO2 we're contributing to the atmosphere and how damaging it may be, as well as how much the earth's climate has changed in recent years to accompany this spike in CO2 emissions. For example, did you know that the past ten hottest summers on record have all occurred within the past fourteen years? Or that the intensity of hurricanes has increased so much that scientists are considering adding a category six to the classification system for the first time in history? He showed photos of glaciers taken in the 1970s and compared them to recent photos, and the glaciers were completely gone or nearly gone in all of them. I really can't do his presentation justice; all I can tell you is that you really need to see the movie and educate yourself, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or you don't care at all about politics. There's really no debate anymore about whether global warming is happening-- it is. The thing dissenters are trying to argue now is that human influence is negligible, and that the earth goes through normal patterns of temperature fluctuations. I will use my future attorney skills and Writing Center eloquence here to say that this argument is total crap. At least see this movie before you disagree with it. It's better to be safe than sorry.

After the speech, I waited in a long line with a few of my friends to shake Al's hand and get a picture with him. I hadn't eaten dinner and his speech was over 2 hours long, so I was visibly shaky and starving, and I couldn't tell at the time what I was more excited for: Al Gore, or the chocolate truffles set up behind him. I managed to get my low blood sugar under control for like 20 seconds when I shook his hand and got into picture-taking formation with him and my friend Sarah. When I shook his hand, I said "PLEASE run for president. I would sleep better at night if you did," to which he laughed and said "thanks," and then he put his arms around Sarah and I and said, and I QUOTE, that we looked BEAUTIFUL. How nice of you to say, Al. Then I darted into the truffle line, ate like 7 while I was in line, stuffed a few into my purse really classily, and then sped off to Uno's with my other starving friend. And that's the story of me meeting Al Gore. In all seriousness, his speech really made me want to DO something about this. Maybe I'll deal with environmental law; who knows. For now, I'm going to stick with recycling and driving a Toyota.

I Get to Meet Al Gore

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:08:59 GMT

Read the entry I wrote last year about the time Bill Clinton came here to speak if you want to get a sense of how crazy I am about famous democrats coming to this campus. I LOVE it. I would feel so much better about the current state of things if either Gore or Clinton was president. And since Clinton has had his two terms, I'm hoping that Gore will go for it again. I mean, he DID technically get the most votes, and he came back from that potentially devastating loss to do incredible things for the environment. He grew a beard and disappeared for a few months, and when he reemerged, he seemed to have completely gotten over "losing the election." I use "quotes" to illustrate my "disdain" for the "electoral process." Maybe when he and I are having our extremely personal one-on-one time I'll try to convince him to run again. He'll listen to me; we're really close.

In all seriousness, all that's going to happen is the other students who won the lotto and I will watch his speech from good seats and get to take a picture with him after. At least that's what I think will happen, but I'll correct myself in my next entry if I'm wrong. In any case, it's awesome and I definitely opened my email and screamed when I saw I had been picked. I never win ANYTHING, let alone the chance to meet someone I have always admired. This is a short entry, but it's getting REALLY hectic over here and I have to brush up on my global warming facts before Thursday, because god forbid I look uninformed in front of the former vice president.

More Thesis Joys

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:29:25 GMT

So I now have access, via my own personal key, to two separate labs in the psych department. I'm not going to lie-- I feel like such a VIP when I break out my keys to get into my lab rooms. Of course, once the initial VIP-ness fades, then that means I'm actually IN my lab room and thus have to do immense loads of work. It's all downhill after the initial door-opening joy.

I've migrated to room 3042, which is down the hall from the room in which I had my eye tracking stuff and did all my data collection, because now I've moved onto (exciting drumroll) DATA ENTRY. And since I'm doing different things now, I CLEARLY need a different environment in which to do them. This new room has three different computers in it and lots of windows and light, which makes me happy. I have been sitting at one of the computers to enter my data and using another computer across the room to fulfill the very important task of blasting internet radio while I work, because of course the computer I have to use doesn't have speakers. I basically sit there typing in ridiculous amounts of digits into Microsoft Excel and taking about 20 minutes per participant (I have 56 participants... do the math here), while intermittently shooting across the room in my rolling chair to change the radio station. It's probably more work to shoot around in the chair than it is to just get up and walk, but I'm really starved for fun right now, if you couldn't tell. I also used my equivalency (in short, you can get food at the diner on campus if you don't swipe your card for a meal during the day, and each meal corresponds to a certain amount of money/items at the diner) the other day to get a bag of pretzel rods, which I have stashed in my data entry room. I figure that if I always get hungry at night, I'll be FORCED to come to the room to get the pretzels, thus tricking myself into typing more numbers. I worried for a second about telling you that I have this hidden stash, but then I remembered that I'm one of like four people on campus who have a key to the room. So unless you can pick locks, good luck getting at my pretzels.

As of right now, I have 41 participants entered, which means I have 15 to go. This translates to roughly five hours, or roughly 75 internet radio songs and the entire bag of pretzels. Now that I think about it, that's actually not too bad. I am in a tunnel of spreadsheet data and I see the light at the end of it. All right, I'm off to the room. You're jealous.

The Housing Lottery

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:11:22 GMT

Hamilton is a great campus in many respects, but its housing is one of its best features. Even those people who complain that they got "screwed over" still end up in far nicer setups than most other colleges I've seen. You're actually matched up with people you're compatible with when you come in freshman year (obviously there are exceptions, but it's the general rule), and the people at residential life do their best to place you in the type of building you request. When I first visited Hamilton, I remember hearing about the split doubles in Dunham, the main freshman dorm on campus. They're essentially two singles with a wall and a door between them. I requested this particular setup and remember being pleasantly surprised when I got it. I used to visit my boyfriend pretty often during my freshman year, and he went to a massive city school and was crammed with two other guys in a room meant to be a double, and he and his roommates were COMPLETELY different people. I was struck by how individualized the housing process was at Hamilton, especially compared to schools like his where they stick you where you'll fit (although just barely).

So I lucked out freshman year and had what was, for all intents and purposes, a single in the middle of campus, right near everything. I got a fairly good number my sophomore year--I want to say it was 135 out of 500 or so--and managed to pull my friend Liz into a single next to me in Bundy, which is one of two adjacent buildings in which sophomores live. Bundy is pretty far down the hill, but we got used to the walk really quickly, and it was nice to have our own little sophomore-inhabited area. And again, I had a single. Let me just say that I'm the kind of person who is outgoing and likes to be around people, but at the same time, I want my own private area to retreat to at the end of the day. If you don't need this "alone time," there are PLENTY of doubles, triples, and quads all over campus. I'm just pointing out the singles because I think they're awesome and I always heard horror stories growing up about awful roommate situations, and I never had to deal with any of that at Hamilton.

My junior year, five of my friends and I pooled our lottery numbers together to get a suite in Babbitt, which is one of two all-suite dorms on campus. Although the suites vary somewhat, most of them are four singles and one double connected to a common room with a kitchen and a bathroom. I ended up being the only one of us not to go abroad that year, so when all of them left at the end of the semester, five of my other friends who were returning from abroad came in. It was also a nice setup because I had the privacy of a single with one of my best friends right next door. Plus the Writing Center was a two second walk from my room, so I could stumble out of a nap and into work fairly painlessly.

I can't quite remember what number I had going into my senior year, but I don't think it was particularly great. In any case, I managed to get the second to last single in Eells, one of the "mansions" on campus that used to be a frat house. The other one is Ferguson, right next door. Eells consists of singles and doubles and is absolutely beautiful-- it has a bunch of terraces and walkways in the back and overlooks the valley going into Clinton. The rooms are spacious and clean, and I can literally blast my obnoxious music as loud as I want and the girl next door claims she never hears it. I still have trouble believing that because my speakers are incredible, but I'm not going to argue it. I know the kid underneath me hears it, but he's cool with it (thanks TK).

So that's the summary of the singles I've inhabited during my four years here. Next stop: law school in the town next to my house, which means I'm moving back home. It's so strange to think I'll be sharing a wall with my parents. I don't think they will be as good sports about my speakers...