Hamilton College Admission Journals: Ryan Karerat

"U-S-A! U-S-A!"

Mon, 02 May 2011 16:24:19 GMT

We’ve witnessed some pretty tumultuous political moments during our time in DC. Seemingly as soon as we got here, revolution erupted across the Middle East. The goverement almost shut down last month. Donald Trump happened. And yet, for as exciting as those moments were, I don’t think any of those really resonate in a “10 years from now I'll remember where I was for this,” sort of way.

I had been thinking for a while on what an adequate post-script to my DC experience for this journal might look like. Of course, I could have described our mid-week trip to Mount Vernon, or cite the incredible infestation of camera toting, sock/sandal combo wearing middle-aged tourists who have taken over our National Mall.

But then something much bigger happened, and it has proved to be the perfect way to close out this semester in DC. Having finished my internship last week, now just closing out the last couple of days in DC by working on my term paper and lazing around, there was almost an anti-climactic feel to these final days in DC. Then, last night, after spending much of my evening watching Arrested Development on Netflix and vaguely aware that the President was going to address the nation around 10:30 p.m. with some new national security development, I headed down to a friend’s apartment only to be greeted when I entered with some very simple words: “We got Osama.”

WHAT?!

Certainly not news you hear every day.

As we watched the television to get more and learned from Wolf Blitzer’s beard that President Obama was ready to speak to the nation and confirm that Osama Bin Laden had in fact been killed, a sort of confused celebration came upon all of us. Ten years in the making, right?

And from there, we heard that a crowd was gathering a couple of miles away, in Lafayette Square in front of the White House. How often does something like this happen? There’s no way that we weren’t going to go and join in.

Whatever it was I expected to see when we got there, I simply wasn’t prepared for the outpouring American spirit that was reverberating in front of the White House last night. We were able to get real close into the action, just a couple among at least 5,000 scarred, rebuilding Americans jubilant to see one of the most evil men this country has ever had to count as an enemy meet his demise.

There have been some concerns in the wake of this that Americans are showcasing an undue amount of ‘blood lust,’ or something along those lines. And yet, from where I was standing, screaming myself hoarse with ‘U-S-A!’ chants (I suppose I should note that contrary to what this website’s profile of me says, I’m a Maryland native and proud American), that’s not at all what it felt like. Sure, there were a couple of cheers that started that rhymed with, “Duck Osama!” But Americans gathered last night to celebrate each other, celebrate this country, and above all else celebrate our troops.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget last night. The large swaths of people, some young, some old, some George Washington University students who didn’t want to study for finals, coming together, screaming, hugging, chanting, waving more American flags than I ever would have expected people to have on them on such short notice, singing The Star Spangled Banner, God Bless America, and chanting ‘U-S-A!’ as much as they possibly could, until the wee hours of the morning. There were guys in full stars and stripes body suits, a burly older man with Marine tattoos who finally succeeded where nobody else could by climbing an enormous light pole to keep an American flag stubbornly flying (and celebrating with some pull-ups), and they were all there to celebrate something bigger than themselves.

It was, I think, a cathartic experience for anyone involved. Nobody likes the idea of celebrating another man’s death, but last night showed me the importance of finding closure, and of finding reasons to come together in a time when of such pessimism and division. It felt like we won the World Cup, except instead of winning a soccer tournament, we had taken out one of the most evil men his world has seen. National pride can almost become a cliché idea at times, but yesterday was pure, unadulterated and unfiltered American celebration. We needed it.

Dazed and Confused

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:25:15 GMT

The Supreme Court Courtroom (our founding fathers were not above being redundant) is a cavernous, cathedral-like space where it’s easy to feel intimidated. Marshals patrol the walkways during the court sessions, hissing at anyone with the nerve to close an eye or otherwise nod off while Antonin Scalia unleashes venom on any lawyer foolish enough to outright contradict him, not-so-subtly also making you aware that they have guns. Not that they will use them on you for spacing out a little while Supreme Court justices try to wrap their heads around technical debates regarding different telecommunication terms by comparing them to carrots and peas on a plate, but the stern faces you’re met with from some don’t completely convince you that given the option, they wouldn’t use more force to ensure order.

The case we went to hear was Actavis Elizabeth, LLC v. Mensing (Docket No 09-1039), Actavis Inc. v. Demahy (Docket No. 09-1501) & PLIVA Inc. v.Mensing, which was 3 cases consolidated into one oral argument before SCOTUS, questioning whether individuals injured by generic store brand versions of brand-name drugs can bring state-court level lawsuits for failure to warn of dangerous side-effects. Quite the mouthful, eh? Watching the justices in action was fascinating, if only because it added to at least the perception I got, that the oral argument was as much some form of political theater than anything else. Clarence Thomas was, as he has been for years, completely silent, except when he would whisper in Justice Breyer’s ear from time to time, I suspect to make fun of the nasal voice of one of the lawyers ‘performing’ before them. Chief Justice Roberts was fair and to the point, Scalia did nothing to dissuade me from my priorly held belief that he is at least a little mentally unstable, Sotamayor brought the sass, and Elena Kagan deliberated like you would expect a former Dean at Harvard to.

Given that I’m not planning a law school track, SCOTUS wasn’t quite the Holy Grail that it was for some others on the program, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The mostly white marble interior and aristocratic air of grandeur to the building also sparked some quality debate over which federal building would make the best personal mansion.

It’s been brought to my attention that Hamilton admissions decisions are out. First off, congratulations to all of you who were accepted! It’s an accomplishment you should be proud of. To those of you that received a waitlist or rejection letter, fear not, and keep your head up

If there is one thing I’m sure about now looking back on my college process, it’s that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I applied to a Hamilton as an afterthought, to be honest. I had my dream reach school (Georgetown), and I had my safety schools, and I needed schools to fill the in-between. I never got to do the Great American College Summer Tour that so many people seem to do these days, so I worked a lot off of word-of-mouth to figure out what colleges might make sense. A lot of my friends were applying to Hamilton and other liberal arts colleges of the similar variety. So I thought, why not? In another sign of just how clueless I was of the situation, I ended up applying to Hamilton over one other school when I was getting to the application deadlines because Hamilton had a shorter supplement, and I was tired of writing essays about what I would carve out of a rock with a hammer and a chisel or which of the Three Musketeers I most embodied.

Really speaks well of me, I know. But that’s honestly how it went. I understood only the barest details about Hamilton when I applied: lack of core curriculum (huge plus), small student body, positive reviews from recent HS alums now up there, and the fact that it was a natural successor to the small boarding school I went to. So I applied, and then sort of forgot about it. Then I got rejected by Georgetown, accepted by Hamilton and a couple of other small liberal arts school types, and realized that those were my only options aside from going to the University of Maryland never being heard from again among the 50,000 or so other kids there.

So I spent the month of April weighing the financial implications of committing to any of the institutions I was choosing between, making trips to New York, Ohio and New England to visit the different campuses and figure out which one made the most sense for me. When I visited Hamilton, I won’t say that it was a ‘natural fit,’ as in one of those love-at-first-sight things, but the visit went just about as smoothly as an awkward high school kid like me could have hoped for. Back in Delaware, the May 1 deadline rapidly approaching, I decided somewhat arbitrarily that my Hamilton visit had left the most positive reflection of the visits I had done. Oh, and they were also offering a generous financial aid package (let’s not act like this isn’t a big part of the equation). So the decision was made. Hamilton it is!

Looking back on it all, I’m astounded by my complete inability to grasp the relevant factors of the decision I had in front of me. I floated through senior year treating college as an abstract idea. It’s a small wonder that I ended up where I really needed to be. In a lot of ways, I was incredibly lucky. Because now I can look back at it all and say that, regardless of whether I actually deserved at the time to really end up in a positive situation, I did. But I think that is somewhat natural. We can’t possibly know enough about ourselves at the end of high school to say with complete certainty that we know what route we want to take. Or maybe that’s just the ethos of a liberal arts student…

Spending this semester in DC, for example, has helped reinforce to me all the reasons why I’m happy to have gone to Hamilton instead of ending up at what was originally my top choice school (GTown), because as a 17- or 18-year-old I couldn’t possibly grasp what the important qualities in any institution were to ensure my success.

Which is not to say that I’m some sort of sage wise man now, because it’s equally important for me to acknowledge the limitations of making any sort of long-term evaluations when I’m only in my early twenties. Still plenty of time to screw up!

Looking back, I can only feel relieved that I ended up at Hamilton. It turned out to be the right fit for me academically as well as emotional health-wise. I can eagerly look forward to this summer, where I’ll study at Hamilton thanks to an Emerson research grant working on my project “Reacting to a Revolution: Tunisia, Egypt, and the New Middle East” and know that conducting said research is such a terrifically positive way for me to spend my summer, and that I need to properly understand why I’m lucky to have been afforded such an opportunity. I can get up for work tomorrow, work my eight-hour day at the office, and return to my apartment and realize that being at Hamilton has allowed me this unique opportunity to study in DC while not jeopardizing an overall balanced liberal arts education.

I list these things not because I’m trying to not-so-subtly list the positive and advertisable qualities at Hamilton, but to point out that those are things I didn’t even think about when I first committed to coming to Hamilton. When I was giving tours for the admission's office last summer, the most frequent question I would get from students and parents was, "Why did you pick Hamilton?" I never had a great answer for them, because the reasons I picked Hamilton have very little to do with why I'm happy I ended up at Hamilton. But that's part of the learning experience.

This is my roundabout way of stressing to any high school student reading this that you needn’t worry as much as you are. You may have been accepted by your first choice school, and that’s great. Your friends probably envy you. You might be crushed because you had it in your head since you were 8-years-old that you were going to some school or another, and they just turned you down. Right now, that might hurt, but know in the long run that you’re going to end up somewhere great where you will use your unique qualities and gifts to make the most of whatever situation you are handed. You are all probably smarter, wittier and better looking than I am. And people tell me that I’m going to be fine in life. So if I’m going to be fine (big if), despite blindly navigating some of the bigger decisions in my life, you should feel pretty good about your own chances. I hope that those of you that were accepted by Hamilton decide to come here, because I believe that it’s a place where anyone can flourish and grow. But don’t hang your head if you have to examine other options. You’ll figure out a way to make it work. How do I know that? It’s the only way.

Maybe you went Early Decision at Hamilton, and you are smarting from your rejection letter. Right now, you might be crushed. But just remember, three years from now you might ironically be writing an online journal entry for some other college talking about how glad you are to have gotten that rejection letter, because you ended up where you felt you needed to be. Getting into or not getting into a certain college is the beginning of something, not the end. Keep on truckin’, keep pushing forward, and regardless of where you sign at the dotted deposit commitment line, you’ll make it work.

Getting used to the grind

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:16:36 GMT

The last few weeks here in D.C. have been quite a blur. I keep feeling like I have barely moved into our Woodley Place apartments, and yet the end of this week marks the official halfway point of the D.C. program, with a one-week break followed by a seven-week sprint to the finish. The past several weeks have included a meeting with a Marc Elias, a Hamilton alum and perhaps the most prominent Democratic campaign lawyer in the country, which gave us an opportunity to have a lively discussion about the merits of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. What I might take the most from that meeting, though, may be his valuable advice about the rigors of law school, and the realistic perspective he provided for us: Don’t go to law school unless you’re absolutely certain you want to be a lawyer (because people who say you can do anything with a law degree may just be embellishing a bit), and don’t go in with romanticized notions of what being a lawyer actually means.

We toured the Pentagon last week, visiting the 9/11 memorial, walking past the Secretary of Defense’s office, and more or less getting an idea of just how big the Pentagon is (more floor space than the Empire State Building). We’ve spent class-time engaging in lively debate about public sector unions, the federal budget, and the Middle East Revolution, and are starting to move ahead with our independent projects that will be due by the end of the semester (I am hoping to pursue a project that examines the new role of the U.S. military intelligence apparatus in our counterrorism efforts). Tomorrow I’ll be heading up to Capitol Hill for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the EPA’s regulating of greenhouse gas emissions and its effect on the American economy, an event I’ll be covering and writing a report on for my internship.

Most of all, what I feel like I and my fellow classmates have gotten out of this D.C. experience so far is a daily dose of what it means to be a person in the real world. Getting to go to a Supreme Court hearing is a tremendous opportunity, but in the long run what I’m taking the most from this experience is simply learning what it means to wake up every morning, go to work, understand what 9-5 really means, and soak that in. It’s a welcome counterweight to the academic rigors of the Hamilton campus, and I think when you combine the two experiences, that is what is preparing me most for whatever is in store for me after the Hamilton chapter of my life closes.

On Wednesday, we have an in-class test on the material that we’ve been studying the past several weeks. It’ll provide an excellent opportunity to wax nostalgic for life on the Hill, with the frantic last-minute cramming and sudden existence of stacks and stacks of academic papers to work through a reminder that we’ll be back at Hamilton before we know it.

There's a point to all this, I think

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:28:16 GMT

On Wednesday, we trekked over to headquarters of the lobbying firm Williams and Jensen to meet and talk with George Baker and Frank Vlossak, Hamilton alums and attorneys at the firm who were willing and eager to share some pearls of wisdom with our wide-eyed group of Washington interns. The meeting was lively, entertaining and educational, and I think all 16 of us Hamilton students in attendance came out of that thinking that we knew a whole lot more about the lobbying industry and the ways in which Washington works than we did when we had first stepped into the room.

A lot of us came out of the meeting buoyed by the very idea of getting to meet and talk to men of their stature. For two hours or so, we listened to real people with real jobs doing real things talk about the real things they do. There stood before us two highly successful men who we could look to as examples that this semester we’re spending in Washington is something altogether different than an abstract class exercise. It's something we can tangibly build off in the same way they did to continue advancing in whatever direction it is we’re going.

The phrase ‘study abroad’ generally conjures images of adventurous American students armed with cameras exploring sidestreets in Paris or scarfing down a rice dish in Dar es Salaam as part of some form of self-imposed cultural boot camp. When your ‘abroad’ semester does not even consist of you going abroad, it begs the question, what exactly are you looking to get out of the experience?

I think in large part, what I and my companions on the program are looking to get out of the experience is precisely moments like last Wednesday night. An interactive discussion with accomplished professionals excelling in their field may not sound like anything different than a Hamilton seminar class, and it’s not as if any of us walked out of Williams and Jensen with our career prospects that much brighter, our future that much more concrete. The most we could hope for is that we absorbed some of the secrets of being successful through osmosis, just by being in tantalizing proximity to those who turned their lemons into lemonade.

But the fact remains that we were there, in the headquarters of a powerful Washington lobbying firm. We were there, in the room. And that, I think, makes all the difference.

When we talk to people older than us, it seems almost inevitable that someone will tell us that we are in the most exciting time in our life. A time of limitless opportunity, they say. Makes sense. But that optimistic look also hinges on the assumption that it’s all going to work out, and that out of this time of opportunity will come something concrete to build our lives from. But the flip side of that coin is that nagging fear that this period of what I guess you could call self-discovery will be less a crystallizing experience and more a confusing one. I am sure that I am not the only one who often asks myself the question, “What if I don’t make it?” What if the lightbulb doesn’t magically turn on one day, my college education neatly laying the rest of my life out there for me, career choice, lifestyle, city of residence all included in some sort of package deal.

Being in this city, commuting to work surrounded by men and women in their power suits and typing furiously into their BlackBerry on the Metro, has been something of a welcome reminder of the height of the stakes, the need to ‘make it.’ It’s a reminder of the fierce urgency of now, the need to win the battle to be somebody. It's a dress

rehearsal for the real world, safety nets like the spacious living quarters we’re afforded built-in, and the knowledge that after this foray into the “real” world, we’ll be able to retreat back into our collegiate bubble in a semester’s time. There, we'll take solace in the fact that we can read Nietzsche or review Proust for another year to stave off the inevitability of the plunge off the deep end and into a world unhinged from college dining halls and finals week study groups.

And so I take meetings like the one at that lobbying firm, and I look at the internship that I am currently undertaking, and I say that I am building toward something. What, exactly? It’s too early to tell, but at the very least, this experience is getting me in the room. If I can consistently keep myself in the sorts of rooms where things are happening, real world decisions are being made, and ambition is being cultivated, then I think I might possibly be on my way to ‘making it.’

Thursday morning, as part of my internship I ventured up to Capitol Hill to attend a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing. It was my first time on the Hill (or as a Hamilton student might view it, the OTHER Hill), and I felt a jolt of energy and excitement even if in reality all I did for the two hours was listen and take notes. Being in the same room as person like Senator Al Franken (D, Saturday Night Live) is a concrete step of progress, right? Now, Al Franken has no idea we were ever in the same room, because he has no idea who I am. In fact, in the annals of history, there will never be any official recognition that I was ever even in the Hart Senate Office Building Room 216 to hear testimony on the Energy and Oil Market Outlook for the 112th Congress, save this obscure college online journal. One day, the hope is, that people like Franken WILL know that I’m in the room. That’s the point, right?

DC Dreamin'

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:23:42 GMT

Greetings from Washington D.C.! My semester ‘abroad’ is now in full swing, as I and 15 other Hamilton students will be down here in our nation’s capital for the next three months, subjecting ourselves to the glorious life of D.C. interns in an ambitious play to move up in the world.

After getting over the intial awkwardness of not being up on the Hill while my friends and classmates were trudging up there to begin another semester in Clinton, DC has been a great experience thus far. There’s something to be said to be in the ‘real world’ for such a prolonged period of time, in an area where you feel like things are always happening, things of consequence. Getting up, putting on business clothes, going to work, getting home, being exhausted, and making your own dinner? If anything, this is a nice little reminder of what greets us after college, and I’d rather not be blindsided by that.

My internship has been very educational so far as well. I came in not knowing all that much about energy policy, but as I’m working with a consulting firm that specializes in just that, I’ve been getting up to speed on it and finding myself more interested in it than I otherwise would have imagined.

Tuesday was the State of the Union, and for Washington D.C., it might as well have been the Super Bowl. The gossip rags were in a tizzy over Democrats and Republicans asking each other out on ‘dates’ to sit next to each other during the SOTU rather than sit in party solidarity, because of course it is an extraordinary action to put yourself within physical contact of someone of opposite political beliefs. Michelle Bachmann deciding to launch an official Tea Party response, going over the head of the Republicans, was another pregame twist that got the decisively career-driven populace of D.C. excited for more political drama. Then of course, the speech came, and while we had the predictable (Joe Biden fist pumps, John Boehner tears), nothing all that dramatic ended up happening. No, “You lie!” or Supreme Court justices muttering under their breath about how much of an idiot their president is this year, unfortunately. Oh well.

Wednesday is our wonderfully scheduled midweek break from our internship. Instead of going to work, we have class in the morning, followed by lunch and some excursion or another. Last week, we went to the Newseum, which is so vast that you sort of get the feeling that they’re still looking for ways to fill it completely out. But the 9/11 and Katrina exhibits in there are both incredibly jarring.

Yesterday, after class, we had lunch at a wonderful little pizza place called ‘Ella’s’ and then crossed the street to check out the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum. Although I can only hope one day to be a real art snob, in my limited experience, I would rate it as one of the best museums I’ve been to. There were some really spectacular portraits, from the original Benjamin Franklin portrait that you saw in every one of your elementary school history textbooks, to the iconic ‘Hope’ Barack Obama portrait made by Shepherd Fairey during the 2008 presidential campaign, to a massive LL Cool J shrine. Any museum that manages to fit both Abraham Lincoln and Erykah Badu portraits under the same roof has to be doing something right.

The Hide/Seek exhibit that is attracting so much controversy was the highlight for me. The exhibit explores gay artists, self-identity and expression, and as a result, has unfortunately been the target of prudish culture war criticism. But the entire exhibit was as thought-provoking as it was provocative, and incredibly powerful. It features the work of artists like Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney, although George Bellow’s ‘The Shower Bath’ may have been the most jarring in its unapologetic boldness.

The presidential portraits also proved to be a source of endless wonder, although I think the larger than life Bill Clinton portrait created by Chuck Close stole the exhibit with an edginess you wouldn’t normally expect from stodgy presidential commissions.

One thing that is taking some getting used to in D.C.: How ill-prepared they are for snow. I’m used to trudging to KJ even with six inches of snow on the ground. Here, the city is in a partial panic as soon as any snow sticks. Hence why I’m sitting in my apartment sipping coffee and typing this on a Thursday afternoon, work cancelled because of the snow and ice that enveloped us last night during what my fellow program-mate (is that what you’d call it?) Dylan Eisenberg ’12 would call ‘THUNDER-SNOW.’ Oh frabjous day! You can follow all of the exploits of the 16 Hamilton D.C. students at: potomafever.blogspot.com