Hamilton College Admission Journals: Ellen Esterhay

Summer Comes to Clinton

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:48:57 GMT

Yes, you read correctly - Clinton had BEAUTIFUL weather this weekend! I was wandering around outside in a tank top and shorts for the first time in MONTHS. I feel especially sun-deprived after spending my last summer in Beijing. In case you don't keep up with the news, you really don't want to spend more time than necessary breathing the "fresh" Beijing air, unless you want lung cancer (I wish I was joking, but it's true).

I love when Spring comes to Hamilton. While our campus makes for a spectacular winter wonderland, it is so beautiful with the sun out and a clear blue sky. I did homework (or rather, tried to) sitting out behind Eels, an upperclassman dorm with a scenic view down the Hill.

It is great to see campus come alive when the weather is nice out. Today there was music playing across the green and tons of people outside throwing around a frisbee or just laying out and enjoying the sun. One of the clubs on campus hosted a grill-out and put up a volleyball net. Needless to say, I hardly got any studying done this weekend. Great weather is dangerous for my grades.

I also had my first bike-racing experience this weekend! Hamtrek, Hamilton's annual mini-triathlon event, is fast approaching. It involves 525 yards of swimming, 9 miles biking and 5k running. Luckily I am participating as part of a team with each person doing one leg of the triathlon. Which is great, because there's a good chance I would drown before completing the 21 pool laps. My friend on the water polo team is swimming, the other one is running and I volunteered for the cycling portion.

This past winter the fitness center acquired new stationary bicycles that have simulated onscreen races, which I got really attached to, for awhile. For some reason I thought real road racing would be the same. Well...it's not. So much more fun, but also extremely difficult! Not to mention that you don't have bugs flying at your face and cars trying to run you over in the simulated version. My choice of bike doesn't help - I am borrowing my friend's mountain bike, which has thick, treaded tires and an extremely heavy frame. Aw well! I am doing it for the experience, I suppose, but I tend to get overly-competitive. I wanna win!

Today there was a timed test trial, set up by a professor who participates in Hamtrek and is a coach for the Hamilton Cycling Team. The only participants were myself, another girl, and two older professors who were clearly seasoned veterans. They were decked out in Hamilton cyclist gear, riding fancy lightweight road bikes and using some sort of iPhone app that kept track of their speed and altitude. Whew. And, to be entirely honest, one of the professors, who also won an award for being the oldest Hamtrek participant last year, passed me after starting off a full three minutes behind. He ended up beating me by a lot. Wish I could place all the blame on my mountain bike, but I can't…he was just so fast!

The race is Friday and there are a lot more participants than in years past, mainly becuase the academic schedule got moved around this year. In the past Hamtrek conflicted with the end-of-classes concert called Class and Charter Day Concert, but that is now happening on a date separate from the last day of classes. Which is all a bit confusing, but the bottom line is Hamtrek has a lot more participants. I've also heard of some other teams' crazy costume plans...my team has yet to come up with a good theme, but it's in the works!

Great Names Speaker (s)

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:07:21 GMT

Hamilton has had a number of pretty "great" Great Names speakers in the past, including Al Gore, Aretha Franklin, Condoleezza Rice, and Jon Stewart. Condoleezza Rice spoke my freshman year, and I still remember the jam-packed Field House being and general buzz on campus leading up to the event. This year is a bit different than past years. Instead of getting one Great Name, we are getting two fairly Great Names - Nobel Peace Laureates Shirin Ebadi and Dr. Bernard Kouchner.

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, former judge and human rights activist currently living in England. I actually wrote a paper on her in Chinese last semester - we had to pick a Nobel Laureate to write about, and I found her story extremely interesting. From what I can remember (I wrote that paper months ago...apparently I don't retain information well) she disagrees with many actions of the current Iranian regime, especially after they forced her to give up her position as a judge for religious reasons. She is also very outspoken against U.S. involvement in Iran and the Middle East, so I feel like this should make for an interesting speech.

I am not as familiar with Dr. Bernard Koucher, but I should start reading up on him because I will be sitting at a dinner table with him tonight! My International Political Economy class, along with a few other classes, has the opportunity to meet him and eat dinner with him before the speech. I signed up but am now feeling the pressure to come up with some intelligent questions to ask him. I get a little nervous at the thought of holding a conversation with Nobel Laureates...especially since our professor "strongly suggested" that we think up some questions for Dr. Koucher and run them by our professorr in class today. He is probably just making sure that we all don't sound like idiots - which is good thinking, on his part!

So that is what my Wednesday is shaping up to be! In addition, I have to interview one of the teachers in the Chinese department immediately following class for a paper on whether China can become a democracy AND finish up an outline on a research paper about income inequality and its relationship to corruption in Bangladeshi NGOs. Whew. If I had to describe college in only one word, I know exactly what adjective I would use. Busy. Very, very busy. But a blast, as well!

How to Avoid the Housing Lottery for 4 Years

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 16:42:46 GMT

Yes, it is true - I have avoided the housing lottery for my entire Hamilton College career!
The housing lottery is how housing is decided for students - Res Life assigns students random numbers within their class year, so seniors register first and freshmen last. Higher-number students can pull lower number students into doubles, quads or next-door singles. Upperclassmen can also pull lowerclassmen. Since I don't fully understand all the ins and outs of the process, I will just direct anyone wanting to know more about the housing lottery to the Residiential Life webpage.

From what I have heard (since I've never been) housing lottery is something akin to pure pandemonium. You gotta figure, there is a lot of stress involved in deciding where you will live for the next 8 or so months. Each year, there are stories about people changing their plans last-minute, deciding to room together, deciding NOT to room together, or getting woken up by a call from friends on Sunday morning and told to get their butts down to the lottery as fast as possible (you need all roommates present with their Hillcards in order to secure a room).

Sometimes I get a bit frazzled in high-pressure situations. I also tend to be very indecisive. This gives me a sneaking suspicion that I would not do well in the housing lottery. So, simple solution - don't go to the housing lottery! How have I managed this? Freshman year students are given assigned housing. Sophomore year, I had medical pre-assign housing (which was 100% necessary, at the time). Junior year, I was studying abroad, so I had a proxy go in my place and decide for me. And this year….drumroll….my friend pulled me into her RA suite in Babbitt! Meaning, no lottery for me! I think I will be really happy with the suite - granted, its a smaller room than what I have this year, but it is still a single. It's closer to all my classes, closer to the better dining hall, and I have a lot of friends living (or trying to live) in the same area next year. Plus, the one complaint I always hear about the suites is that they are loud, but I am hoping that an RA suite will be a bit quieter. If I want a loud, crazy time, I can just visit the suites downstairs!

Only downside is this will be my first year without my own bathroom (gasp! the horror). Freshman and sophomore year I was in four-person rooms with a bedroom, common room, and bathroom. This year my single has its own bathroom as well, which is so unbelievably convenient and wonderful. Next year will be a bit of an adjustment, but I'm not complaining…if I only have to use a hall bathroom once in my entire four years at Hamilton, clearly I've been living the good life.

Hamilton, Isolated?

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:17:12 GMT

On Wednesdays, I usually go to Sadove (the campus student center) after lunch to study before class. Recently, with the advent of Spring and college admissions deadlines fast approaching, the number of tours on campus has dramatically increased. They also always show up at Sadove while I'm there, which can be pretty entertaining. A few of my friends are tour guides so I can always give them a wave and make them look popular in front of their tours (naw I'm just joking, they pay other people to do that).

I must first say that most all of the tour guides give great tours. I'm sure it's difficult to keep visitors entertained while trekking around campus in all sorts of bizarre central New York weather. But I happened to overhear a tour group's conversation the other day and I was SO tempted to butt in, because the prospective student asked a great question that was met with a rather unsatisfactory answer.

The visitor's question was, "Do you ever feel isolated at Hamilton?" This was probably referring to Clinton's extremely small size and the distance between Hamilton and Syracuse, which is the closest city not counting Utica - but no one really counts Utica. The tour guide's answer was a rather vague "Ah it's not really a factor" before moving on to talk about student publication. But in my opinion, if a student is considering spending the next four years here, he or she deserves a more well-rounded answer.

So here is my answer: Yes, Hamilton can feel a bit remote - but that is also partially why Hamilton is a) is such a blast and b) has such a strong community. The lack of activities to do off-campus actually makes what's happening on campus so much more interesting. People become much more creative when they have to make their own fun.And from what I've heard from friends attending schools in urban areas, their on-campus community isn't nearly as exciting or close-knit as Hamilton's. At those schools, some students commute, a lot live off campus, and it doesn't really have the same feel that Hamilton does. Here, you literally cannot walk down Martin's Way during the day without having to wave or say hi to at least four people, because on a small campus you end up meeting a lot of different people. Which is great!

It is true that campus can start feeling like a bubble, at times. But the time at which Hamilton started feeling small to me coincided perfectly with my study abroad semester. And by the time that semester ended, I wanted to be back on campus. All my friends who are abroad right now really miss being on "the Hill" and always ask me what they are missing out on.

In addition, a lot of philanthropic organizations on campus are focused on reaching out more to the community. Once a week I get off campus and go teach English to refugee students in downtown Utica. Other people tutor local Clinton middle school students or volunteer at the local nursing home. And if there is a big concert happening in Syracuse, a forty minute drive doesn't stop people from getting there. Sometimes, Hamilton can a bit of a bubble, but with friends, community service events, sports teams, clubs, student organizations and CAB campus-wide concerts and comedy shows - it's hard to feel isolated here.

Walk the Moon.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:58:42 GMT

Kudos to CAB (Hamilton's Campus Activities Board), because they do a great job putting on all-campus events and getting some great acts to Clinton. The Walk the Moon concert this past Saturday was definitely a success! To be honest, I think most people on campus hadn't heard of the band before CAB announced that they were coming. But that is something that CAB does well, too - booking musicians before they really become famous. I looked up Walk the Moon as soon as the concert was announced - not only was their music catchy and fun, but they were featured on Nylon Magazine, sang with Local Natives and Weezer, and performed at Lollapalooza! If anyone doesn't understand those last three references, they are two indie-pop bands and a great Chicago music festival.

CAB brough Janaelle Monae to campus for the last April concert, which is a prime example of CAB getting people to Hamilton before they really make it big. When Hamilton booked Janaelle Monae, she was definitely on the rise, but not exactly well-known. By time she came to perform, she was booked for an appearance at the White House and had featured on the band Fun.'s song "We are Young," which later won a Grammy. She was a fantastic performer. At one point during the concert, she actually got some students to hold her up by her feet, so that she was singing while walking on top of the crowd. It was insane!

Walk the Moon was just as fantastic. Their music is really upbeat, and it is obvious that they genuinely love performing and making music. CAB sold the tickets for $5 ahead of time for students and $20 at the door (cheap tickets, another plus!). The crowd got bigger as the concert went on, so by the end the room was packed. My friend and I made it almost to the front of the pack, literally two rows away from the stage, before we decided it wasn't worth getting pushed around. Though I will be the first to admit that if people choose to be in the front, they should expect to get pushed a little. At one point, I was asked by the girl in front of me to give her space, when it was the people behind me pushing me into her! So I will take this time to say that if people place themselves at the front of the crowd, directly in front of center-stage, they should expect to get bumped. That being said, the girl asked very politely, and I backed up as much as was phsysically possible, so no hard feelings on either side. But…it's a concert, for goodness sake!

At the end of the show, CAB announced our Class and Charter Day performer. Class and Charter Day is the big last-day of classes celebration at the end of every year. I think most schools have something smilier, albeit under a different name. For April Fool's Day, CAB put out posters saying that Asher Roth was coming. This worried people a little. But the prank was worth it….because we are getting Macklemore!! I am so, so excited! My friend swears he saw one girl sink to her knees, crying tears of joy when his name was announced. I was definitely nowhere near that level of emotion….but safe to say the whole campus is really excited!!