Hamilton College Admission Journals: Alison Znamierowski

Sunday Afternoon at the Library

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:48:01 GMT

Wrong. Everybody on campus seems to be at the library, getting ready to get down to the exam crunch.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving break! I was lucky enough to spend my Thanksgiving with my beautiful family and catch up with my sister and a couple of my close friends from high school.

It was certainly relaxing, but I'm glad to be back on the hill. It's been a great couple of days! The other day, it was amazingly beautiful -- in the 60s! I went on a long walk with one of my friends, Hailey, in the Glen. The Glen is a great place to talk or just look at the beautiful scenery and decompress from any stress you might have. Then, yesterday, I recorded a song with one of my great friends, Liam. He's an awesome musician, and I was so excited to be able to sing a couple of tracks with him! I also got to hang out with my friend George and go to the applied music concert with him. There are so many talented musicians here, and it's amazing to get to see them perform.

I also signed up for classes next semester! I'm taking Jazz Dance, Intaglio Printmaking, Ocean Science, Africana Studies, Art History, and saxophone lessons. I'm going to talk to my advisor about the possibility of being an Art/Dance combined major, which I'm also stoked about. And, because I'm a couple credits ahead, I have been considering the option of taking a semester off to travel, possibly in South America, or just across the US. There are so many options and opportunities to explore, and I'm incredibly excited about them.

I've also just been so happy to meet some crazy beautiful people here, and I'm incredibly lucky to have met them and gotten to know them.

Saturday Night

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:37:26 GMT

I was going to just stay in this Saturday, but I was stopped on my way to the music rooms by some friends who were headed to the party at the MajApp (the old Major faculty apartment). The theme of the party was Mad Men, and everybody was dressed in slick 1960s suits and dresses. When we went in, everybody was even dancing like it was the ‘60s. There was even a live jazz band, which my friend George is in. It was a really nice event. The MajApp always hosts great parties with themes such as “Freshman Girls Dressed as Cats” (for Halloween), Titanic, and Spirit Animal.

Then, I went to Diner B with some friends. Diner B is when the diner serves breakfast late at night on Fridays and Saturdays, and it always attracts a huge crowd. I also bumped into my friend Anna and another friend from high school, Maggie, who goes to Colgate, which was a lovely surprise! The jukebox is also always put to good use during this time, and often the students break out into dance and song. This time, while we were eating, the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver came on, and the whole diner started singing along. It was a great moment.

Then this morning, I went to Dunkin Donuts with Anna and Maggie and caught up some more, which was great. Now Anna and I are in the library doing work and drinking Red Bull… time to go be productive!

SpeakEasy

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:18:59 GMT

The Hamilton “SpeakEasy” is put on by the college annually, and I had the pleasure of attending it last night!

The SpeakEasy was in Sadove living room, and it was packed. They had put down all sorts of air mattresses and beanbags on the floor to accommodate the crowd, but there were still a lot of students left standing. It was hosted by Doctor Crystal Endsley, who I have had the privilege of having a class with this semester. She started the event with her own piece of spoken word, which was amazing (check her out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmXGlj92y5M)

The event included performances from Hamilton students, Utica College students, and the guest performer, Oveous Maximus, who is an amazing rapper, producer, and poet. I was astonished at the amount of talent these students had, and their amazing poetry and ability to perform. I love events like this, because they remind me how much talent the students here have, which is something that constantly inspires me and challenges me to do more and explore new interests.

D.E.A.R.

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:41:57 GMT

One of the programs that I am involved with at Hamilton is called “D.E.A.R.”, which stands for Drop Everything And Read. It is a great program; it is very informative if you are a student interested in Education, but also just a lot of fun if you just need to get off campus for a bit and interact with some kids (as one of the volunteers said this week, you become reliant on going into the school as a stress-reliever during the week).

I’ve been a volunteer for DEAR since last year, and have had some really awesome experiences. Some of them have been funny, such as when a 1st grader excitedly told me an anecdote about how her dog always does the “happy dance” on her leg, or when a student who was working with my friend Molly had to use the word pretty in a sentence, and wrote ‘You’re so pretty I could pass out’. Others have been really insightful, which was the case with this week.

I was working with a student, trying to help him with his reading and writing skills. He was clearly struggling with both, especially writing. When the teacher told him to write the sentence “There are 1 tens and 2 ones in the number 12,” he had no idea how to begin writing the word ‘there’. As I suggested that we sound it out, I realized that ‘there’ is not a word that you can necessarily spell correctly from sounding it out. I began to think about the challenges of being a teacher, especially in elementary school. Every student needs so much attention to develop these skills, and with class sizes of about 20, it can be really hard to give students the attention they need.

These experiences are extremely helpful with gaining experience in the field of education, but they also raise a lot of new questions and realizations, which are important to address as a teacher.

Hamilton offers many other extracurricular programs that relate to certain majors and minors, many of which are through HAVOC, which you can check out here: http://www.hamilton.edu/havoc/havoc-links/projects !

Geoffrey Canada Lecture

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:30:17 GMT

Yesterday, my Education class took a field trip to Utica to watch Geoffrey Canada speak at Mohawk Valley Community College. Geoffrey Canada is the president of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, NY, and has been working to improve the school systems in Harlem and the Bronx. He was also featured in the film Waiting for Superman, which was based on his ideas surrounding the education system.

Before I talk about the lecture, I need to rave a little bit about my Education professor, Susan Mason. If you come to Hamilton, be sure to take an Education course with her. She is an amazing professor, and she has helped me so much to improve and become more confident in my oral communication skills. She’s also just an awesome person to talk to. Whenever I visit her in her office, there are students popping their heads in every 5 minutes to say hi to her. She’s so candid and insightful, and you can talk to her about anything that’s going on in your life.

So we were driving to the lecture in Professor Mason’s car, while she blasted “Saturday Nite”, a “classic funky jam by Earth, Wind, and Fire”, and we talked about our own educational experiences in high school and at Hamilton. When we got there, I was surprised to hear that a freshman at Hamilton, Deondre Coston, was going to introduce Geoffrey Canada. Deondre went to Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children Zone’s high school, Promise Academy, and is now a student here.

Geoffrey Canada’s lecture was incredible. He humorously joked about his experiences with the television world: “I get invited to go talk on 60 Minutes, my wife and kids say, ‘oh okay go have fun’, I get invited to go to the White House to talk with the President, they say, ‘oh, okay, say hi from us’, I say, ‘I’m going to Chicago, I’m gonna do Oprah’ and they say, ‘YOU?!’” But he also helped to address a lot of the problems in the national public education system, and some of his ideas to improve the system.

It was a great experience, and I’m sure we’ll have an interesting discussion about it in our next class. What’s cool about it is that one of the students in my class, Jose, just suggested to Professor Mason that we attend the event, and she immediately got tickets for us and made travel arrangements. It’s amazing how flexible and considerate the professors are here, which is one of the benefits of having small class sizes: every voice matters, to the students and to the professors.