Hello again, gang!

Man, this year’s been going ridiculously fast! We’ve already been in school for more than a month. In some ways, it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that since school started, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been at the classes all that long! And I received an email today that the schedule is already up for next semester! That means it’s already time to start planning for the second half of the year… gah!

Anyway, in light of all this craziness, I thought I’d tell you a bit about what I get to experience the very most attending college here: The experience of being a Mount student! Want to know what it’s like? Come along!

I can’t tell you exactly what everyone’s experience is going to be like, as I don’t take every major. (I almost never even go in the science building, I’m an art major!) But I can tell you a couple of things that are true across the board. Hopefully over the next couple weeks, I can tell you guys what it’s like here at the Mount.

Firstly, for anyone who’s new, the College of Mount Saint Joseph is located on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio, and we’re right on the side of Delhi road. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the center of downtown from here. My permanent home is on the east side of Cincinnati, off of Salem road. It takes me 35-45 minutes to get to the college from the east side of town, depending on traffic. If there’s no traffic at all, I can make it in 30 minutes!

For those who have the opportunity, if you live as far from the Mount as I do, I’d highly recommend looking into living on campus. This is my second year living on campus, and I’m very glad I do. I have friends that attend the Mount that live close to where I live an commute, and it seems pretty stressful, coming through downtown. I’ll write a blog all about it later this year, but if I don’t wake up till 10 minutes before my morning classes, I can make it on time!

I’ve been asked by a great many people this one very simple question: Why the Mount? Why didn’t I go to University of Cincinnati or Northern Kentucky University? Wouldn’t those have saved me money?

It’s true that the Mount is going to be more expensive (generally) than those schools. But there’s many things to consider about the Mount where the Mount’s got lots of stuff to show off, in my mind!

First, after my presidential scholarship from the Mount, my actual tuition is almost identical to what I’d pay going to UC. The Mount gives out a ton of scholarships. I really don’t know a single person that goes here that pays the full amount for tuition. So go ahead an apply, you never know what might happen!

Secondly, the Mount has a ton of stuff that UC or NKU can’t really offer me. They’re both good schools, but here’s a few reasons the Mount won out!

A big reason for me was that the Mount, being a much smaller school, had time to treat me much more personally than UC or NKU did. The Mount toured my mother and I around the school one on one with a tour guide. At UC I was in a 30+ person group with one tour guide. Also, class size at the Mount is waaaaaaaay smaller than the bigger schools. My brother attends UC, and he frequently has seminars and other basic classes that have anywhere from 50 and frequently up to 500 or more students. Here at the Mount, my general freshman courses, which are the biggest I’ve had so far, had about 30 students each in my Art Seminar and my Freshman Seminar. The smaller school affords you more of a personal presence on campus. For me personally both the head of the Art department and the head of the English department (The heads of my major and my minor) both know me by my first name. That wouldn’t be terribly likely at UC.

As the next few weeks go on, I hope to tell you more about the specifics of what it’s like here at the Mount. And the longer I’m here, the more I’m beginning to love it! I hope you guys will tag along as we go through this year.

It’s gonna be a blast! Stick around, folks! I’ll write more next week!

Commuters vs. Dormers: cars vs. beds, seat belts vs. desks, 3 tote bags and a backpack vs. 1 backpack. These are just a few of the differences between being a commuter and a dormer.

Of the nine friends in the group I hang out in, my posse! Only two of us are commuters. The rest are dormers. Alex and I drive to school- she drives 45 minutes from Aurora, IN, to the Mount, and I drive 25 minutes from Mt. Washington (East Side of Cincinnati) to the Mount. She drives a red Chevy Blazer and I drive a white Chevy Lumina. She and I frequently are discussing road conditions (the continuous pot holes on I-471 through Kentucky and all the winding back roads in Indiana), gas prices (the dramatic jump of 20 cents from $2.89/gal to $3.09/gal over the course of one night), and the other crazy drivers (people swerving in and out of other cars going 80 mph because why? I don’t know…).

But our dormer friends: Sam and Anne room together, so do Jimmie and Tom (blogger! :), poor Sarah is in a room by herself, and Maria and Bridget dorm together. They spend countless hours together, hanging in each others’ rooms (I left school today at Noon and Sam and Jimmie were building card towers because they had nothing to do), and watching TV shows together (Sam and Sarah were watching M*A*S*H together).

So it’s sad when the day is over, we commuters travel home with our best friends- our cars (see previous blog :) – and we sleep in our own beds in our houses with our parents. It’s even more sad though because we can’t watch Wildfire or Kyle XY in the same room on the same TV. We have to IM and text each other or call- depending on your long distance calling plan (that’s something I’ve never had to deal with before- having to watch minutes based on if you’re calling someone who’s originally from Piqua, Ohio, or from Lawrenceburg, Indiana)-our opinions and speculations on the development of the episode across miles just so we can “hang” with our friends.

Yet… when you do spend those days and nights together just having fun, it can make all the difference. The “girls” of our group (Anne, Sam, Alex, and I- Sarah, Maria, and Bridget had other plans) put together a “Girls’ Night In” for Thursday night (well, actually it just happened to be Valentine’s Day when we did this lol). We got junk food, drinks, candy (chocolate!), Valentine’s Day candy hearts, and our pillows and blankets, and we hung out watching Across the Universe with Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood. We laughed, we cried (well, Anne did actually :), and we had fun. Alex and I spent the night- Alex slept on the couch and I slept on the floor. We talked late into the night, banged on Sam’s wall at 5:30 AM to turn her alarm clock off and ended up knocking the speaker off the wall and hitting me in the head (that was not fun WHATSOEVER! Haha), and waking up at 8 AM so we could eat breakfast in the Fifth Third Dining Hall.

But those are the kinds of times you as a college student will always remember- the time when you were carefree, out of class, just hanging with the new friends you’ve made, and just having a great time! So, to those commuters out there and those prospective commuters, dormers friends are great. Commuter friends are great. New friends are great. College is great. Have fun, enjoy new things, and experience life as you’ve never done before! Happy college days!!! :)