Month: October 2020

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Fall Fest

 

One of my favorite events on campus is Fall Fest. It is exactly what it sounds like: a festival to kick off the fall season here at Grove City College. All the clubs, sororities, fraternities, and other organizations on campus make game booths in the Quad and you and your friends spend an entire afternoon wandering from booth to booth playing carnival games. To top off the fall experience, this year the student body government passed out caramel apples, popcorn, and other snacks. So here are some highlights from Grove City College’s 2020 Fall Fest. 

  1. Bunnies. Bunnies. Bunnies. Most years, some wonderful club or organization brings a petting zoo to campus. Yes, a petting zoo. In effort to make Fall Fest a little more sanitary this year, the campus decided against a petting zoo.  One club was a little more creative and  decided to bring some small rabbits to Fall Fest this year. I cannot tell you how many times I heard the question, “Did you see the bunnies?” during Fall Fest. It was a big hit, and I think we are all excited to hang out with some bunnies again next fall. 
  2. Duck Hunt. You have probably never heard of this game, but it is a Fall Fest favorite. Each player has a large bucket of assorted rubber ducks. When the person running the game shows you a rubber duck in a cowboy costume, you are on a mission to find the cowboy rubber duck in your bucket before your opponent can find a cowboy rubber ruck in their bucket. 
  3. Egg Roulette. If you have ever played the card game Russian roulette, then you might have a good guess as to what this game is. Every game has four players, and each player smashes an egg against their forehead. Hopefully, your egg was hardboiled and you can earn tickets. Unfortunately there are losers in every game, and the loser in this game will end up with a face full of raw egg. 
  4. Water Dunk. It is a classical carnival game and there is a good reason for that. There are not many other feelings as good as when you are  the one to nail throwing the ball at the target so that a large bucket of water falls on some poor booth runner’s head. 
  5. Bigfoot Run. This was a new booth to Grove City College’s Fall Fest. For this game, participants strapped on some massive feet and raced against one another to the finish line, while trying to not lose their toenails (some plastic balls attached to the giant feet). It was probably my favorite booth to watch.
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Professors Online

 

Before attending Grove City College, I was taking a full course load online through a community college. I did not mind online classes when I was taking them my first year of college. It gave me more freedom to have a job and travel. By the end of a year, however, despite my guzzling down textbook information, I did not feel like I was retaining much of what I learned. (Apart from business law, surprisingly most of what I learned in that course stuck- who would have guessed?) It was then that I began looking into going to a college in person, and poof- Grove City College fell out of the skies. 

The professors here did a lot more than teach in person though. Most professors I had actually took time to get to know who I was. Getting lunch with professors, going over to their homes to study for finals or have tea, and having professors offer to pray and talk with students happens a lot here. While I first attributed this to perhaps being part of their job descriptions, many over summer would reach out and ask how things were going. Some even, unfortunately who do not work at the school any longer, continue to reach out and pray with me. My sole conclusion is that the staff at Grove City College authentically care, and feel it is their calling to teach and mentor us. 

When the school needed to switch to online because of an international emergency, I think all of us students were wondering how it was going to go. Having done a year of online school in the past, I was not as worried about formatting as some of my peers seemed to be. Most of all, I knew it would be the most difficult for professors who were not all tech savvy and had about a week before they needed to transition their entire way of teaching online. The first couple weeks online were a little chaotic as many professors were figuring out which face call meetings worked best- Zoom or Teams or other programs. When quizzes and tests came, it was another big haul of decisions. Would the tests be open note? Would we do them while logged into the meeting? WiFi  was spotty where some students lived- how would those students be helped? There were lots of logistics to be worked out in a short period of time. I could tell a number of my professors were thin-stretched by all the changes. 

Despite this, I still felt like I learned more through my time online with Grove City College than through my time online in my past school. The professors did not stop teaching, and they continued to do their best work. The high standard of education did not change, even though all of the circumstances did. There were immense amounts of grace as well. My parents were working in the medical field and could not stay home to help my seven year old brother with school, so often he would join me for my classes once his were over. When this happened, some of my professors would even keep him engaged and ask him questions about what we were learning in class.  

Needless to say, I was thoroughly impressed by the teaching staff here at Grove City College over the past year. Many were pushed out of their comfort zones and had to change their methods very quickly, and from my experience they did a great job. More than that, we have a staff that authentically care about their students and want to know where each of them are at. I have not experienced this in many other places. 

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Virtual Career Fair

 

Grove City College students are a notoriously driven bunch. It feels like many of us are thinking about what we will be doing post-graduation or over the summer more than anything else. Last semester saw many summer jobs and internships canceled because of the virus, and we have been hesitant to get our hopes up for more opportunities. Many of us were really disappointed and nervous to hear that the Career Fair was not going to be held in person like it usually is. Yet, the online Career Fair put on by the Career Services Office was a complete success, and I suspect there will be lots of jobs and internship positions for this upcoming summer because of it. So, here is some insight as to how it went: 

The entire event was hosted through Handshake, which is a job recruitment application for college students. Weeks in advance, the Career Services Office worked hard to advertise the event to make sure the entire student body knew about the Career Fair. This was a big help to people like myself who do not typically stop to read all the flyers around campus. Student staff wore Career Fair t-shirts, banners were up around campus, and chapel advertised months in advance. It was impossible miss the career fair. 

A few days before the event, the CSO put catalogues in our mailboxes, which listed out every company that would attend the virtual fair. I found this to be very helpful and much more effective than past Career Fairs where I would typically wander around until I stumbled upon a company that interested me. With the catalogs in the mail, I could easily see which companies might be of interest to me and sign up for interviews. Amanda Meyers, an Entrepreneurship major commented about past years, “Most booths are computer science and chemical engineer booths. There are only a couple booths suited for my major.” The new system of sorting out companies ahead of time made connecting with businesses a breeze in comparison to previous years. The use of Handshake made it easy for companies to connect with students as well. Many students had companies reach out and request to interview with them at the fair before the fair had begun. 

Each session was 30 minutes long, which gave businesses adequate time to present to students what their company was all about. The longer sessions allotted  time for students to properly connect with businesses and ask questions as well. Overall, I felt that connecting with companies was much easier through the services offered through the online Career Fair than it was at past in-person fairs. Next year might be in person, or it might be online, but the CSO’s hard work from the past year is going to open new doors even for next year’s Fair. 

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Almost Pro: Intramural Sports

Giving up your high school sport to solely pursue college academics can be a difficult and daunting task for a senior. Sports have an interesting way of grabbing our hearts and gripping tight until we completely fall in love with them. You start as a young kid, maybe because your parents forced you to, or you were sitting around the house bored. Whatever it is, the bonds and memories formed during the participation of that sport hold near and dear to your heart. However, God did not create every high school athlete to go on and play Division 1 or professional football, so like me, you go to college and those exciting sporting events become distant memories.

Going to college and deciding not to play soccer was a difficult decision for me. I constantly weighed the pros and cons of joining the Grove City Men’s Soccer team with my parents, coaches, and teammates. In the end, I decided that sticking to just academics and hanging up the soccer cleats was the best decision for me. This was truly a bummer because I had been playing soccer since I was 3 and felt that a part of me going to be lost. This could not have been further from the truth.

Within my first week at Grove City College, I had multiple friends, upperclassmen, and hall-mates excitedly describe and inform me about various intramural sports that happened on our campus! They explained to me that intramural sports, or IM’s, are a great way to continue playing your favorite sports competitively at a lesser than collegiate level, form new relationships with people, and take a study break from exams and homework. I was instantly intrigued and decided to form various IM teams myself. Everything I heard about IM’s was spot on. They were very competitive, made for a great study break, and helped me to make a ton of new friends. This was the perfect place for a washed-up high school athlete, like me, to go.

Grove City College proudly offers over 20 IM sports that any student can participate in. A few of these sports include but are not limited to soccer, football, basketball, ultimate Frisbee, spike-ball, softball, rocket league (e-sports), and tennis. Almost all of the IM sports offered have a men’s, women’s, and co-ed section. Within these sections, there are different leagues, such as A-League, B-League, and C-League to monitor the level of competition. Winning an IM championship means more than bragging rights over your fellow competition, as each member of the winning team receives a free t-shirt that you design. Grove City College has recently switched over to a fully functional website and app called IMLeagues, which allows for easy signups, game reminders, and stat recording availability. Participating in intramural sports has been one of my best college decisions, and I would highly recommend any incoming freshman looking for fun to give them a try.

This is a picture of my freshman year IM Soccer team winning our first championship. We have played together for four consecutive years now and the bonds could not be stronger.
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The Safest Campus

Grove City College

As a senior in high school, I remember being slightly afraid to come to college. I did not know how safe the campuses would be because they were in towns and cities that I did not know. I originally wanted to go to the University of Pittsburgh, but one reason that I chose to come to Grove City College is because of the safety and security of the college. As a senior, I can say without hesitation that there has never been a minute where I did not feel safe while on campus. The College is very safe, and it is one of those places where you could leave your wallet somewhere and it would be there three hours later, untouched. Considering how unsafe many colleges are, it is so important that Grove City is as safe as it is. The campus and the parking lots are well-lit and there are emergency call boxes located all around campus. There are Campus Safety vehicles constantly driving around to check on things. There is barely ever an incident report at the College.

Not only is the College a very safe place to be, but also the town is very safe. The town of Grove City is very quiet and has a low crime rate. There have been evenings that I have gone out for a walk and did not feel afraid at all. The people that live in town are kind and the community as a whole is very safe. In fact, the crime rate of Grove City is only 1/1,000. Since I am a young, female, college student, it makes me feel very safe to know that the campus is a safe place and that the community is a quiet. Overall, the campus is small and quaint and there are many reasons as to why Grove City College is special and unique. I recently asked several of my friends if they felt safe at Grove City College, and every one of them replied without hesitation, “Yes!”. My one friend said, “As a 21 year old college female, there has not been a second where I was afraid or even concerned about my safety at Grove City. It is one of the benefits of going to college in the country- I love being safe and the more I think about it, the more I am thankful that I chose Grove City. At other colleges, it is quite different.” I can confidently say that if you come to Grove City College, you will feel safe and at home, which is very important to many college students.

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Interning at a Mom and Pop Shop

As a Business major, I used to think that the best thing that you could put on your resume is that you interned at a large corporate company. I believe that many college students think that that they need to work at a big company in order to gain quality experience. However, I interned at a small mom and pop shop this summer and I gained wonderful experience and learned many new skills.

The name of the company that I interned at is called At Home Senior Services and it is a non-medical home health care company located in Pittsburgh. It is owned by a husband and a wife, so I really appreciated the closeness of the relationships that I made within the internship. Since I interned at a small company, I was able to express my ideas because they were very open to new ideas. The job was flexible, and I got to test out a lot of different ideas. I loved that I was not given a “to-do list” each day. Instead, I was able to brainstorm my own ideas for marketing the company to both clients and caregivers.

Interning at a small company allows you to be creative, and you also are given one-on-one advice and training from the bosses. Not only did I learn many different marketing skills and ideas, but also I was able to spend a lot of time talking to my boss. This allowed me to gain first-hand business experience from a businessman himself. Overall, I was very pleased with my internship this summer, and it helped me to learn that I would work much better in a smaller, private business than in a corporate setting. I would not have known that if I did not intern. Interning allows you to discover what you like and what you do not like, so that you can get a better idea of what path you want to take after college.

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Internship Business Learnings

This summer, I had my first internship. I interned in marketing at a business in Pittsburgh called At Home Senior Services. At Home Senior Services is a non-medical home health care company. At first, I had no idea what I was going to do and what I was going to learn. I was afraid and nervous because it was a new experience for me. Not only did I learn many practical skills, but I learned many business skills that you cannot learn in a classroom.

An internship is great because you get to apply what you have been learning in college to an actual business. I loved that I was able to be hands-on in the company. I learned how to work with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is one of the most challenging skills that I learned. SEO, in a nutshell, is how you best optimize your website and your posts so that they are successful within search engines. I also was able to participate in many conference calls and other virtual meetings. My boss assigned me projects so that I was able to learn business skills such as telephone skills, negotiation skills, and communication skills.

I learned a lot about how a business operates and all of the different functions of a business. Even though it was a marketing internship, I was able to learn a lot about Human Resourses by interviewing applications on my own. I also learned how to recruit employees and how to best market our business to both employees and clients. I learned a lot of practical business skills that I never could have learned in a classroom. I really enjoyed the hands-on application of the marketing skills that I have learned because it was the first time in my life that I could actually apply what I learned at Grove City College to the business world.

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Transitions: Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the “Transitions” series! Transitions can be difficult, but I want to continue to ease your mind about a few of them.

  1. Transition to leaving family.

One of the most difficult things for people going to college is moving away from family. This is completely understandable seeing as you will have lived with your family for your entire life. Something to acknowledge when you come to college is that yes, it will be weird at first sharing a bathroom with 20-30 other people and not having your mom around to help do your laundry or cook for you. But, going to college is such a beautiful first run at being independent from your family and making big, daily decisions for yourself and by yourself. Also, you will have plenty of breaks to go home and visit your family if you live far away. If you live close, you can go home on the weekends to catch up and reenergize for the week ahead! You can do it. Missing family is so normal. Lean on your peers who are also missing their family and in the same transition with you and they will become your family.

  1. Transition to being autonomous.

As mentioned above, you are most likely moving out of your family home and pretty excited about going to college to become independent. Of course, there are some responsibilities that only come post-graduation, but for the most part, college is the first time you will be independent from your family unit. It is truly so exciting coming to Grove City and making decisions for yourself without having to consult your parents or anyone really except yourself. You can decide what you do when, what you eat when, how late you stay up or wake up in the morning, if you work out or not, and a whole lot more. College is a great space to learn the ropes of being independent while in the safe confines of a phenomenal school like Grove City College.

College is one of the biggest transitions you will ever make in your life–moving away from family into a dorm, new classes, new experiences, etc. It can all be terrifying from an outside perspective, but when you break it down day by day, moment by moment, you will soon learn to thrive at Grove City College.

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Transitions: Part 1

Grove City College

College is one of the biggest transitions a person will make, aside from getting a full-time job post-graduation. These four years are full of newness and change and excitement and anxiety all wrapped in one. Transitions can be difficult, but I want to ease your mind about a few of them.

  1. Transition to dorm life.
  • Going from having your own space at home to living with approximately 20-30 people on the same hall can be daunting. It can also be slightly annoying to have this newfound recognition that you now have to be careful with your stuff and make sure people know it is yours. Let me tell you though, dorm life is kind of scary at first, but turns into the coolest thing ever fairly soon after move-in. Once you realize that you are living with your closest friends and do not have to drive anywhere to hang out with them, you will quickly learn to love it. Also, the dorms provide ample opportunity to share things with your friends (i.e. clothes, shoes, video games, hats, etc.). You basically shop for free in your friends’ closets and rooms, with their permission of course.
  1. Transition to college classes.
  • I talked about this in a previous blog, but the transition to college classes can be really scary. It is easy to come into college thinking that college classes will be significantly harder than the ones you took in high school. I am here to tell you that you will be just fine. Yes, Grove City is academically rigorous. That is definite. However, you learned how to study and work hard in high school and that is no different here. You will be fine. The Grove is well-known for being difficult but take it from me, you work hard, study hard, and learn so much from your classes here. And, if you need any help with your classes, the College has a free tutoring service offered to each student who attends Grove City College. Please take advantage of that, many students tutor other students, so it is a great way to not only learn but also meet new people!

College is one of the biggest transitions you will ever make in your life–moving away from family into a dorm, new classes, new experiences, etc. It can all be terrifying from an outside perspective, but when you break it down day by day, moment by moment, you will soon learn to thrive at Grove City College.

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Working Part-Time and Being a Full-Time Student

Coming to college as a freshman, most would never think of getting a job while being a full-time student. I realized, however, that it is indeed possible to be a full-time student as well as a part-time employee to make extra money as well as gain experience.

I interned with a company called FCB Health, NY this last summer as the editorial intern. After a summer working remotely for the healthcare network, I accepted a freelance editor position with FCB beginning September 1st, 2020. While school is super important, it is also important to be proactive about finding a job for post-graduation. I kept in contact with my supervisor from the network and landed a job for the next year prior to graduation. The primary point is, even if you are a freshman, it could be beneficial to get a part-time job during the semester career related or not. It could be beneficial for a couple of different reasons. One, you will make some money to help with the cost of books or whatever else you would like. Two, you can learn the value of hard work before starting your career.

The most valuable thing I learned from working part-time while being a full-time student is first, the importance of prioritizing finding a career while at Grove City. Your academics are equally as important during your four years at the College, but that does not mean you should not also focus on getting a jump start on finding an internship or part-time job. It does not matter if you’re a freshman or a senior, it is never to early to make connections and gain experience while also being a student. Secondly, I learned that everything would work out how it is supposed to. If you get a job during school, you will be okay and able to make it work. But if you don’t, you will also be okay. All in all, during your time at the Grove, if you can start building connections with people in the work industry, do it. It will only be beneficial to you in the long run and there is time. Do not let anyone tell you that you are only a freshman, and this does not apply to you. It is never too early to start networking and getting yourself out there.