Author: goetzrm19

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ICO Aliquippa Experience

After going on ICO Aliquippa in the fall semester, I knew I wanted to go back in the spring. When preparing for this trip, I kept thinking back to the fall trip and wondering how similar and different it would be.

During the fall trip, we were always busy helping others, focusing on fixing things and meeting people in Aliquippa. We focused on going to the different neighborhoods and housing plans, walking around to hand out food to families and play with little kids. With the kids, we taught them about Jesus, played with them, and did Bible studies with them. A majority of our time was creating relationships and becoming familiar with Aliquippa to then come back in the spring and continue building those relationships.

When we came back in the spring, it felt like we picked up where we left off. We got to see all the people we met in the fall and spend days working and serving with them. Compared to the fall, we focused on being servants and serving others well while building the relationships we created. For a few days, we got to talk with Marie and help repair and clean parts of her house and learn more about her life. This was the most difficult part of the trip for me but also was an important lesson and reminder. Everyone has a different story and some people are not as fortunate as you, but they are the ones who are most joyful and grateful. We also spent time working at Uncommon Grounds Café and food banks, helping serve them in any way that they need. For a majority of our week, we worked with Communicycle, a non-profit organization, repairing and replacing bikes to give them to a kids’ summer camp. We spent a lot of time with Brownie, who helps out at Communicycle, and got to see how much of an impact he has left on people and how God has performed miracles in his life. One of my favorite parts about being on an ICO trip are the relationships and the people you meet and spend time with. We still talk to everyone we worked with during the fall and spring and go back to Uncommon Grounds Café to help them, in anyway they need.

Every night, we took time to talk about our highs, lows, and God sightings of the day. Thinking and answering these questions helped to keep our focus on why we were on this trip, to serve others through God. The fall trip had a positive impact on me but this trip really pushed me in my faith. If you are looking at Grove City College or have decided to come in the fall, I recommend looking into an ICO trip or going on one. Not only do you get to spend time with your peers, but you get to meet so many people in a different area and serve with them while doing it for the glory of God.

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Experience with Sororities at College

When it comes to meeting people and making friends at college, a lot of people immediately think of joining a sorority or a fraternity. At big schools, many people join groups to find or meet friends but everyone has a different reason. Being at a small school like Grove City College, not only are you here academically, but socially and spiritually. My faith is an important part of my life and was one of the reasons I decided to join a sorority.

Rushing a sorority can be very intense and time-consuming, but it is all in the way you look at it. The best way to approach rush is having a positive mindset and thinking that you are going to meet new people and form a friendship with them. If you meet people in a group and become friends with them because they are in that specific group, you will not have a long-lasting friendship. Take it from me. I rushed my freshman year and did not get into the group I was rushing, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I spent time figuring out who I was and what I was looking for in a group. I decided to try rushing sororities again and look at different groups, which led me to find a great group of girls who I became genuine friends with. Rush can be tiring, difficult, and time-consuming but it is worth it if you find a group of friends you can be yourself around.

For me, being in a sorority was more than being part of something on campus. It is being surrounded by a group of your peers who love the Lord and will push you in your faith, and who love you and will always be there for you. Not only do you get to know people in your class, but you look up to seniors and get to know them and get advice and wisdom from them. For some people, sororities and fraternities can be seen as being “exclusive” and “cliquey” but once you get to know all of the people in those groups, you come to find that they are great people.

Joining a group might not be for everyone, but my best piece of advice is to try it. You may not join a group but you get to know people on campus and become friends with them. As my parents always say, “What’s the worst that can happen?” You do not like the groups; you do not have to join it. Try something new! Get out of your comfort zone! Meet new people!

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Freshman Spotlight: Natalie Merrick

College is a time for students to step out of their comfort zone and explore. You have the freedom of living on your own and making your own decisions. Being at Grove City, this is the time where you find out more about yourself, find friends that will be with you throughout life, and where you can grow deeper in your faith, all while being surrounded by community.

Natalie Merrick is a freshman majoring in Exercise Science with a pre-physical therapy concentration, and minoring in Psychology. While her academics are time-consuming, she has learned to find a way to balance it while playing soccer at Grove City College. For Natalie, she grew up in the Cranberry Township area (about 30 minutes from campus) and knew of Grove City College from her sister going here and people in her high school. While she was looking at other colleges, she ultimately decided on Grove City because of the Christ-centered mission of the College and the soccer program.

Along with her major and being on the women’s soccer team, she is also a part of Homecoming Committee and the Gamma Sigma Phi sorority. Her best piece of advice when it comes to rushing different sororities is to check your heart constantly and form relationships with people to be their friend, not to be in the sorority. When it comes to sororities or fraternities, you want to make sure that you “vibe” with the people in the group as your true self, not having a persona.

When asked about the impact that Grove City College has had on her faith, Natalie said her faith has grown tremendously because of the people that she surrounds herself with at college. She was intentional when getting to know the seniors in her sorority and on her soccer team. She said “watching them walk with the Lord has encouraged me to do the same and I’ve found people who prioritize their relationship with Him and encourage me in my walk of faith.” She has found that her friendships here are ones that will stay throughout her life. When asked about the community at Grove City College, she said it is welcoming and inviting to everyone and encourages growth spiritually, academically, and socially.

The best piece of advice Natalie has for future underclassmen or prospective students is to “go into everything with open hands and find chances to grow and be challenged in your academics and faith.” Keep your eyes open to new things, people, and opportunities God places right in front of you. Whatever you decide to do in college or whatever happens, God is always with you to help guide you and provide for you. College can be the best time of your lives, so get involved with activities, groups, and get to know people who can help push you to be a better person overall.

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Sophomore Spotlight: Lucca Baccari

Whether you are a prospective student looking at Grove City College or you have decided to attend Grove City in the fall, college is a time for people to learn and grow. You may not know what the “college experience” looks like, but that is okay! The best advice you can get is hearing from current students who found ways to adapt to the college environment and succeed socially and academically.

Lucca Baccari, a sophomore mechanical engineer, decided on Grove City College not only because of the baseball team but because of the reputation of having strong academics and a small, tight-knit community surrounding the campus. When asked about adjusting to “college life” he said to schedule out your weeks so you know when assignments are due but also what events or activities are happening so you can go to them. This method works best for Lucca as he is very busy juggling his workload, baseball, and being in the Beta Sigma fraternity. Finding a balance between a sport and academics in college is difficult but he makes it work by planning ahead on the weekends and working ahead on assignments, especially when he is in season. His best piece of advice for student athletes is to “have good time management and not procrastinate on assignments. You don’t want to fall behind in academics or your sport because it can be hard to recover.”

When asked about the impact that Grove City College has had on his faith, Lucca said “It’s grown to a whole new level. You’re surround by people who have come from completely different walks of life who teach you different things to help you in your walk of faith.” Faith is important to campus life, but also to the community that surrounds the college. The community of Grove City focuses on “building each other up and creating a positive experience on campus, whether it be academically or socially.”

The best piece of advice Lucca has for prospective or incoming students is to “participate in campus life as much as possible. Not only does it benefit you by helping you meet people but continues to build the campus community.” Do not be afraid to get out of your comfort zone to meet people. The community at Grove City College creates many opportunities and experiences for people!

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Inner City Outreach – Fall Semester

Going into freshman year, I wasn’t involved in a lot of groups or activities on campus because of COVID-19 restrictions. Over the course of my freshman year, campus started to slowly make changes to try and go back to “normal.” As the spring semester ended, I knew that I wanted to join a group or different activities on campus to have community and get to know other students.

Coming back to school in the fall, I was part of OB (Orientation Board). It gave me the opportunity to grow closer with people I didn’t know very well and provide community to incoming freshmen. One of my friends from Orientation Board asked me what I was doing for fall break, and she proceeded to talk to me about an upcoming ICO trip. ICO is also referred to as Inner City Outreach, a small mission trip led by Grove City College students, taking place in different cities in multiple states, as well as a few countries. The only trip happening over fall break was ICO Aliquippa, and it was four days long. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area and have always been told that Aliquippa has a reputation for being unsafe and filled with crime. This made me very hesitant to want to go on the trip, but after talking to upperclassmen who went on the trip and listening to their experience, I decided that I wanted to go. I did not have high expectations, nor did I know what to expect before going on the trip. All I knew was that I was going out of my comfort zone and that made me very nervous and scared.

During the trip, we worked with a local church, Mount Carmel, and they felt like family at the end of the trip. We spent two days working on Janice’s house, a fellow believer. We got to paint her porch, do yardwork, and build her a new staircase to get into her house. The best part about working on her house was spending time with her, hearing about her life and how God has worked in it. We also got to spend time in the different plans (housing communities) playing with kids (lots and lots of face paint), doing Bible studies, handing out clothes, and serving food to families. We worked with a non-profit organization Communicycle that collected donated bikes to repair them and then give them to kids who do not have bikes. We spent time learning how to repair bikes and would drive around Aliquippa, handing out bikes to children.

Every night on the trip, the group would take time to reflect on the day and talk about their high and low and an instance of where they saw God that day. Asking these questions helped us to keep God at the center of our mind and of the trip. Looking back on the trip, I realized that Aliquippa is different than how it is perceived. People see Aliquippa as being a broken town with a high crime rate, but after spending time there, I see it in a different way. Although they do not have a lot, they have a strong community. They know people in different plans and all of their neighbors, treating each other like family. On the trip, I saw how present God was in each activity we did and how He is working through the people of Aliquippa. I cannot wait to go back to Aliquippa for the spring ICO trip and continue to share who God is to people. If you are looking for community at Grove City College, ICO trips provide amazing community with fellow students who want to share who God is with others!

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My Experience Running a Business

Last semester, August 2021 to December 2021, I was in an Entrepreneur class called E-Commerce. The class focused on starting a business and selling a product in-person and online. I was on a team of four people, and we created Geodesy Bracelets, personalized, hand-stamped bracelets to help you remember your favorite place or phrase.

At the beginning of the class, every student pitched an idea and the class would choose their top five favorite ideas and form teams based on those ideas. As my team formed, we had an idea for the bracelets and assumed that it would be easy to make and good for people to buy. We wanted to have a metal oval with coordinates or words stamped on it, with multicolored cords to wrap around the wrist. We ordered all the needed materials and made the prototype, only to see that we did not like anything about it. We kept asking ourselves, “Who is going to buy this bracelet? There’s no way they’re going to want to spend more than $3 on this.” We faced a problem of having the prototype look and feel of low-quality. We could not figure out how else we could stamp coordinates or words and almost came up with an entirely different business idea. We all had to decide if we wanted to do a new business idea or pivot from our original idea. We decided to stick with our original idea, and we pivoted a lot from it, which only made our products better quality and more popular to customers. As we made our products, we created a website and social media accounts to allow customers to shop all of the products, read customers’ stories, and stay updated about sales. At the end of the semester, my group donated all of our profits to a Christian summer camp, Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which allows young athletes to live in community with each other and grow in their faith. We had personal connections to Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which made us work harder to help get more donations!

My experience with Geodesy Bracelets has been awesome, and I loved the class. The class allowed me to run a business in a short time and see the behind the scenes of it. I learned a lot about working with a team and discovering different ways to pivot when faced with a challenge. Starting a business is very time consuming and at times, it feels like it is not worth it. However, this class showed me that running a business is worth all the time and effort. Why? It is because you hear customer’s stories of why they purchased from your business or what their customized order meant to them.

When looking at different classes to take at Grove City College, whatever major you are, this class gives you a real-world experience of running your own business. It has been one of my favorite classes that I have taken.

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My Experience with Orientation Board

Imagine this: You are driving up to Grove City College for move-in day, but you are feeling butterflies in your stomach. You are sitting in the car, nervous about meeting people, making friends, and starting classes. As you pull up to your dorm building, a group of white T-shirts swarm your car, shouting in excitement. They start to unpack your car and carry all of your bins and suitcases to your dorm room. They wait around for you to walk into your dorm room and pray over you for success and joy through the semester. When your parents leave, you spend the next few days meeting upperclassmen and fellow freshmen, participating in social gatherings, sports, movie nights, and other activities.

That was my experience when I came to Grove City College. Orientation Board (OB) helped me get familiar with the campus and with meeting new people. They also helped me get to know upperclassmen in my major, to help give me an idea of what my classes would be like, as well as the professors. After seeing how involved Orientation Board was with incoming freshmen, and the group as a whole, I decided I wanted to do it.

Through the process of joining OB, we did retreats and meetings to grow closer together and hear the “why” behind everyone’s decision to join. Orientation Board is a big group, divided into different committees. Each committee has different tasks and events they put on for the freshmen. I was on the Religion Committee, which included Sunrise Service, Worship Night, Praying Sessions, etc. One of my favorite events that OB did before the freshmen arrived was the Prayer Walk. We each walked around on campus, to each building, and prayed over it and prayed for the incoming freshmen. An event that I helped organize was All-Campus Worship. My team and I put together a group of student musicians to lead worship and read Scripture. Seeing all of the OB members and the campus come together to worship helped remind me that Jesus is changing our hearts daily and we are serving Him through helping others. I think it also helped many of the freshmen know that Jesus is the one constant thing in our lives and we should lean on Him to help us through the semester.

Orientation Board has helped me step out of my comfort zone and meet so many people – some of which are now my closest friends. OB has push me in my relationship with Christ, while serving others and having a fun time. Overall, it has been an amazing experience to be apart of Orientation Board, and I cannot wait to do it again next year.

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How I Chose Grove City College

Being the youngest of four, I got to watch all of my siblings decide on which college they would attend. Whenever someone asked me where I wanted to go to school or what major I wanted to pursue, I always said, “I do not know yet…maybe a big school.” In the back of my head, I thought I would go to Penn State University, but little did I realize I wanted to go for the wrong reasons. I wanted to go there not because of the different majors they offered, but because my brother was there and I would be close to him. The one school I never thought to look at was Grove City College because of the reputation it had: being a strict Christian college with challenging academics. My dad was the one who kept bringing up Grove City College, and I finally agreed to tour the campus.

When I toured Grove City College, I kept thinking “too small, too close to home.” My tour was in June of 2019 and the campus was dead with no students there. After my tour, I kept thinking of all the negatives and was not giving the College a chance. That was, until I decided to do an overnight stay in October of 2019. When I stayed overnight, I finally got to “see” the College. I sat in classes as a prospective student and talked to professors and students about their experience. I also got a chance to see events that were going on with fraternities and sororities. My view of Grove City started to change, and I started to consider it a top option. After I got home from my overnight visit, all I could think about was the excitement and fun I had while I was there. I filled my parents in on my trip and after talking to them, I knew I wanted to go to Grove City. The people at Grove City want you to be there, and they want to help you in any way they can, academically or socially.

The funny thing about choosing a college is that you may think you want a big school, but you may actually want a small school and vice versa. I know that Grove City College is not the school for everyone, but to some it feels like home. Ever since I was accepted and came here, I have felt a sense of peace I could not imagine experiencing at another school. The Christian environment and sense of community at Grove City makes you feel like you are at home.

Here are some of my tips when visiting Grove City College:

  1. Sit in different classes to get an idea of college classes
  2. Talk to professors and students in the majors you are interested in
    1. They are honest with you about academics but they also get to know you
  3. Stay overnight, especially in one of the dorms, if you can.
    1. You will get a feel for how college is and can help see if you like the atmosphere and environment at Grove City
  4. Explore the town of Grove City, and see what is around!