Abby Schiela, Author at

Posted on December 22, 2017December 7, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

So You Want to be an RA?

If you love getting to know and caring for the people around you, the Resident Assistant position at Grove City College might be right for you! A Resident Assistant, or RA, is a full-time student who lives on campus in the residence halls and is responsible for facilitating community on his/her hall and upholding policy across campus (among numerous other things). It is a great opportunity to be involved in campus and serve the people living around you.

You are able to apply for the RA position for your sophomore through senior year. All residence halls have RAs, freshmen buildings and upperclassmen buildings alike, so there are opportunities to be an RA for numerous demographics. In upperclassmen buildings you will be the only RA on your hall and will likely have a roommate of your choosing (though some buildings offer the opportunity to live in a single room as an RA). While it shocks many people that as an RA I still have a roommate, I love it. My roommate is one of my biggest sources of support and helps to create a sense of community on the hall just as much as I do. Some freshmen buildings have two RAs per hall, meaning that you will have a roommate who is an RA and the two of you will work together to care for your hall.

RAs work in teams with three to 11 RAs (depending on the size of your residence hall) and one Resident Director (RD). New this year, MAP North, the primary residence for freshmen women on campus, also has an Assistant Resident Director (ARD) as part of their team. These teams are great opportunities to learn and grow in both a professional setting and a personal setting – they will likely become some of your closest friends and will understand your experience as an RA and student better than most others on campus.

As an RA you have the opportunity to plan events (called programs) that will help your residents learn and grow beyond the classroom in addition to building stronger relationships with one another. These are very neat, as Residence Life provides funding for these programs so there is really a lot that you can do with them. These events really shape people’s college experiences and I highly encourage you to attend RA programs even if you are not an RA yourself.

You will also have duty responsibilities as an RA, which each residence hall does slightly differently. In general, you will be “on duty” one night per week, which means that you will have to be in your building and do some rounds of the building to check for facility concerns, to uphold policy, and to check for safety concerns. When you are on duty you are “on call” and if a resident in your building experiences an issue, you are the first one they would call and/or come to. These nights are great opportunities to hang out in your room with your door open and see who is around to hang out with.

Being an RA also means weekly staff meetings with your building staff and bi-weekly or weekly one on one meetings with your direct supervisor, the Resident Director (RD) for your building. Otherwise, being an RA is a very flexible schedule – you choose when to run programs, you have input into the duty schedule, and you get to choose when to knock on doors and invite people over.

The RA position has shaped my college experience entirely. I am currently a senior and have been an RA since my sophomore year. For both my sophomore and junior years I was an RA on the same hall in a suite style building and my residents were primarily seniors. This year I am in a different suite style building and my residents are primarily freshmen and transfer students. All three years have been amazing experiences and God has grown me so much through them. The other RAs who I have worked with and each of my RDs have shaped me and supported me through my difficult semesters and my easier semesters, and I have definitely made lifetime friends through this position. If you are wanting to be an RA during college, Grove City College is the place to do it.

Posted on December 16, 2017December 7, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

On-Campus Jobs: Student Assistant at the Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation

Many students are worried about working while they are at college, and luckily there are many opportunities at Grove City. There are many off-campus options due to our proximity to Grove City Premium Outlets as well as many great businesses to work at just barely off-campus on Broad Street like Sweet Jeanie’s and Beans on Broad. On-campus jobs are a great option, though, because supervisors understand that you are a student first and are able to be very flexible with scheduling, not to mention the “commute” is basically non-existent.

One of my positions on campus is as the student assistant to the program manager of the Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation (CEI) at Grove City College. I started in this position in September of my sophomore year, and have enjoyed it ever since. The CEI recently increased its student staff, which means that there are many possibilities in this department.

In this position, I mostly work on administrative tasks given to me by my supervisor, Lynn Stillwaggon ’84. Twice a week I come into her office to work with her on details for that week. I also put together and send the weekly newsletter for the CEI. My jobs can include anything from sending emails to students about events, and requesting help for events from faculty or staff to hanging up posters and writing our weekly newsletter. It has been a great opportunity to be involved in my major department and to understand the behind-the-scenes workings of our Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation.

One of the biggest benefits of this position has been a great relationship with my supervisor. Mrs. Stillwaggon is a Grove City College alumna and has been a great supervisor and mentor for me over the past two and a half years. In between tasks we will chat about our weekends and life in Grove City, to more important conversations about life in general. This is a benefit that I think many student workers at Grove City College can agree with – our supervisors become so much more than that and we learn so much from them. These positions are much more than menial jobs.

I have also gotten to know many other students on campus through this position, whether it be from sending emails in order to gain information for a press release or because I am helping to organize our annual Elevator Pitch Competition, I have interactions with all kinds of people who I may not have met otherwise.

Working on campus has been an excellent experience and I have learned so much from the people I work with.

Posted on December 14, 2017December 7, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

Finals Week: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

You have probably heard about finals week in general – probably in the form of some horror story including sleep deprivation, gallons of coffee, and impossible exams. Well, I am here to tell you that while those stories may be true for some people, it is definitely not the norm. In my opinion finals week is, dare I say it, actually kind of…fun!

I know what you are thinking – “This girl is a crazy nerd…or just plain crazy” – hear me out though. During the semester you have to balance so many things at once, going to classes, doing readings, writing papers, any extracurricular activities, taking care of yourself, and taking exams. It can get overwhelming, especially if your midterms line up at the same time like most tend to. Finals week is nothing like this. You have three things to balance: studying, taking exams, and self-care. When the entire campus (and even much of the surrounding community) is focused in on this one thing, it is a lot easier to knock finals week out of the park than typical horror stories lead you to believe.

Some basics about finals week at Grove City College before we jump in: Regular semester classes always run through Wednesday, with night classes taking their final during their typical class times during that week (night classes only run on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings). Thursday is study day, meaning that there are no classes that day and that there are no final exams scheduled during that day. The first exam time is 7 p.m. on Thursday evening. Starting with Friday there are three final slots a day on Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday at 9 a.m., 2 p.m., and 7 p.m. Final times are assigned by the Registrar based on what time classes meet during the semester.

The Good

As I just said, you only have three things to balance during finals week, which is a lot different than your typical week in any given semester. Along with this, the entire campus and even a lot of the surrounding community is all in your corner.

The first day of our official finals week is “Study Day.” Study Day is the last Thursday of the semester, and no classes or exams run on this day until the first final exam time slot at 7 p.m. The entire campus community surrounds Grove City College students on this day with support – there are rooms open across campus for studying and several offices provide snacks and coffee free of charge throughout the day; several local churches open their doors to college students for a place to study and to relax, and some even provide a home cooked meal during this time. The library even brings in therapy dogs in the afternoon!

Our Student Government Association (SGA) sponsors a Moonlight Breakfast every semester which takes place at 9 p.m. – right after the first final exam slot. This is one of my favorite parts of finals week – there is almost an excited buzz in the dining hall as everyone comes together to share food and take a break from studying. This event brings the campus together and creates a sense of unity like nothing else.

For the rest of finals week you simply have to balance studying, taking exams, and packing to go home. There are no final exams scheduled on Sunday, so this is a great day to go to church, rest, relax, and spend time with friends before heading home.

The Bad

Finals week does not have its bad reputation for no reason, but it really is not as terrible as it sounds. A negative to finals week is that your finals schedule is pretty set in stone based on your class schedule – each class time is assigned a final exam time before the semester even starts. The only way to have an exam time changed is if you end up with three exams scheduled within a 24 hour period. This can cause frustrations for some people who want to leave campus earlier rather than later, but is not a huge problem if you look at your finals schedule when making travel plans.

At a certain point, generally later on in the week, you just want to take the exam and be done. Sometimes there is only so much studying you can do, and, unfortunately, even when you are done studying you may have to wait to take the exam. This can make for some times of boredom right before your exam. My suggestion to avoid this is to plan some study breaks throughout the week so that these pockets of time can be used as effective times to recharge, rather than an anxious waiting period right before your exam.

While the dining hall often starts finals week strong with nutritious meals and lots of comfort food, the end of the week can be a different story. As the campus empties out, so does the dining hall, and sometimes you need to get a bit creative with the different options to create a full meal – but it is possible.

The Ugly

Let’s face it, for most of the campus finals week is not a pretty time. Laundry gets put off and “stress mess” in dorm rooms is a real phenomenon. This is not true of everyone, though – sometimes cleaning and presenting yourself well is a huge stress relief. If you are a messy stress kind of person, though, it is okay, you are in good company.

As long as we are talking about appearances with “the ugly” I should mention that our campus is actually beautiful during both finals weeks of the year. In December it is decorated for Christmas and there is often snow on the ground that makes for a beautiful winter scene and in May the quad is bright with green grass and the trees are full of leaves. There is not a point in the year where the campus scenery would fit into the category of “ugly”.

Finals Week: Overall

So you will survive finals week, and you may even enjoy it. It really is all about attitude during finals – take care of yourself, focus on the good, work hard, and it will all be okay.

Posted on December 12, 2017December 7, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

What Love Is: Post-LSAT Celebration

At the beginning of this semester I was studying to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scheduled for mid-September. As an RA on a hall comprised of freshmen and transfer students I was also balancing academics, work, and relationships with the women on my hall. There were several times throughout the first month of school that I felt that I was falling short in my relationships with the people around me. I wanted to be able to devote all of my time to getting to know them and helping them to adjust to life at Grove City College and felt guilty about having to lock my door to take practice tests or camp out in the local coffee shop to study undisturbed.

Everyone who I spoke to on campus was so supportive of me during this time, offering me words of encouragement and reminding me to give myself grace in a very busy time of life. The women on my hall were one of the greatest areas of support during this time, even though they were all transitioning into a new phase of life and getting acquainted with our campus at the same time. Various residents would stop by to cheer me on and see how my studying was going each week and would make sure to tell me that they were praying for me. I was so surprised and felt so blessed to see that these women who I was meant to be serving in my role as an RA were going to such efforts to serve me after knowing me for such a short amount of time. They already wanted me to succeed and were willing to do anything they could to help me get to that point.

Saturday, September 16, 2017 I spent five hours in our Hall of Arts and Letters taking the LSAT. When I finally came out of the exam I was tired and felt like I had spent all day running, rather than sitting at a desk. A huge weight was off my shoulders because I no longer had to study for the test, but it was replaced by another, smaller one as I waited for the results.

Our campus Fall Fest was that afternoon and I spent a bit of time there with my roommate, Bri, and then we went and ordered large sundaes from Sweet Jeanie’s, a local ice cream parlor. When we got back to campus, we helped our friend, Lisa, clean up her Fall Fest booth and then the three of us changed and went out to dinner to celebrate my completed test. We laughed throughout the meal and I felt so thankful to finally have time to relax without the pressure of the LSAT hanging over me.

After dinner, we went back to my and Bri’s dorm room. I opened the door and went in first, and was immediately shocked by almost a dozen people standing in the dark, shouting surprise! The women on my hall had decided to bake and decorate a cake (chocolate and Nutella!) the night before in order to celebrate my completed test. I jumped, laughed, and teared up. They had orchestrated the surprise all on their own, with Bri offering our room as the place to surprise me, and they certainly succeeded. I felt so loved and blessed that so many people wanted to celebrate with me.

This is so indicative of the environment at Grove City College. Students care for one another through verbal support, prayer, and meeting one another’s needs. Since living here is the first time that most of our students have lived away from home it is so important to have people around who care for you, and that is just the overall atmosphere in the Residence Halls. I am continually astounded by the wonderful people around me and how they care for one another and for me.

Post-LSAT Cake — Surprise Celebration with the Hall

Post-LSAT Dinner — Dinner with Bri and Lisa

Posted on December 9, 2017November 14, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

How to Choose Your Freshman Roommate

So you have decided on a school and you are ready to start thinking about the year ahead. If you are planning on living on campus you are probably thinking about your roommate situation. Going with a random roommate assigned by Student Life and Learning is always an option, as is choosing a roommate based on information from a variety of different outlets. Some people will tell you to choose a roommate to avoid a horror story, but some will tell you that you do not know a person well enough before college and that going random is a better option. It depends on your personal preferences which you go with, but if you are going to choose a roommate there are some important things to look for.

When I was a senior in high school I decided that I wanted to look for a roommate who I thought I would get along with well. I am now a senior in college and am living with the same person who I requested on Grove City College’s roommate finder four years ago – we are incredibly close and love sharing a room with one another! In the spring of our senior year of high school, we connected via our class’s Facebook page and got to know one another over text messages and the Grove City College Roommate Finder application.

As you are getting to know a potential roommate, it is important to dig deeper than small talk and hobbies and get to know one another’s living preferences and styles. Here are the top five things to find out about a potential roommate:

1. Personality Type

By personality type, I am referring to your levels of particularity and speed of life. Going into college I knew that I needed to find an easy-going roommate who would not grow frustrated with my Type A personality and constant need to do something. I also knew that I would not live well with someone who was equally as particular as me. This has nothing to do with extroversion or introversion, and each pairing will be different – while I needed a Type B roommate, somebody else with a similar personality to myself may work best with another similar roommate. It all comes down to knowing yourself and knowing who you work best with – if you tend to clash with a certain kind of personality, that is not the kind of personality you should choose to live with.

You can learn this about a potential roommate by directly asking how they view themselves (though people will be varying levels of self-aware) and through everyday conversations as you get to know one another. For this reason it cannot hurt to start the process early – even if you do not find a roommate, you could find a great friend!

2. Cleanliness and Clutter

Do you expect that your beds are made, prefer that they are made, prefer that they are not made, or have no preference? Do you expect dirty laundry to be out of sight, is it okay for laundry to be in a basket but visible, or is it okay for laundry to be in a pile on the floor? Do you care if the room is vacuumed? Do you expect to share vacuuming duties with your roommate, or are you okay with doing it yourself?

These are just some of the things to think about in regard to cleanliness and clutter in the room. There are so many different ways to address cleanliness in a dorm room, and it is difficult to foresee all of the possibilities before arriving on campus, but you can think about it with potential future roommates by discussing dorm room clutter and cleanliness in general.

3. Room Temperature Preferences

While you do not have control of the thermostat in your dorm room, you can impact the temperature in your room by opening or closing the windows and using a fan. I tend to run warm on a day to day basis, so I definitely prefer the room to be cooler, and so I needed to find a roommate who did not prefer a toasty room. This one is simple enough to find out – just ask!

4. Sleep Schedules

While working out sleep schedules is hugely important to a college roommate relationship, it is difficult to accurately predict what your sleep will be like at college until you arrive. Definitely talk through what time you prefer to go to sleep and wake up with a potential roommate, but the best advice I can give you here is to give one another grace in this area. When you decide to live together you may both think that going to sleep at 11 p.m. and waking up around 7 a.m. sounds great, but after arriving at college it is very possible that one of you will change that schedule.

5. Guests

Are you okay with having guests in the room? Can friends be over at any time, or is there a “friend curfew”? There are lots of ways to address this, and it is another one that is difficult to know before arriving on campus, but it is important that it be an open discussion. Unless you are a very deep sleeper, I highly recommend setting the boundary that friends not be over when either roommate is sleeping, but aside from that different roommates will have different preferences in this category. One thing in this realm that you will not have to work through as much as in other schools is that guests of the opposite gender are only allowed in your room at certain, set hours called Open Hours. While it may be frustrating for your roommate to have his/her significant other over every time there are Open Hours, you will not have to worry about them sleeping over in the room or being over every day.

Your Roommate Relationship

These are just scratching the surface of what plays an important part in the roommate relationship, but they are things to discuss before agreeing to live someone – especially someone who you have not met in person yet. No matter what, just remember to give one another grace to grow and change, and you will be okay. Do not be afraid to have direct conversations about the way you live together, and try to keep it an open conversation in order to avoid difficult confrontations or passive aggressive situations that can be even worse. Roommates can become some of your best friends, but it is okay if you are not incredibly close.

Posted on December 7, 2017November 14, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

Entrepreneurial Successes: Homecoming Businesses

The Entrepreneurship department at Grove City College is a high-energy, supportive, and fun community, but perhaps the best part is that students come out of the program fully equipped to start businesses and many start them even before graduation! The Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation at Grove City College hosted a tent at Homecoming this year, and I took the opportunity to get to know some of our alumni and student business owners and their businesses. Everyone in this video is either a current student here, or graduated this past year, in May 2017. The Entrepreneurship department and the Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation serve students of all majors, so be sure to check them out regardless of what you’re studying!

For more information about each of the businesses see each of their websites:

Graphrite (Keith Meikrantz ’18, Austin Zick ’18, Maddie Williams ’18, Samuel Kenney ’18): https://www.graphrite.com

PeeWee Packs (Ross Harrington ’17, Hannah Vaccaro ’18): https://www.linkedin.com/company/peewee-packs/

Hoot Book Revival (Natalie Webb ’17): https://www.hootbookrevival.com/

Posted on November 22, 2017November 4, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

Living on Campus: What is an RA?

You may have heard people talking about RAs or heard about them from people who have gone to college before you, but you still do not know exactly who, or what, that is. RA stands for Resident Assistant, and your RA at Grove City College will be an upperclass (sophomore through senior) student of the same gender as you. There is either one or two RAs per hall, but there may be multiple halls on a single floor depending on the size of the particular residence hall. RAs are present in freshmen and upperclassmen buildings alike. But what does an RA do and how will they affect your time at Grove City College?

Your RA will live on the hall with you, and will likely be one of the first upperclassmen that you meet upon arriving at Grove City College. If you are a freshman female, you will more than likely have two RAs, and if you are a freshman male you could have either one or two. I am an RA on a unique hall this year – my residents are 1/3 freshmen and 2/3 transfers, so my freshmen are in the minority of females who have one RA their freshman year. You will meet your RA on orientation move-in day (if not earlier, via email or because you have arrived early for a sport or club), and they will help to make your transition to Grove City College as easy as possible.

Relationship Building Roles

When you first arrive you will probably have many questions about campus and living away from home, and your RA is a great resource for when those questions arrive. Your RA will also likely hold casual events on the hall like movie nights and game nights in order to get to know you better as well as to help you meet the other people living on your hall. Many RAs on campus will keep their doors open regularly, and oftentimes these casual events occur spontaneously as people stop by – keep your eyes open for these opportunities to build relationships with the people living around you!

Your RAs will also host several more formal events throughout the semester, called RA Programs (though they will likely be advertised with different names). These are events funded by Residence Life, which means that RAs are able to use those funds to do some really cool things (oftentimes with really good food). Some programs are for fellowship and fun (i.e. a building bubble soccer tournament), some are opportunities to learn a new skill (i.e. sewing rice bag heat packs), some help to teach you more about what our campus has to offer or basic lessons on campus tools (i.e. a session with the entertainment offerings at the library or a practical lesson on how to schedule your classes for next semester). Overall, RAs do their best to plan programs that are fun and beneficial.

Administrative Roles

Perhaps what you may hear most about RAs from other schools is that they enforce school policy. This is true of Grove City College RAs as well. RAs are trained to uphold community standards and confront policy violations in a loving way, and will work with students to help them to understand the purpose or reason behind a particular policy.

Similarly, there is an RA “on duty” in each residence hall from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every night and all day on Saturdays and Sundays. This means that there is always an RA present in your residence hall during these times as a resource to residents in many ways – mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically (in cases of illness and/or injury or in cases of facility concerns). Contact information for the RA “on duty” is located on every hall within the building, and within most of the residence hall lobbies.

Simply put, your RA is a resource.

RAs are students just like you, and they are in a great position to support you through the school year and beyond. Your RA will likely be a helpful resource for you, and will quite possibly become a good friend to you.

Posted on November 3, 2017October 23, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

It’s a Suite Life: Community vs Suite-Style Bathrooms

I am a senior at Grove City College and over the past four years I have lived in three of our five main female residence halls. Freshman year I lived in Mary Anderson Pew (MAP) North, as most freshman women do. Sophomore and junior years I lived in MAP South, and this year I am living in MAP West. South and West are both suite-style residence halls, meaning that most of the rooms in these buildings are attached to one other room with a bathroom in the middle. North has community style bathrooms.

I have loved my experiences in both of my suite-style rooms as well as with community bathrooms. I have no clear-cut preference between the two, as they have both been very different and yet great experiences.

Pros of Suite Bathrooms:

Convenience

There is no getting around it, suite-style bathrooms are convenient. Midnight bathroom trips are easy and I am back in bed before I am even fully awake, and being able to carry on a conversation with my roommate while I do dishes or fill our water pitcher is awesome.

2. Privacy

This one is kind of tricky. Yes, there is slightly more privacy in suite bathrooms, but I am still sharing with 2-5 other people, so it is not uncommon that more than one person will be in the bathroom at one time. Grove City College suite bathrooms are unique and nice in the respect that the toilets are still enclosed in stalls, so someone can be in the stall while someone else is in the shower with no problem whatsoever.

3. Bonus Friends

Suite-mates are your bonus roommates. You will likely see them more often than many other people on the hall, since you are sharing a bathroom, and brushing your teeth at the same time everyday allows a certain kind of bond to develop. Suite-mate relationships come in many different forms – some people become best friends, and some people remain friendly acquaintances, but there is always a unique relationship between suite-mates.

Pros of Community Bathrooms

Bonus Friends

Similar to suite bathrooms, the people who you meet in your community bathrooms can become your best friends. Community bathrooms present the unique opportunity to chat with people who you otherwise would never even meet and develop close friendships while you are performing your normal bathroom routines. Before college I never would have thought of the bathroom as a social place, but since leaving the community bathrooms I have really missed meeting new people while doing makeup or doing dishes.

2. No Clashing Schedules

In community bathrooms you don’t have to coordinate with suite-mates and roommates for who is going to shower when. In an entire year of living on a community bathroom hall I only had to wait for a shower once, and that was after a particularly sweaty FitWell (physical education) ended for the day. You can blow dry your hair before your 8 a.m. class without angering a roommate who’s still sleeping, and flushing the toilet at 2:30 a.m. is not going to wake anybody up.

3. Cleaned for You

Community bathrooms are cleaned by the housekeeping staff here at the college throughout the week. I never quite figured out their cleaning schedule, but they did some form of light cleaning in our community bathrooms nearly every day of the week and did a deep clean one or two times a week. I never felt like the bathroom was dirty, and I didn’t have to schedule in time to clean it myself.

Cons of Suite Bathrooms

Cleaning

This is only a minor con. Students in suite-style rooms that have only two rooms attached to a bathroom (so mostly only the women’s suite-style rooms) are responsible for cleaning their own bathrooms. The school provides all of the cleaning supplies that we need for us, so we just need to worry about actually using them. There are many ways to work out a cleaning schedule with suite-mates and roommates, but this year my suite decided that each room would take turns cleaning the bathroom once a week, and it has been working well for us.

2. Schedule Conflicts

My roommate, suite-mates, and myself all have similar nighttime and morning schedules. This is a large part of what makes my roommate and me, in particular, able to share a room. This generally means, however, that several of us are using the bathroom at similar times, which is no big deal when it comes to brushing teeth or washing faces, since there are two sinks in our bathroom, but it is not unusual that we all take showers back to back and would probably take showers at the same time in a community bathroom. The proximity of the bathroom to our sleeping quarters also can be an issue when one of us is getting ready for a morning class while the others are still sleeping – it usually means avoiding having to blow-dry our hair before 8 a.m. and being very careful of not shining light in our roommates’ eyes when entering and exiting the bathroom.

3. Less Spontaneity

I love talking to people and I love spending time with the women on my hall. This is significantly easier to do in halls with community bathrooms for obvious reasons. People have to be much more intentional about opening their doors or interacting with the people they live around in suite-style halls than they would in community halls.

Cons of Community Bathrooms

Less Privacy

You are rarely alone in a community bathroom, which can be fun from a social aspect, but there are definitely times when you just do not want to interact with anyone and community bathrooms can make that a difficult thing to do. Community bathrooms do have double curtains in front of the showers, which means that walking around in nothing but a towel is not a necessity (though, our single-gender residence halls make that an option for those who prefer that).

2. Hand soap

This could just as easily be a pro of community bathrooms. Hand soap is provided for you in community bathrooms (paper towels are provided for both community and suite bathrooms). While this is certainly more convenient, I personally get really excited about seasonally scented hand soaps and have loved getting to choose my own for my suite bathroom. Sometimes people will put fun soaps in community bathrooms, but it gets used a lot faster than it otherwise would.

3. Bring Your Towel

(I am kind of grasping at straws at this point…I love community style bathrooms!)

In community bathrooms you have to remember to bring your towel from your room to the bathroom. You actually do not necessarily have to carry your toiletries to the bathroom, because the residence hall bathrooms at Grove City College all have shelves for students to leave their shower caddies in the bathroom, which is very convenient.

So there you have it! Both community bathrooms and suite-style bathrooms have their pros and their cons, but you are able to have a great experience in either one! If given the option, I would recommend living in a place with community bathrooms for your first year at college in order to have more opportunities to meet people and to avoid unnecessary conflicts with roommates and suite-mates about the bathroom, and then consider living in a suite-style bathroom in your later years of college if you so desire.

Posted on October 30, 2017October 18, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

Opportunities in Entrepreneurship: Startup Weekend

In February of my freshman year at Grove City College, I had the opportunity to attend Startup Weekend Pittsburgh as part of one of my classes, Lean Launchpad. We were offered the option of attending and participating in Startup Weekend Pittsburgh as our midterm, or taking a formal exam. This is just one of the ways that experiential learning is given importance at the College.

Hesitantly, I signed up to attend the Startup Weekend. Up until that point in the school year most of the friends I had made were from my residence hall, and not my classes, so I was afraid that I would be a loner for much of the weekend. That concern was quelled very quickly, though. My professors had taken care of organizing rides from Grove City College to Pittsburgh (about an hour-long drive), and from the moment I greeted my classmates who I was driving with I felt like a part of the group.

Friday night, the first part of the event, was a flurry of excitement. We had the opportunity to network with other entrepreneurial minded people from the area, and those who wanted to were able to pitch their ideas to the entire crowd in the hopes that those would be the businesses we worked on all weekend. After the pitches we networked some more and voted on the best business ideas with post-it notes. Three of the teams chosen were pitched, and in turn led, by Grove City College students.

We spent Saturday working in various teams to do research and prepare a minimum viable product for presentation on Sunday evening. The weather proved to be an additional complication, in that a bad snowstorm hit Pittsburgh in the middle of Friday night and many of us were snowed-in at friends’ and family’s houses and could not get to the school where the program was held. We therefore had to work remotely. This taught me to be flexible and work with various groups remotely in order to complete tasks.

On Sunday we finished our products and prepared our final pitches, and then ate dinner while networking with people from the other teams. At the conclusion of the event, each team presented their businesses and awards were announced. Grove City College had quite a showing in the awards (check out the original press release to find out more about this).

I arrived back on campus on Sunday night refreshed and energized for Entrepreneurship. The weekend had taught me to put myself out there to learn new things, it taught me that Grove City College students look out for one another regardless of how close we are or where we are, it taught me to trust the experiences that my professors suggest. Since that point I have had countless opportunities similar to Startup Weekend, and have never regretted taking one of them. While I have learned so much in the classroom, it has been experiential activities like this one where I’ve learned the most about business, and luckily the Entrepreneurship Department at Grove City College provides experiences like Startup Weekend all of the time.

Posted on October 25, 2017October 18, 2017 by Abby Schiela — Leave a comment

Do Not Fear The Humanities Core

Grove City College requires all students to complete a Humanities Core as part of their general education requirements. These have been updated and changed since my start here in 2014, but they still serve the same purposes and cover similar course material. Thanks to these courses I have been exposed to history, music and the arts, literature, study of worldviews, and academic study of the Bible.

One of my biggest fears when it came to these humanities classes was that they would be a waste of time, but that was a fear that proved to be unfounded. As an Entrepreneurship/English dual major I was afraid that Civilization and Literature especially, one of these core classes, would overlap with my English coursework, but it did not. We read classic novels like The Aeneid and Paradise Lost, and my English professors (many of whom teach Civilization and Literature along with their English department courses) have not spent time re-teaching us these books.

The books I read in Civilization and Literature (affectionately known on campus as “Civ Lit”) shaped the way that I view the world, and Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno led me to think deeply about my faith and difficult theological questions pertaining to Heaven, Hell, and sin. After reading these books I am convinced that all Christians and questioners alike should be exposed to them.

The Humanities Core class that has shaped me most, though, has been Speculative Mind (Now changed slightly and called “Christianity and Civilization”). For the first half of this class we discussed various world views and how each one views prime reality, external reality, man, death, knowledge, ethics, and history. We then transitioned in the course to talk about various Biblical topics and modern culture topics and how we engage with the world as Christians. It was this latter portion that affected me the most.

My professor led discussions on current hot-button topics in a way that allowed us to engage in conversation, analyze various facets and point of view, but did not devolve into arguing and hard-headedness the way that many conversations of the like do. This led me to see the world through the lenses of my classmates, all of whom have had different experiences in their lives that myself, at least for a class period.

There was one class period that changed me in particular, though – the day that we discussed the Sabbath. My professor laid out the concept of the Sabbath in a way that I had never heard before, and argued that despite many people seeing it as an optional practice in modern times, it is still a very important doctrine to follow. The following semester, I decided to observe a weekly Sabbath after being convicted in Speculative Mind, and it was life-giving. Observing the Sabbath has brought me closer to God and has brought more peace into my life overall.

So did I learn a lot academically in my Humanities Core classes? Absolutely. This learning, though, is not what was the most important to me. I learned so much more about living life as a Christian and engaging with the modern world. Do not fear the Humanities Core, because it will bring you out of the comfort zone of your discipline and into an area of extreme growth.