Category: Student Stories

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Being an Undeclared Major – Katelyn Bartley

 

Sophomore Katelyn Bartley talks about coming to Grove City College without having a declared major. She says she decided to be undeclared because she was not confident in what she wanted to do for a career. Katelyn also felt that as a home-schooled student she had not explored all the options of possible career paths well enough to make an informed decision. She says she knew that she enjoyed some subjects she had learned about in high school, like English and History, but did not think that she wanted to pick a major based on that.

Katelyn says that as an undeclared major she was able to take different classes and learn more about her options for majors. She was able to avoid falling behind by taking a lot of required classes. One of these core classes was sociology and, from there, she developed an interest in social work. After taking more social work classes her second semester, she declared her major as Social Work.

Katelyn says she does not regret coming to college as an undeclared major. She says the decision was very helpful because she did not take classes she did not need by coming in as another major and then having to switch later on. She had the opportunity to take general classes that would apply to any major while exploring a few classes that sparked her interest. She credits this decision to not putting her behind in her major requirements now.

When asked if she has any advice for rising freshmen that are facing the same decisions, she says they should come in undeclared if they have a couple options and are unsure of one specific major. Katelyn points out that the professors are really helpful with students that want to explore options or have questions. She also says that student advisors are helpful in transferring from being undeclared to finding a major. She says that career services also personally aided her in her decision.

“There are always people here to give you advice and help you figure it out,” says Katelyn.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Being an Undeclared Major: Lilly Klein

Sophomore student Lilly Klein knows what it is like to come into college without being set on a major. Although being undeclared can be stressful, Lilly says she does not regret the decision.

Lilly says she always knew she always enjoyed writing, but was not sure what career options would be available to her in the field. Due to this, she made the choice to hold off on choosing her major. She also says that she did not want to decide on a major and then have to change.
During her freshman year, Lilly took mainly general education classes that would apply to most (if not all) majors. During her sophomore year she branched out and took an accounting class. Lilly says that it was this class that helped her decide on a major. During that semester she declared an Accounting major with an English minor.
“I liked it a lot and I would nerd out about it with my mom and my friends. That’s what convinced me,” reflects Lilly.
She says she is grateful for her year and a half without a declared major because she says otherwise she might have never found her passion for accounting. Although her mom studied accounting, she had not considered it as an option for herself.
Lilly believes that the main benefit of being undeclared is that it gives the student a lot of flexibility and they can explore different classes without feeling like they are putting off classes in their major.
When asked if she has any advice for younger students faced with a similar situation to hers, she says, “Don’t be afraid of not having a major. I’d also say make sure you take a lot of diverse classes. One thing that I kind of regret is that I took a lot of required classes in my spring of freshman year. It wasn’t a bad decision necessarily because I got them out of the way, but it put off my decision-making process a bit more. Try to balance required classes with exploratory classes.”
Posted on by — Leave a comment

CliftonStrengths Assessment Project | Part 4 with Jake Dobransky

Jake Dobransky

This year, Grove City College had several students take the CliftonStrengths assessment for free as part of a grant the college was awarded in order to foster a deeper exploration of calling and vocation for the students. The program development grant is from the Council of Independent Colleges, specifically their Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education. This assessment endeavors to provide students with a common language of talents and strengths and attempts to promote a culture where students thrive both inside the classroom here at Grove City College, and in the outside world. One of those students that took the CliftonStrengths Assessment is junior Jake Dobransky, who is pursuing a Business Economics major.

I asked Jake how the CliftonStrengths Assessment has helped to shape his understanding of calling and vocation, and he said, “The CliftonStrengths Assessment has helped me see that whatever future God has for me, He has wired me with strengths and gifts to prepare me for my future roles.” I also asked Jake about how learning his results has helped him in his academics and he said that the assessment has not really influenced his academic work. Although he did say it gave him a greater understanding of who he is, but he is still the same student as he was before.

I discussed with Jake how learning, and now knowing his results, has helped him in different leadership roles he may experience. He said, “The assessment gave me clear insight that my strengths don’t center in influencing others. If I want to inspire or change a group of people’s minds, it may be best for me to connect with an individual with influence and have them encourage others with their help.” I also asked him how learning his results has helped him in relationships with others, both on and off-campus, he said, “With my greater awareness of my sense of responsibility, I try to be more patient with those around me who like to waste time.  It is right and natural to be balanced, and that means having fun is good once in a while.” Jake said learning his different strengths and talents through this assessment has helped him to be a better Residents Assistant (RA) to those he serves. He said both in understanding why he values his work and how he can better engage with his residents.

Jake said he has not noticed any significant changes in his daily life, but he realizes now he is more self-aware. He said when working with others he is more patient and tries to selectively choose his words in order to achieve the best end result in any given situation. Jake said the best takeaway from this assessment was, “I am not an influencer by nature and must rely on facts and reason to convince others.  I have adjusted my efforts in how I try to relate with those around me.”

Jake plans to start a career where he can utilize the economics he is learning here at Grove City College and pair it alongside his love for data analytics when he graduates. Here on campus Jake is a member of the Beta Sigma fraternity, a Residents Assistant (RA) in Lincoln, a member of the Men’s Club Volleyball Team, a member of the Crimson and White Society, and a Member of Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK).

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Double Varsity Sports with Gretchen Elsey

Gretchen Elsey Competing in the High Jump
Gretchen Taking a Shot on the Basketball Court

Gretchen Elsey is a sophomore here at Grove City College, majoring in Exercise Science, while also pursuing a Nutrition minor. When Gretchen is not in the classroom, you can most likely find her on the basketball court or on the track. That is correct, Gretchen plays two different sports at the varsity level for Grove City College. Gretchen is a shooting guard for the women’s basketball team, and she does mostly high jump, with a little bit of long jump for the track and field team.

Gretchen said it takes drive and discipline to play two varsity sports at the collegiate level, but she said she would not want it any other way. When I asked Gretchen about the time she must commit to both sports she said, “Basketball is definitely much more demanding because the season is so long. Our basketball team does a lot of community service projects as well so it’s not just basketball practice every day and it’s super cool to be able to reach out to the community and form those relationships. Whereas track is a little different because I miss a large majority of the indoor season because of basketball. They both take the same level of commitment though, in both sports, the team and coaches are relying on you to show up and focus in to get 1% better each day.”

Gretchen said she had always planned on playing two varsity level sports when she decided to come to Grove City College. I asked Gretchen if she prefers one sport over the other and she said, “That’s a tough question because they are so different. Track is nice because its more individualized in a team setting and it’s scored as a team event, but it heavily relies on how the individual performs. Basketball is 100% a team sport and everyone needs one another to perform at its best.” Gretchen said she has recently excelled more in track, but that basketball has taught her a lot about being mentally tough, which she can carry over from the court to the track.

Advantages coming from playing two sports, according to Gretchen, are all the friends and connections that are made and being like a big family with your team. She also said playing two sports really teaches her how to manage and balance her time effectively. Gretchen said some disadvantages are having less time for relaxing and taking naps, and that trying to make plans can be difficult because there is often a lack of free time.

I asked Gretchen how she manages her time when she is in the heat of her sports seasons, and she said, “It can be challenging but having very little free time really makes you have to do your work in between classes or right after practice. I’ve always been bouncing around from sport to sport and keeping busy, so for me it’s still the same routine.”

I also asked Gretchen how she focuses on academics when she is in the thick of her two different schedules, and she said, “It can be hard at times especially when there are those weeks where it feels like you have absolutely everything due and five exams and no time to do any of it, but I know that in a few years I won’t have competitive sports anymore so ultimately, I’m here to focus on my academics because that will follow me after my college career.”

Gretchen Elsey is the 3rd on the team in 3-pointers, and a two-year letter winner for the women’s basketball team. When it comes to track and field, Gretchen is the 2018 Presidents’ Athletic Conference (PAC) outdoor high jump champion, 1st Team All-PAC, she has been named PAC Rookie of the Week twice, she has been named ECAC Rookie of the Week twice, she is the 2019 PAC indoor high jump champion, and she is the indoor record holder for women’s high jump at Grove City College.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Discovering My Artistic Abilities | Ceramics

Are you one of those people who has always had a profound interest in art? The kind of intense intrigue where you look at the piece of art and cannot help but wonder what the artist was thinking or how it is even possible that the creator was able to make such a complex and beautiful work simply with paint, a brush, a canvas, and their mind? This type of curious mind was one which I possessed and which always drew me to art… no not as some artist who loved to draw and was extremely gifted, but rather a terrible artist incapable of drawing a simple shape but who was simply intrigued by the work and precision others were able to produce in their works. In having never possessed the capability to draw or paint I somewhat gave up on exploring the field of art and had just stuck to simply observing and enjoying others pieces, that is until my junior year of college when I found a form of art that I had not had the opportunity to experiment with earlier in life. This new medium for art supplied me with the opportunity to use the strength of my hands and machines to create my art rather than the steadiness of my hand or my ability to blend colors. This new opportunity supplied me with confidence that I could in fact contribute something artistic for once.

The medium I was introduced to in the second semester of my junior year was ceramics, more specifically wheel throwing. For those of you who do not know what wheel throwing is, it is a form of art in which one uses clay, a spinning wheel, and various other tools to create pottery. Being that a wheel is used this allows symmetry in these art pieces to be acquired quite easily and allows for enhanced focus on other areas of the art form. As noted above, this form of art allowed me to avoid my shortcomings and inability to be steady, blend, and draw and allowed me to focus on new skills and techniques. In one semester of work I had fallen in love with this form of art as it supplied me the ability to contribute and inspire others as I had been my whole life.

After the close of the semester my interest only grew greater for this field of art which drove me to pursue more classes and more opportunities to work with this artistic medium known as clay. I am now in the second semester of my senior year and before graduation have made space for a few elective credit hours which have allowed me to add two more ceramics classes to my college transcript and which allow me the opportunity to both work with clay in a different manner and to hone in my wheel throwing skills one final time. The two ceramics courses I am currently taking are beginning hand building where I will be able to use different equipment to make more intricate and varying shaped pieces and advanced ceramics where I will be able to keep improving my wheel throwing abilities and creating new more complicated pieces.

With my story I hope that this encourages you to pursue your interests in college, whether these interests are something you already enjoy or something you did not know existed. Explore the various opportunities of your college or university and use your elective hours to learn about things that interest you, you never know what you might learn or what you might grow to love.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

CliftonStrengths Assessment Project | Part 1

The CliftonStrengths assessment is an online talent assessment designed to allow people that take it to discover “the one true you.” Completing the CliftonStrengths assessment allows people to discover what they naturally do best; it helps them learn how to develop their greatest talents and allows them to use their customized results to live their best lives.

Widely known for its polls and employee selection research, Gallup (the company that makes the CliftonStrengths assessment) has conducted extensive research for over 30 years to identify talent that could be enhanced and used to pursue positive outcomes in work and educational settings. CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) is an online assessment of personal talent that identifies areas in which an individual has the greatest potential for building strengths. As an assessment based on positive psychology, its main application has been in the work domain, but it has been used for understanding individuals and groups in a variety of settings, especially higher education.

This year, Grove City College had several students take the CliftonStrengths assessment for free as part of a grant the College was awarded in order to foster a deeper exploration of calling and vocation for the students. The program development grant is from the Council of Independent Colleges, specifically their Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education. Grove City College has a mission of “equipping our students to pursue their unique callings.”  This assessment endeavors to provide students with a common language of talents and strengths and attempts to promote a culture where students thrive both inside the classroom here at Grove City College, and in the outside world.

Today, CliftonStrengths is available in more than 25 languages and more than 20 million worldwide have taken the assessment. CliftonStrengths presents 177 items that each consists of a pair of potential self-descriptors, and most of these descriptors are associated with a “theme.” A theme is a category of talents, which are defined as recurring and consistent patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior. The assessment measures the presence of talent in 34 distinct themes.

I will write a series of blog posts featuring students and faculty who have taken the CliftonStrengths assessment and interview them about how it has helped them learn more about themselves and their talents and how they are utilizing those results in their daily lives.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

ICO Ecuador

Rachel and the ICO team in Ecuador (Photo Courtesy of Rachel Puls)
Rachel and the ICO team building for the locals (Photo Courtesy of Rachel Puls)

An Inner-City Outreach (ICO) trip is a mission trip where Grove City College students go out to a certain city, some in the US and some abroad, by themselves and do different missions work while also experiencing the culture of the place they are traveling to.

Sophomore Rachel Puls, who is an Elementary and Special Education major recently went on an ICO trip to Shell Mera, Ecuador from December 27th to January 7th. Rachel went to Ecuador with a group of 15 other Grove City College students. I asked her what made her decide to go on this ICO trip, and she said, “I always knew that I wanted to eventually try a missions trip, so I impulsively went to the meeting and applied and got in.”

Rachel said she absolutely loved her experience on this trip and would love to eventually go back. While there, the team built a workshop for the people living in the jungle to take classes and learn trades/skills that will help them to get jobs and sell their merchandise in the future. They also did some connecting with the Waorani Indians and people living in Ecuador as well as authentically experienced the culture and some of their traditions since they were there during New Years.

I asked Rachel if she would recommend going on an ICO trip to others, and she said, “Going as far as I did is definitely not something for everyone, but I would encourage people to try at least one in their lifetime, even if it is just in your neighboring city.  It is something that can really open your eyes to the Lord and help you to grow in ways you never thought possible.” This was Rachel’s first time going out of the country, and she said it was a great way to do it, and a way to truly experience other cultures.

She said her favorite part of the whole experience was being able to connect with so many people and not being worried about worldly or outside things, just being concerned with experiencing authentic communion together. I asked her if the trip met what she expected when signing up, and ultimately traveling there, and she said, “In some ways yes, but I also did not set many expectations and this trip went above and beyond for what I thought was going to happen and what I was going to see and experience.” She said the only downside to the whole trip was that some of the members of the group got sick toward the end, which was not the best.

Rachel said her favorite memory from the trip was when one day the team was hiking through the Amazon Jungle and she got to cut down banana trees with a machete!

Here on campus Rachel is a part of the ICO Ecuador team, and she is also a member of the Gamma Sigma Phi sorority, the Homecoming Committee, and a co-captain of the Women’s Club Lacrosse Team.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Faculty Led Study Trips (Part 2)

As a sophomore, I have had the privilege to partake in one of the faculty led study trips abroad during the May 2018 intersession. I signed up to take the three-credit humanities course, Western Civilization. With Dr. James Bibza and Dr. Paul Schaeffer as the professors teaching this course and leading us in our travels, the trip was guaranteed to be a success. These two professors had experience with the travel route that we would be taking, and had worked closely with a tour company to ensure we would have smooth travels. The objectives they had set for our class to accomplish seemed reasonable. It included some readings from a text book, and attending lectures while we were on our trip. However, they ultimately hoped that we would immerse ourselves in the new cultures that we would be experiencing.

Our studies began in London, England for four days. Following a day trip to Oxford, our group headed for Dover. At this point, we took a ferry across the English Channel to Calais, France. Once we were 0n the continent, our stops included Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Innsbruck, and Heidelberg. In total, our trip visited six European countries in a 14 day period.

Once we had safely returned to the United States, our final task was writing a paper that discussed any of the topics that we discussed in lectures. The paper may have been a requirement of the course, but I know that many of my fellow travelers felt that it helped them to thoughtfully compose the incredible experience that we shared.

The trip itself was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I will always cherish the memories that I made through it. However, I was also lucky enough to also make lasting bonds with people that I may not have had the chance to meet without this course. My experience with faculty led study trips was incredible, and in the future I will absolutely look to do more of them.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Inside Married Life: Priya Sprunk’s Perspective

Priya Sprunk was a Psychology major with a concentration in Exercise Science during her time at Grove City College. As a member of the 2017 graduating class, Priya still feels very connected with the students. She was a member of the Sigma Theta Chi sorority, and still holds close relationships with the current girls, along with alumni. About a month after graduation, Priya was married to her best friend, Nate Sprunk, who changed her formerly the last name of Graczyk. Since Nate is a current senior at The Grove, Priya was able to shed some light on their relationship while in different stages of their lives.

When asked what it is like with Nate still in school, Priya responded with:

“It is different for sure. It is a somewhat challenging dynamic when one person in a relationship works full time and one is a student full time. I sometimes wish I didn’t have to live in my college town because it makes me feel like I haven’t fully moved on from college. However, my job helps me feel like I’m making a difference, which helps. I work as an instructor for adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities who have graduated from high school, but still, need to develop independent living and employment skills before living on their own. I really enjoy it!”

Priya stressed how it has been hard to make time for other friends after working full time and then coming home to spend time with Nate.  However, she feels that marriage has helped both become more independent and hard-working, along with giving them the happiness of living together.

“We met about 10 years ago when I was in 7th grade and Nate was in 6th grade. We were part of the same youth group and were always close friends. I had a huge crush on him, but we didn’t start dating until the summer of 2014 before my freshman year at Grove City College. The college time together helped us grow together; I don’t even recognize the young and immature teenage couple we were four years ago. Living in a Christian environment helped me grow spiritually and make Christian friends who hold me accountable while encouraging me. Later we began to think about marriage as we started thinking about our future careers and what we wanted for our lives.  By the fall of my junior year after many discussions by ourselves, with both sets of parents, and with friends, we had decided we were ready to commit our lives to each other. We were engaged the following March,” Priya said.

Priya and Nate continue to enjoy each other’s company, build upon their relationship, and focus on God. By attending church, reading their Bibles, and praying together, their commitment to growing spiritually has shown in their actions toward others and each other. They lift one another up while practicing patience and empathy in the hard moments. Priya looks forward to their awesome future.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Favorite Aspects of Grove City College – The Atmosphere

When looking at other colleges my senior year of high school, I thought I really liked the bigger city campuses like Pitt or Duquesne, but the more I considered walking to classes every day and the feeling of overall safety, I decided that those campuses were not for me. As much as I wanted to rebel against every aspect of Grove City College, it felt more like home with each visit, especially since a large portion of my family are alumni.

Over the past four years, I have loved the small campus. Yes, there are times that I wished I had an abundance of restaurant options or more places to visit, like Penn State, but it has challenged me to find excitement even when it seems lacking. With my love for photography, the open, quiet town and outskirts of Grove City have made for interesting subjects of my camera. Walking around the train tracks, down Pinchalong road, through the peaceful neighborhoods, over the beautiful campus, and in the quaint downtown have been a few of my favorite parts of attending this college.

With the small campus comes more personal relationships among the student body, professors, coaches, and administrative staff. In talking with students who attend larger colleges, they are always amazed that I go and sit with my advisor regularly to catch up on each other’s home life. I appreciate my relationships with everyone on this campus and how influential they will be even post-college. It is crazy to think that my freshman year roommates will be there for monumental moments in my future, as I will be with them. My faith has genuinely grown during my time here, from friends, teachers, the incorporation in classes, and the overall Christian values of the College.  Although graduation will be bittersweet, I know that the lessons and morals I have strengthened at Grove City College will always be with me.