Big V State: November 2015

There are many different types of living options at Saint Michael’s College. We have regular dormitories, suites, apartments and townhouses. Students elect their preferred room based on their lottery in April. In addition, there are also some factors influencing students getting a lottery with a good or bad number.

(Yellow=Dormitory, Orange=Suite, Black=Apartment, Blue=Townhouse)

The first one is what year a student is. If you are a rising senior, you will definitely have the preferential right to choose your lottery, then juniors and sophomores. The next factor is your GPA, because the higher GPA you have, the better lottery number lottery you can get. I think this is a very fair way to determine what kind of housing you will receive. Because every student has the same right in the school, the only way to determine who has more privilege is dependent on their academic performance.

(My suite's lounge-GEAR housing)

However, for international students, there is a different choice. Because our college really cares and wants to improve national students’ competency, our college has created a program called GEAR (Global Experience Academic Residential Program) in a suites hall. This is a housing especially for international students, as well as American students who want to hang out with international students.

(Indian Food)

(Japanese Night)

(Saudi Arabian Kebab)

The biggest difference between GEAR housing and other housing is that each suite in GEAR has to create an event for its floor, and invite anyone and everyone to come. The event can be any activity, but the school mainly wants residents to bring more cultural events from different countries. Why? Because it is very important to let the students know how important understanding different countries’ cultures, languages and even economics are in modern times.

(Bowling Night)

For example, my suite created a bowling night because most of our events were held in the building. But this time, I want to bring my residents off campus to go outside the school. I booked two 12 seat school vans for my event, but more than 24 residents came to join us. This proved a very successful event because everyone was bowling until around midnight! We had a blast!

(Bowling Night)

In general, I have seen many fun activities in our international suite - such as Saudi Arabian students cooking kebab, Indian dance, Japanese night, Chinese dumplings, and carving pumpkins. In addition, every international student is not an English native speaker, so studying in the U.S can sometimes be stressful. In order to help international students to relax mentally, our school also prepares a meditation trainer for international students every Tuesday night! It is not usual to see A university creating such a cool international housing experience, and preparing so many valuable events for international students on a small campus, but Saint Michael’s College does it. As an RA and a resident in GEAR housing, I can feel our school pays a lot of attention and energy to international students and our daily needs. This is what makes Saint Michael’s College special.

(Bowling Night-GEAR Residents)

(Mountain Day During High School in 2010)

I had hiked a few times since I came to the U.S. The first time was during high school. In my high school, we always had one random day off during the week in October for hiking. My school always did not tell us which day is our Mountain Day because they wanted to give students a surprise and encourage everybody to go hiking. The interesting thing was that if anyone of us was trying to skip the Mountain Day for a day off, we had to prove certain reasons; otherwise, we might get an absence if we did not go hiking.

(Snow Mountain Hiking in Seattle in 2010)

Unfortunately, I did not make it to the top for the first time because I ran out of times and I did not have any experience hiking in the U.S. Hiking in the U.S is a little different from China since there are no stairs in mountains here. What we had are just some directions and a not very obvious trail. I regretted that I could not make it to the top, but I promised myself that I must make it to the top next year.

After my second time hiking with my school, my perspective of hiking was completely changed. The moment that I could see the landscape on the top just made me feel wonderful. I was telling myself that the hike was really worth it even though the trail was long and hard.

(Hiking Mansfield Mountain in 2013)

After I moved to Vermont, I got much more excited for hiking, because here are numerous mountains we can hike. The first mountain that I hiked is the most challenging one in Vermont, and that is Mansfield Mountain, the highest mountain in the state. There were two trails I could choose; one is more steep, dangerous but short, and another one is easier but much longer. I chose the dangerous one because I wanted to challenge and remind myself why I could not make it to the top for the first time!