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Celeste Barnaby shares her experience as an introvert during her first week as a college freshman.
Most colleges have an orientation period before classes start where freshman move in and spend a couple days getting situated, learning about the school, and meeting their peers. There are usually a lot of cool events that you can choose to attend at your leisure. This is your chance to make a first impression and …
Kelly reminds us that despite busy schedules and today’s technological society, reading should still be a priority.
I personally believe that an undergraduate liberal arts degree is the key to success. An undergraduate liberal arts degree goes far beyond expanding one’s knowledge. Having grounding in good literature and a basic understanding of the sweep of human history and culture provides the best foundation for any future learning and for being able to interact …
Former GLI Communications Intern, Olivia Tang-Kong, writes about how shyness doesn’t have to limit your ability to be a leader or embrace your authentic self.
It was a little over a year ago that I walked into an auditorium of strange faces. There were small clusters of people scattered everywhere – where do I sit? It was the first club meeting of the year, and as a brand-new freshman in college, I knew this would be a great opportunity to meet …
So, what are you going to do after you graduate?” As a junior in college majoring in the liberal arts, this question plagues me on a weekly basis. By this point in my college career, I have a few standard responses. The hopeful: “I’m going to make cultural change.” The indignant: “I’m going to do …
When people told me that post-college life would be difficult, I believed them. I just didn’t believe that it would be difficult for me. I graduated from Smith College on May 17th 2010. I moved back home to Harlem and my mother’s couch ready for the next phase of my life. It’s August 2010 and …
When asked to write an article in tandem with my mother about how the college application and selection process affected us both, my initial reaction was something like, “What is there to say? That was so not a big deal.” The whole thing seemed so four months ago. But then I quickly remembered that I’d …
Before applying for colleges, my daughter Maddie set a few broad criteria: She wanted a liberal arts college with a low teacher-to-student ratio, and she didn’t want to be in a big city. My main criterion was amorphous: I wanted her to be happy. But what is happiness? Does prestige matter? Would she be happier …
In the anti-sexual assault community on my campus, there’s a lot of talk about “self-care.” We start every group meeting with a check-in about how we’re feeling and end every meeting affirming one thing we are planning to do in the next few days to take care of ourselves. We promote self-care since anti-sexual violence work takes a huge emotional toll on those in the community: in order to keep working in the field, we have to proactively work to prevent burnout.
With that said, self-care is a complicated concept. At first it doesn’t seem that way: usually, when going around the table in a meeting, people will say things like, “I’ll make sure I get enough sleep tonight,” or “I’m going to chill out and finally watch this week’s episode of Glee.” Now, getting sleep and watching Glee are great things. But beyond those one-time activities, how can we make sure to do self-care at times when we feel pressured to put everyone else’s needs first?
When Simone asked me to write for this blog, I was excited and nervous (nervcited!). I wrote a bunch of practice posts before I was satisfied with one and finally submitted it—my first post about my Consent Facilitator training. Before I submitted it, however, I sent Passion (one of the other fabulous writers here and another intern at GLI this past summer) an anxious text message that said something like ,“Can we talk about the blog? I don’t know if what I wrote is ok!” Passion responded telling me that whatever I had written was probably fine. I wrote back, “maybe I should ask Simone?” And Passion replied, “You know the answer to that, you are just asking me because it makes you feel better.”
About three weeks ago, I spoke with Rachel Simmons at her book tour event in New York City and talked about my emotional journey pre-GLI and post-GLI. It was a really great experience for me–I got to share parts of myself that I never share with anyone with a group of strangers (ok, a few of my friends were there). Actually, I felt really scared, but felt great afterwards. So I thought I would share what I said that night with this community:
Hi, my name is Lauren Herold. I’m a sophomore at Columbia University and in the summer of 2006, I was a camper at GLI. This past summer, I also interned at GLI. First, I would like to thank Rachel for inviting me. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to speak here.
