Hi everyone! It’s the second week back from spring break, and it’s quite a busy one! Because terms are only ten weeks long here at Lawrence (we have three 10-week terms per year), classes (and life) are very fast-paced, so there is often quite a bit of work to do for classes even during first week! There is still room for fun, though, and this past weekend was a great one for me because my family was in town to visit! They were vacationing in Boston, and decided to make a stop in Appleton before heading back to Los Angeles. It’s interesting for a lot of us at Lawrence when our families visit, because it feels a bit like our two worlds are colliding, but I had a great time showing my family around campus, introducing them to my friends, and getting to spend time with them.
Before last term ended, I participated in a very unique and exciting event here at Lawrence! I went on a special tour of Lawrence called “The Secret Places of Lawrence Tour!” Basically, it was a tour of secret or seldom-visited places on the Lawrence campus, which included the Main Hall cupola, the underground tunnel between Memorial Hall and the Wriston Art Center, and the Ormsby Hall attic. The tour was only available to sophomores, so my sophomore clarinet friends and I went on the tour together. The cupola and the attic were only accessible via extremely steep stairs, so the tour ended up being quite a workout, but it was amazing to visit parts of campus where so few Lawrentians have been! The main hall cupola was definitely my highlight of the tour; the cupola is such a landmark of Lawrence, and getting to look down on the Lawrence campus and Appleton from such a high elevation was an amazing experience. Making the journey to the cupola is actually considered quite an honor, as well as somewhat of a rite of passage, and many past Lawrence students have written their names on the walls and window frames of the cupola, which has created a sort of permanent record of Lawrence alumni up there! My clarinet friends and continued the tradition and wrote our names and class year on one of the window frames—it was quite an emotional moment! Here is the view from the cupola (though it’s a little distorted!).
As for this term, it’s great to be back in the swing of things, and this might be my busiest term yet. My two main classes are Music History Survey II and International Relations, and I am very excited for both of them! Since I am a Bachelor of Music major, my clarinet study counts as my third class, and I will be doing a lot of practicing this term in preparation for my juried performance in May. This performance, informally known as a “jury,” is basically a judged/graded performance that is adjudicated by my clarinet professor and several other members of the woodwind faculty, and this performance will serve as my final exam for my sophomore year clarinet study. At many music conservatories, jury preparation is known for being very stressful and intense, but I have found Lawrence’s approach to juries to be fairly low-key while also productive. The real challenge for me this term will be to balance my classes with all of my other commitments! The one new commitment that I am particularly excited about is my internship with the Warch Campus Center (our student union and dining facility); I am helping to plan and execute the campus center’s on-site weddings, conferences, and corporate events this spring and during the summer! Event management has been a career interest of mine for quite some time now, and I am really looking forward to learning about event function, logistical planning, and the hospitality industry through this internship.
That’s all for this week! Below is a fuzzy but aesthetically interesting photo of me and my friends atop the Main Hall cupola!
