Spring break what up!
Well this is interesting- today Poughkeepsie weather decided to give us a bit of the winter we’ve been lacking lately. I’m alright with it as long as it’s decent weather once I come back from spring break. I’m going home to Kentucky this break, which is just what I need after a tough round of midterms. I’ve got a lot of family back home and strong ties to my place of birth since I’ve never lived anywhere else (though I’ve traveled a bit here and there, especially since my 28 year old sister moved to New Zealand. That’s a nice trip to make if you can swing it).
The reason I mentioned home is because this time of year is really exciting for people who have applied to internships for the summer. Some plan on being far from home, while others are applying to programs here at Vassar. A couple of my friends are doing either the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) or the Ford Scholars program, both are paid summer-long interships here at Vassar, which is amazing. Those are always great experiences because you get to work with a professor on his or her research and really get practical lab experience.
I did something like that my senior year in high school back home, so I decided against applying to URSI this summer. Instead, I’m going to focus on logging some hours shadowing a vet, both small and large animal if possible– it’s good experience either way. Since I’m on the pre-vet track– which is not a major at Vassar, instead you just take the prerequisite courses for vet school– I will need to have a certain amount of experience by the time I graduate, and since I live in Kentucky, the land of the bluegrass and thoroughbred racing, I figured I’d take advantage of my opportunities back home. The only down side to that, is that I’ll be 800 miles away from most of my Vassar friends, who are going to work either at Vassar, NYC, or who live up here already.
But I’m used to it at this point. I absolutely love home, but I came to Vassar because I knew it was the school for me. Learning to balance home and Vassar life has been a bit of a challenge, but I’ve got a much better handle on it than I did freshman year. Almost all of my closest friends stayed in state to go to college, so that was one big challenge to overcome. It certainly does make the breaks from school that much sweeter– being able to see all my friends every time I come home is pretty lucky, and a luxury I don’t think most people have. Plus, at the end of long breaks from school I find myself asking Vassar friends when they’ll be back “home” again, meaning at Vassar. I’ve found that feeling of comfort is not necessarily singular nor exclusive, and I’m happy to have more than one place I call home.
