This week I went to a public health talk. There was a keynote speaker, an exhibit, and several public health program recruiters, as well as Bryn Mawr students and advisors who have experience in that area. The keynote speaker, Cynthia Eyakuze (BMC ’94), spoke about her own path to the public health field after graduation from Bryn Mawr. For the first few years after graduation, she worked in lower-level positions in organizations that were doing things in the field of public health that she wanted to be a part of. Even though she was in lower level positions, she still got to be an important part of the missions of the companies with which she was involved because she spoke French. Eventually, she went for a degree in public health and then started to move up in the ranks, eventually becoming Director of the Women’s Rights Program at Open Society Foundations.

I am not going to apply to public health degree programs after Bryn Mawr. I want to apply to occupational therapy school. I went to a public health event because it is one of many things that I am interested in, and maybe down the line, I will decide to move into this field and use the skills that I learned from being in a hospital as a therapist to make a difference in this field. My conversations with the people at the event reinforced that this is possible. Very few of the people there took a straight path to public health. For many of the people I talked to, their path was very circuitous. An interest in people and a passion for health science can combine in a lot of different ways, and one of those ways is in a path to public health. It was encouraging to talk to people who were passionate about the same things that I am, and who have done many different things with that passion; things that I have not thought about doing and may never get the chance to try.

It made me glad that I go to a school where literally hundreds of options are open to me after graduation, and I just have to pick. People with my same degree go into a variety of different fields and do interesting and important things. People with different degrees from me go into the same field that I plan on going into but apply the skills of that field in a way that is unique to their specific background.

This year, I joined a club. While doing such a thing is not always advisable in your junior year, when you already have many commitments, challenging classes, and plans for the future to spend your time on, I decided that this particular club was worth it. I have joined the Body Image Council, a club dedicated to addressing body image issues on campus. I feel that these issues are very important to talk about and work on, because so many people have to battle with these issues in private for fear of being stigmatized and judged. I joined this club because I want to help make this a subject that people can freely talk about, if they want, without having to worry about these negative consequences.

I am writing about this now because this week is Body Positivity week, sponsored by the Body Image Council. There are a lot of events happening on campus, such as a free yoga class, a film screening, and clothes donations. Yesterday, I tabled for the event in the campus center to let people know about body positivity week. In addition to handing out informational flyers, our table had a huge piece of paper with the words “What do you love about your body?” on it. The idea was simple: people were invited to write the things they loved about their bodies on the paper. IT was a challenge for me. In order to get people to come over, you have to call out to random strangers and ask them if they want to write something they love about their bodies. I’m not all that outgoing, and people generally don’t like to be solicited.

When I initially called out to people they seemed wary. Unless Girl Scout cookies are involved, it’s hard to get people excited on a Monday. When they realized that they would get the chance to talk about what they loved about their bodies, they surprised me. People smiled. Lots of people came over and wrote on the poster. It turned out; people had a lot of things to say about their bodies. Some of them were simple, like “I like my eyes”, and some were a little more involved, like descriptions of the things that their bodies let them do. A lot of them walked away smiling, and it made me glad to be a part of this club.

There are many benefits to taking classes off campus. For example, you have access to a wider range of course offerings, you get to meet students from other schools, and you get to expand your knowledge of mainline traffic (that last one might be a drawback). There are, however, a few drawbacks, and I encountered one such challenge this past week. It turns out that not every school has spring break on the same week, and I found myself with two half spring breaks. One week, I didn’t have to go to my Villanova class, and the next week, I had spring break from all of my other classes but still had to attend class at Villanova. It essentially meant that I was staying on campus for a large part of spring break.

When you are on campus when most of the student body is not, there are two major challenges. The first is food; the dining halls are not open. The second is entertainment. With everyone gone, you and the few people on campus have to come up with creative ways to fill the hours that you would normally spend in class and doing homework. The food problem was surprisingly easy to solve. My friend has an apartment with a kitchen, so we got to spend much of our extra time cooking and baking to our heart’s content. One night, we even had blackberry-chocolate chip pancakes for dinner, with white chocolate chip brownie cookies for dessert. It was almost as good as a home cooked meal.

It wasn’t that hard to find fun things to do, either. My hellee and I caught up on a few of the movies we had been planning to watch. I introduced her to the gem that is Sweet Home Alabama, a thrilling romantic comedy set in the south, complete with two Civil War reenactors, a coon dog cemetery, several honky tonk bar scenes, and more country accents than she knew what to do with. The other big attraction was the King of Prussia mall, which is the biggest mall I have ever been to, and quite possibly the largest mall on the East Coast (the internet is undecided on this). This mall has over 400 stores, so there is a lot to do and see.

My personal favorite adventure around southeaster PA was to a place called the Baldwin book barn. It is a literal barn that is full of books and 1 cat. My hellee and I drove there on a rainy day, and spent hours in the unheated barn, listening to rain on the roof and perusing any book that caught our attention. I had read on Yelp that the barn had cats, so I went in search of them. After trekking through all five floors, most of which were unheated, and the fifth of which was rather rickety, I finally found a cat and several interesting books. Though it is a bit far from campus, it was a perfect spring break adventure.

This week, my brother came to visit. It was exciting because he got to see me compete in my conference championship, but the main reason for his visit was to go on college tours. Despite the fact that I still think of him as the cherub-cheeked 6 year old who let me paint his fingernails “Spiderman Red”, my little brother has grown into a tall, 17-year- old junior who is thinking about college.

Obviously my brother will not be considering Bryn Mawr. He’s actually been on the campus tour, but that was 3 years ago. Hearing him talk about his college visits brought me back to when I was deciding where to go to school. One of the main things that he talked about was food. This is high on the mind of any 17-year old male, but I’m pretty sure that the blueberries and yogurt that I had for breakfast on the morning of my overnight at Bryn Mawr were one of the huge pros on my list. The Haffner pizza was another big plus.

The other thing that my brother took away from his college tours was that dorm size was going to be a big selling point for him. I didn’t remember this being an issue for me when I was thinking about colleges, and I wondered why my brother would make this such a big deal. Then I remembered what had been special about my overnight at Bryn Mawr. Almost the entire time had been spent in the common room. I attended a hall tea, and then a couple of students and I watched a movie. The whole thing felt, in short, like a sleepover. I wanted to go to a school where it didn’t matter how big your room was because you’d spend most of your time outside of it. That’s been my experience at Bryn Mawr. I spend time in the common areas of the library or in the psychology house studying with my classmates, or unwinding with my friends over an episode of How I Met Your Mother in the common room. My freshman year, my best friend had a huge double and we all spent our study and hang out time in there. Even if I had a long week or I missed home cooked meals, there was always a little microcosm of home when I was with my buddies. It was the only place other than the common room where we could all spread out on the floor with our books and catch up on the weekend’s events while we studied. The advice I probably should have given my brother (other than that Bryn Mawr is the best!) is that if you go to a place where you get to be part of a special community, it doesn’t matter how big your dorm room is.