This Monday marks the final week of classes before Saint Mike's students depart for Spring Break. Many choose to go home and see their family, visit friends, go on service trips with MOVE, or join the Wilderness Program on an extended excursion. My blog post history might lead you not to be surprised that I'm joining the WP, once again, for a spring break excursion. This year, we're headed to Charleston, South Carolina.
Nautical geography of Charleston Coast. Chart credit.
Every year the WP offers programming for spring break, usually including a paddling trip, climbing trip, and an extended hiking trip. This year, the climbing crew is headed out to St. George, Utah, and the hiking crew is Grand Canyon-bound. Each trip consists of no more than 8 or 9 participants, and the WP offers students a price for these opportunities that will not be found after college. To put it in perspective, I have knowledge that the market price for the same trip I took to Baja last year would cost no less than three times what I paid as a student. If you're thinking about an extended excursion in the outdoors, I'd give it a go while you're still at Saint Mike's.
The paddling crew this year will be crashing at the cottages of Charleston County Parks and Recreation, from where we'll base most of our water travel for the week. Generally each day consists of some amount of touring (covering distance as a means to locate a feature), and surfing (you don't just do this on a board). Depending on what the coast offers around our location, some days might be more devoted to rock play or surfing, for example. In any case, coastal kayaking offers boaters much opportunity to play in a very dynamic aquatic environment, and that's the main goal of the week (with the intent of having fun :D).
After travel days are subtracted, our group will have six days in the field. Since we're staying in cottages, we'll get to prepare some pretty substantive meals at night, and the park surrounding our lodging is quite a beautiful space. From what I understand, Charleston has an impressive Parks and Rec system, and I look forward to checking it out next week!
I tend to be a 'no ragrets' person. One can't change the past, and it's silly to carry emotional baggage for what's no longer within one's control. That being said, I'm at the point in life where I have to ask the big question, 'what's next?' As I come to the close of my life's latest 4-year plan, I'm being forced to think not only about what I want to do, but what I actually can do.
Having taken not a single physics class in college, it's unlikely I could launch into a PhD in Astrophysics (ahhhhh, see what I did there? launch into astrophysics!). But I also haven't much of a desire to do that, so no worries on that front (lucky it's not the final frontier! I'm on fire today).
While at Saint Mike's I took a breadth of classes. And I'f I'm being honest, I never really found a niche of academia that called to me louder above the others. I dabbled a lot, because I couldn't nail down what I wanted to study above all else. I declared my Econ major at the end of my fall semester junior year. That is very, very late to declare a major, and even then my decision was driven by the necessary fact that I graduate in the near future. None of this is to say that I don't like my major; from my perspective the Econ dep't is stacked with people I'd love to be as smart as in my wildest dreams. I even got to do research with Prof. Walsh last semester, and Prof Natarajan is advising me for my thesis research this semester. I've learned a lot from my experience as a student in that department, but after four years I've come to realize I love being a student. Of what? Well... lots and lots of things.
In fact, just to give you a glimpse of the variety of classes I've taken, here's a literal snapshot:
Course/Section and Title
Credits
Term
EC-311 A Macroeconomic Theory
4.00
2014/FA
EC-315 A World Economies
4.00
2014/FA
EC-410 A Senior Seminar in Economics
4.00
2014/FA
HO-301 A Honors Colloquium
2.00
2014/FA
PH-103 A Pursuing Wisdom
4.00
2014/FA
EC-103 B Princ of Microeconomics (HON)
4.00
2014/SP
MA-120 E Elementary Statistics
4.00
2014/SP
PO-365 A Multicultural Theory/Practice
4.00
2014/SP
SP-203 A Third Semester Spanish
4.00
2014/SP
AN-333 A Anthropology of Refugees
4.00
2013/FA
EC-333 A Economics of Education
4.00
2013/FA
PO-101 A Introduction to Politics(HON)
4.00
2013/FA
SO-221 A Race and Ethnic Relations
4.00
2013/FA
BI-153 F Intro Cell Biology & Genetics
4.00
2013/SP
BI-205 A Biological Communications
4.00
2013/SP
CH-117 C Organic Chemistry I
4.00
2013/SP
EC-325 A Economics of Health Care
4.00
2013/SP
BI-151 C Intro to Ecology & Evolution
4.00
2012/FA
CH-110 A General Chemistry I
4.00
2012/FA
EC-101 A Prncpl Macroeconomic (Honors)
4.00
2012/FA
GS-308 A AdvTpcs: Gender & Development
4.00
2012/FA
RS-242 B Christians and Muslims
4.00
2012/FA
AN-310 B Native American Cultures
4.00
2012/SP
FR-203 A Third Semester French
4.00
2012/SP
FS-103 A Essays and Essayists
4.00
2012/SP
RS-120 H Christianity: Past and Present
4.00
2012/SP
AN-109 A Introduction to Anthropology
4.00
2011/FA
FR-101 B First Semester French
4.00
2011/FA
HI-161 A Early Latin America
4.00
2011/FA
MA-150 B Calculus I
4.00
2011/FA
Like I said, I love being a student... but of what?
So my one takeaway is this: if I could do it all over again, I would have taken more math classes.
'That's kind of a strange takeaway, why do you say that, Ben?'
I've come to the realization that if I want to go to grad school to study econ (which I do), I'll need a heck of a lot more background in math in order to apply my econ knowledge at that level. Plus, I really like math. I was always a strong math student, and I think that mathematical thinking translates well into the fields of philosophy and theory, both of which interest me. So, yeah, I wish I would have taken more math.
But at the expense of not having taken one of these courses... I'm cool with doing some post-grad math courses before I apply to grad school. I gained a huge base of knowledge from being exposed to all these subjects, and I wouldn't change that even if I had a time-turner (I'm looking at you HP fans).
If I haven't mentioned already, my little brother Nick is a first year at SMC. Also an avid skier and lover of all things mountainous, Nick was drawn to SMC just like my dad (Tim Rosbrook, '88) and I were.
This past weekend Nick turned 19, and the whole family came up to celebrate. We took many a ski adventure up here as kids, but our big sister hasn't been up in ages. And, we certainly haven't been here all as a family in over a decade. For that alone, it was a really special weekend.
Friday I only saw my parents briefly (I couldn't turn down tickets to see Gogol Bordello at HG!) during my break at work, so the weekend for me began Saturday morning. Nick and I, along with our dad and older sister Katie, piled in the car down to Mad River Glen for a day of skiing those notorious slopes. Since our mom doesn't ski, she passed the day in Burlington. She spent a few hours at a spa, but our mom also thinks Burlington is one of the cooler towns on the planet. She's an arts&craftsy, do-it-yourself type person, so the many art stores and cafes, to her, are a playground.
Nick is the type of kid to celebrate with a steak, so that night we went to E. B. Strong's for his birthday dinner. Our family can talk, so after a salad, main course and a coffee, we still spent much longer than the casual out-to-dinner-at-a-restaurant amount of time around the table. But it was fun, and since that Saturday had Mardi Gras festivities elsewhere in Burlington, we chatted the night away in relative peace. Afterwards we stopped at the Crow bookstore next to the restaurant, and picked up a few novels and other books for later indulgence. At that point we parted ways; our parents back to their hotel, Katie and I for a quick glimpse of Mardi Gras as it faded into the night, and Nick back to SMC. The next morning, we had a quick breakfast at Henry's. After this Nick and I resumed the college thing, Katie went back to life in New Haven CT, and our parents made their way home to Rome NY.
