Students Find Family Away From Home
There’s no wrong way to spend fall break. You can stay on campus with friends, admiring the fall foliage and catching up on homework and some much-needed sleep. Or you can go home to Mom’s meatloaf, Dad’s corny jokes and an eager puppy who’s missed you terribly.
Or, you can go to Scotland.
For fall break, Megan McNamara ’14 hopped on a plane with her parents and flew across the Atlantic Ocean to visit her boyfriend and her sister both of whom are studying abroad this semester. The trip was a gift for Megan’s 19th birthday.
“It was amazing seeing my family,” said McNamara. “I didn’t realize how much I missed them. It was nice to have someone buy me a good meal.”
But McNamara got more than a non-cafeteria-style dinner: she got a chance to immerse herself in a different culture.
“We went to the Edinburgh castle which is hundreds of years old,” said McNamara of her sight-seeing in the country. “We also went to a scotch distillery, went to a rugby match and went to a lot of pubs.”
“The culture in Scotland is very similar to ours but with slight differences,” McNamara said. “For example they are sports oriented but with soccer and rugby instead of football and baseball. They also drink a lot!”
It is exciting to be in a new place and learn the customs of a different country, but sometimes, nothing can beat what’s familiar.
“My favorite part was just having dinner with my boyfriend and family,” McNamara said. “It was so much fun catching up.”
So it turns out you don’t have to necessarily go to your house over break to find home. Danielle Gladstone ’14, who attended Loomis Chaffee, returned to her alma mater to see the Middlebury a capella group, the Bobolinks, perform.
“It was Middlebury does Loomis,” said Gladstone. “It should have been weird to see people that I usually see walking around Middlebury walking around my high school campus, but it didn’t even phase me.”
Danielle brought even more of Middlebury to Loomis, taking her boyfriend, Andrew Emerson ’13, to the school.
“I liked showing him the campus and letting him meet some of my favorite teachers from high school,” said Gladstone. “It is strange though that after graduating only two years ago I didn’t really know any students left at the school.”
But, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“It didn’t feel like any time had passed since senior year. The campus and the people looked and felt exactly the same. What should have been a surreal experience felt completely natural,” said Gladstone. “Middlebury belongs anywhere.”
And so it seems that no matter where you go October break can be a chance to experience a little bit of home.
Students Participate in Charitable Fall Break Alternative
Middlebury Alternative Break Trips (MAlt) offer unique experiences to students who are not interested in staying on campus or going home over a vacation and who are passionate about giving back and helping others. The recent mid-term break MAlt trip took nine Middlebury first-years and sophomores to the Merck Forest and Farmland Center in Rupert, Vt. for a weekend of fun-filled community service.
Co-coordinators Sierra Young ’12 and AmeriCorps VISTA Member and Service & Activism Initiatives Coordinator Jillian Hall made sure that everything ran smoothly: planning out minor details, buying groceries, making sure everyone had proper gear and serving as a leader and role-model once on the farm.
Merck Forest and Farmland Center is off the electrical grid, gathering all of its power from wind turbines. The farm makes its own maple syrup and sells crops and meats as a source of income, but relies heavily on grants to stay alive. However its philosophy of sustainable farming has proved successful and serves as a model for farms around the country that are considering a shift toward sustainability.
The group arrived at Merck on Saturday and was given their first task: herding sheep, a job most of the students deemed one of the best parts of the trip.
“The farm raises sheep for wool but doesn’t have a sheepdog, so we circled them and kept them from dodging away, which was more difficult than I thought it would be,” said Laura Irei ’13. “Sheep are surprisingly agile!”
With the next day came another project, this time more hands-on. The team was in charge of hanging tarpaper and re-siding a cabin where the Merck interns live. Jonathan Brach ’13 participated in a MAlt trip in White Sands, New Mexico last February and decided to partake in another over mid-term break as a way to “give back to Vermont in a small way and escape the bubble at Middlebury.” Brach found the re-siding project to be the most valuable part of the trip.
“It was just really great to do something so hands on, and now I know how to put up siding if that need were ever to arise.”
The task may have been difficult, but “it was really satisfying to see the work we accomplished at the end of the day,” said Irei.
There is no question that the mid-term MAlt trip was a success. Maddie Mailly ’14 did not know any other participants, but applied because of her love of camping and community service. She called her weekend at Merck “a fun and fulfilling experience with a great bunch of people,” adding that she would love to go on another MAlt trip in the future. Trip co-coordinator Young recommends MAlt to anyone who is considering it, as “each trip will be different, but rewarding in its own way.”
Brach echoed a similar sentiment.
“You never really know how far-reaching the positive effects of your service will go.”
Students Forgo Trips Home In Favor of Staying On-Campus
For many students, the mid-term break came with a classic conundrum — to stay on campus, or to go home? Most went home or visited friends at other schools, but a select group stayed at Middlebury.
Due to the insubstantial number of students remaining, the few facilities that were open had limited hours. Ross dining hall was the only on-campus dining option, and the fitness center was open for just two hours on Monday and Tuesday.
Many students used the vacation and limited eating options as an opportunity to try restaurants in town, such as Lottie Hedden ’14, who ate at Two Brothers Tavern for the first time.
“I’m either too busy or too lazy to go into town for lunch or dinner, so it was nice to get off campus and explore. The food was great, too,” said Hedden, who is from Washington, D.C. and stayed on campus because driving would have been a hassle.
“It didn’t make sense for me to drive ten hours to be home for two or three days and have to drive all the way back again,”
Long drives home were just one of the many reasons students stayed on campus over the weekend. Several sports teams required athletes to remain at Middlebury because of games and practices. Others stayed on campus in the hopes of getting work done. Cailey Condit ’11 opted to stay to work on her thesis, but admitted that she didn’t get as much done as she hoped to.
“I went adventuring in the woods, spent a lot of time in the Ross dining hall, played board games, and went to a couple parties. By the time Wednesday rolled around, I realized how little I had accomplished because I spent so much time playing,” Condit said.
Despite not getting much work done, Condit admitted that the stress-free weekend was nice.
“The campus felt so calm. People were just hanging out and enjoying free time for the first time in a while.”
David Chen ’14 agreed that the campus was relaxed, but didn’t find it as nice.
“It was great to hang out in Middlebury with my friends and not have to worry about work, but the empty campus was kind of eerie.”
Most students agreed that staying on-campus during mid-term break offered the perfect balance of work and fun, with plenty of time for de-stressing before classes resumed on Wednesday.
“It was nice to be in Vermont without the constant feeling of having to work, work, work,” said Condit.
Mountain club Redefines “Tumbledown” Mountain
What started as a daylong hike became a team rescue effort for eight members of the Middlebury Mountain Club.
The trip began with the scaling of Tumbledown Mountain, located in what Pier LaFarge ’10.5 described as a “beautifully remote” region in Western Maine. The mountain, famous for its Chimney Trail, is named for the erosion into a central basin that effectively created two “sub-peaks.” Armed with daypacks, the students began their climb up the precipitous trail that led them through caves, notches and waterfalls. Upon arrival at the rocky summit plateau, according to LaFarge, the hikers discovered a stunning view of a “jewel-like mountain lake tucked right into the middle” of the mountain.
The hikers then began their descent down the steep slope, a task rendered even trickier by rain. As they made their way down the slippery trail, they came across a woman who had fallen and injured her ankle. As the students with the highest certifications in this type of emergency response (Wilderness First Responder), LaFarge and Ben Meader ’10.5 took primary responsibility for organizing her transport to safety, though all students were at least certified in Wilderness First Aid.
They first tried to assist her in hobbling along the mile to the trailhead because as LaFarge said, “a carry-out is unimaginably slow.” However, it quickly became apparent that she would need more support. By lashing together three sapling logs with twine and padding the midsection, the group was able to construct a saddle-like apparatus to support her. Six students helped to carry and stabilize the contraption for the 1.5 to 2-hour trek before park rangers in an ATV arrived on the scene.
Though the trip was originally meant to include an overnight, stormy weather and various delays (from the rescue itself to paperwork with EMTs) prompted an early departure.
While LaFarge and company were trying not to lend any more significance to the name “Tumbledown Mountain,” another group of Mountain Club members was exploring the Carter Notch, just south of Gorham, NH. The five students, some who had never before hiked in New England, spent three nights backpacking in the frigid mountain air.
Max Godfrey ’13.5 of Atlanta, Ga. was struck by the signs of winter that had already begun to infiltrate the terrain. The already steep rock faces, he said, were “basically coated” in ice, turning a moderately challenging climb into a real test of the hikers’ skills.
The views, however, were well worth the struggle. Though fog obscured much of the landscape during the first two days of the trip, the clear weather on the third day afforded a striking vista of the snow-covered Presidential Range.
The mountains “looked like glaciers,” said Godfrey. “It was amazing.”
A night’s stay in a hut where a woodstove had been installed the same day was another highlight.
For those in search of a similar experience, Godfrey recommends departing no later in the year than his group did.
“You should probably wait until next year unless you have snowshoes or crampons,” he said. “It’s already winter up there.”
Fall Break Adventures: Students live it up on and off campus
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