Second-year undergraduate students in the U.S. have a special item on our checklist: declaring a major.
To me, the word “declare” sometimes sounds a little grandiose in a comical way: something solemn, resembling the Declaration of Independence, maybe? Yet, “declaring a major” is also important, somewhat daunting, and often accompanied by much pressure. Indeed, “decl...
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Author: April Xiaoyi Xu
A Wild Professor Chase: On Office Hours
If you were to dive into my iCal or folders, you would be sure to find tons of documents labeled “OH”. It’s not an exclamation, as much as I am always excited about it. Instead, “OH” is my abbreviation for Office Hours, a particularly defining element of my college experience.
Somehow, I’ve always had a romanticised picture in my mind of what Office Hours would be like: a co...
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Semester 1, Sophomore Year: Check!
Happy New Year! Perhaps it’s time to reflect a little on the semester that we just successfully completed. So here we go:
Overview
From escorting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to mealtime conversations with old and new friends, to Athenaeum dinners, classical music at Little Bridges, Law Journal weekly meetings, to playing with kittens during Sophomore/Final...
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Our Beloved World: First-Year Book Brings Pomona Community Together
A standing ovation. Cheers, claps; claps, cheers, followed by even more cheers and claps…
Each year, Pomona College selects a “first-year book” that incoming first-years discuss with peers and faculty members during Orientation Week, and invites the author to visit campus in October. This year’s assigned book was none other than Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s autobi...
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Us
SETTING: Our Beloved World
CHARACTERS: All the people in it
SCENE: Pomona College, Claremont, CA
Thursday, 3:30 pm. I walked out of my International Relations class, trying to put aside the heaviness sparked by the discussion on the Rwanda genocide and other ethnic conflicts. The first floor of Carnegie Hall — that classy building resembling the White House to some deg...
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Pomona: School is Cool!
I like the expression “Too cool for school”, but school can also be "cool." At least that’s what the kindergarten version of myself thought: school doesn't just mean classes, but also an interesting amalgam of academics, extracurriculars, fun events, etc. As I grew up, the elements that formed my perception of “school” have increasingly complemented each other well (for example...
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“And I Also Ran for Senate…”
When the sky is rinsed in that cathartic, faint blue hue; when the soothing pools of raindrops cleanse the dryness of this land; when the only sounds that echo around our ears are the gentle “drips drops” that flow and grow over time… That shall be when, perhaps, those words will come back to me. I shall gather the faded memories from an earlier chapter of my life, and smile at...
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Resources at Pomona
A new land. A new territory. A new adventure…
Everything will be new, or so it seems. I can imagine, if you are a newly admitted student, how complicated your feelings must be. You are excited, you are overwhelmed, and you are nervous as you prepare to bid farewell to your high school career and move on to college. If you are an international student, you might feel even mo...
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Freshwoman Year Pt. II: A Quick Reflection
’Tis Spring Break! My parents are here, visiting me from China. As we drive around the Golden State from SoCal to NorCal in the next few days, I (rather ambitiously) plan to read a few books, get my homework done, write some more blog entries, and get back to some of my friends (feeling guilty about not maintaing email chains during the busy academic year).
A brief summa...
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Reading, Locations, and Race
"America talks too much about race. America also talks too little about race." These are lines from award-winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest novel Americanah that echo in my head. I read Adichie’s book last summer, since it was the Pomona College summer reading assignment. As I read, I jolted down some questions, which I hoped to ask the author (who gave ...
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