Sarah Binau – Voices

Good Weather Is a Good Basis for Making Your College Decision

Posted on May 8, 2019September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau '19 My personal weather-related nightmare: feeling my snot freeze into icy boogers inside my nose in the 7 a.m. darkness as I unsuccessfully scrape an inch of ice from the windshield of the car with my icicle fingers, exhaust fumes adding to the gray sky’s clouds, wondering how far away June is. Except this isn’t a nightmare; it was my reality growing up in th...

The Writing Center: Pomona’s Peer-Powered Model

Posted on February 13, 2019September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau '19 When I was in high school, asking for help with writing meant you were a bad writer. It is (unfortunately) commonplace to be taught that some people are good writers and others are bad writers. But the truth is that everyone starts with a blank page and a wondering mind. When I started college, I thought of myself as a good writer because I’d done well ...

A Summer in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Posted on December 6, 2018September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau ‘19 It’s July 1st, and I’m on an Alaska Airlines jet headed to Bethel, Alaska, to work for the town’s Cultural Center and live with a Pomona friend. I land on Bethel’s only runway in a 50-degree drizzling rain. “Remote” and “rural” begin to take on new meanings. The town of 6,000 has one main road (warped by the melting permafrost below), a gallon of orange ju...

The Consortium: Pomona’s Community in Claremont

Posted on November 5, 2018September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau '19 Pomona wouldn’t be Pomona without the Claremont Consortium. The collaboration and sharing of diverse ideas, beliefs, and approaches to education that comes with working so closely with the other schools makes Pomona’s participation in the 5C system integral to what it means to be a Sagehen. Pomona’s home in the Claremont Consortium sets it apart from ot...

Feeding Body and Soul

Posted on September 7, 2018September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau ‘19 As I look forward to my fourth and final year at Pomona, I realize how many wonderful, invigorating, and often strange adventures Los Angeles and its neighbors have offered me these past three years. I have been fed—literally and figuratively—in more ways than I can count. Here is a brief, by no means exhaustive, list of ways I’ve kept my body and soul ful...

City of Angels Traffic

Posted on June 20, 2018September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau '19 Pomona loves to tell prospective students that it offers the best of both worlds: a tight-knit, small-campus liberal arts college, just a stone’s through from one of the US’s biggest metropolitan areas. Los Angeles is a sprawl of a city that includes beaches, high-rises, famous media sites, towering mountains, and an arid desert climate. From tacos to the ...

“You’re a Cog Sci major? What’s that?”

Posted on May 27, 2018September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau '19 I came to Pomona thinking I wanted to study Psychology, English, or History: the subjects I enjoyed in high school. I took an upper-division Psych class my first semester, having passed through the introductory course from an AP credit. I loved the class, and I liked the other Psych majors I met in the course. But, even though I loved it, I felt I was miss...

Oceanía Es un Continente?

Posted on May 10, 2018September 21, 2022 by Sarah Binau

By Sarah Binau '19 I was in my Spanish class at the public university (La Universidad de Chile) in Santiago, the sprawling, smoggy city at the foot of the Andes in the noodle-like country of Chile. Our professor, Claudia, paused during the lesson and remarked that our class had representatives from every continent. My classmates were a global mix: Brazilian, Japanese, Portug...