Education on a Farm: What You Can’t Learn at a Liberal Arts College

Extending my post-study abroad travels through winter break means I don't get to spend the holidays at home. Luckily, I get to spend them on a 10-acre organic farm in the tropical hills of northern Thailand -- not a bad alternative. I am spending 17 days WWOOFing at Mae Mut Garden, doing volunteer work in exchange for room and board. In the past 2 weeks, I have learned so...
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Semester 1 at Pomona: First-Year Impressions

Embracing Freshman Year!
From my time at Pomona College as a first semester first-year student, I have had so many memorable moments and have learned so much, not only from my classes (Macroeconomics, Calculus, First Year Seminar, and Intermediate Spanish), but from many occasions beyond the classroom. As one of America’s foremost liberal arts institutions, Pomona College provides its students an ab...
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Contradance: Outside the Claremont Bubble

Having lived in Claremont for four months now, I find it easy to be “stuck” in our comfortable “Claremont bubble”, whose tranquil cafés, bakeries, and froyo shops have become lovely weekend escape spots. Luckily, I got to explore the surrounding communities, largely through contradance! Contradance is a form of partnered folk dance whose origin can be traced back to  17-Cent...
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The Stress of De-stressing: Events at Pomona

Finals week: when picking a de-stressing event is the most stressful aspect of trying to de-stress. The hardest part about finals isn't really those impending exams and assignments - it's all the beautiful creative performances and events that I'm missing out on when I stay in to finish a Computer Science test program (essentially a take-home midterm to program SpaceInvaders...
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Alternabreak in Los Angeles

This entry is cross-posted from the Draper Center for Community Partnerships blog. The Draper Center fosters relationships and exchanges among community members, students, faculty and staff. Their many programs include the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success, Food Rescue, many volunteer and mentoring opportunities for students, and Alternabreak, a week-long community e...
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Learning in Collaboration

At the beginning of the semester, I decided I was going to actually get on top of things and find an organisation that I could volunteer as a tutor through. I've been meaning to do this for a while, and figured now would be as good a time as any. After searching through Chirps (the Pomona message board that gets emailed to us every morning), I couldn't find an organisation that...
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Volunteering Around Claremont

Freshman year I started volunteering with LINC, a program through the Draper Center designed to help elementary school kids improve their reading skills.  I never imagined myself going into education or teaching, but the more I hear about issues with our education system and how so many kids are disadvantaged for various reasons, the more active I tend to want to become in thes...
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