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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The Major Limbo

  This blog is for all my underclassmen, especially sophomores, who I know are going through the process of declaring a major, or for anyone else stuck with major decisions (that's punny). It is very hard for many people to choose their college major. Statistics show that 50%-70% of students change their majors at least once, and most will change majors a...
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Ringing in the New Semester

There are some moments at Pomona that have been truly essential to my experience - moments that cannot be conveyed adequately on any pamphlet or website - and it's those moments that I missed sorely when I was gone. Although I, as many others, arrived to Pomona after an exhausting chain of travels (bus! train! airplane! then MetroLink!), hearing the squeals of excitement as...
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A Major in Music and a Minor Identity Crisis

I’ve heard so many stories and jokes surrounding the indecisiveness of the majorless first-year, those lost liberal-artsers who constantly change their interests, take courses from every department possible, and woefully declare the hopelessness of their future. The good news is that all of these confused first-years eventually find something they love or something at which the...
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Reading on Rainy Days: How to Know You’re in the Right Major

Because I've lived all my life in Southern California, where life moves quickly in perpetual forward motion, rainy days feel like free passes to me. Waking up on a day where the sky is gray and the air feels slow and thick with rain makes me feel like everything that was so important yesterday can wait to be accomplished when the sun comes out again. On rainy days, all I wa...
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On the Merits of Licking Rocks

Contrary to popular belief, not all rocks are the same; in fact, they have a diverse set of origins, compositions, structures, and properties, all of which can be related back to their mineral make. This of course renders mineralogy, which is exactly what it sounds like, an important component of any geologist's set of mental tools for conducting field work and research. Now th...
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“Dear Junior: According to our records, you have not declared a major.”

We’d always been told that attending a liberal arts college meant that we’d be faced with an abundance of enticing classes, go to classes with too many overeager aspiring academics, and be exposed to an overflowing wealth of knowledge spanning every imaginable discipline. My inability to buckle down in one discipline during my first two years is proof that such buzzwords as “li...
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Finding a Major (AKA, Serendipity)

This in a nutshell is all you really need to know about my research this summer. I own a lot of books, and I spend my days sitting on that orange couch reading them. That, of course, isn't the whole story, so if you want to know more about academic life at Pomona, here's the way it was for me. In high school, I had two loves: history and my girlfriend (cue groans from all an...
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