Global Eyes!

Happy Sunday! After a weekend of a little fun and lots of homework, I find myself here not wanting to do anymore. Go figure. I can't believe the semester is basically halfway over already! Time has been flying by and it's been kind of scary/kind of awesome/kind of off-putting. In eight weeks, I'll no longer be a college student...how does one "real life"?

Let's drop that scary thought. The original intent of this post was to talk to you all about the Global Eyes competition that Saint Michael's has every year. It's a competition where students who have studied abroad submit up to three photos that Saint Mike's will display around the school if they are selected! The various categories of photos that they choose from range from artistic to photos that show the politics and political tensions of another country. It's an awesome opportunity to share your study abroad experience through photos with the greater campus community!

For my study abroad experience, I took a short three-week trip to England last summer through a course offered by the college on Shakespeare. It was an amazing experience, and I believe that Saint Mike's is planning to offer it again for anyone interested! It was taught by Professor Clary in the English Department for those interested.

So of course I decided to submit a few photos to the competition. Fingers crossed. Take a look!

This is a window in a crypt under St. Edmund's Hall at the University of Oxford. It was a surreal experience to be in there because it's not open to the public very often!

Believe it or not, I actually experienced more good weather than bad when I was in England, which led to this amazing shot of the London Eye!

This is a picture of Wroxton College, the school I stayed at during my time in England. It was a giant castle that was so much fun to explore and call home.

Although the deadline for this year's Global Eyes competition has already passed, it's a good thing to keep in mind for next year! If you want to know more about it, click here. Also, I would highly recommend studying abroad in England. The locals were always friendly and it was better than I could've imagined before going there.

Senior Seminar Adventures.

Hey everyone! I hope you've been getting through this ridiculous cold weather and staying warm. I'm definitely ready for winter to be over.

But anyway, onto other stuff - so I realized that I've neglected to tell you all about how my senior seminar project is going now that it's the semester that I'm going to see the finished product. My partner Tara Keady and I are writing about perceptions of gender and sexuality on a global scale through various subtopics such as law, gayborhoods, travel, and the military. So far it's been such a rewarding and informative experience! We're in the stages right now where we're finishing up interviews, putting down our ideas for how we're going to break the book up, and then we're going to start writing in just a couple of weeks!

I think the most interesting part of this project so far has been how social media has had such a huge impact on it. Seriously, I don't think we would be able to do a project like this if social media didn't exist. It's been paramount in landing us interviews with people from other countries, such as England, Spain, and South Africa, and I think the global perspective on this project is what makes it so intriguing. For example, do you think that the U.S. is the most accepting country of LGBTQ people? Think again - it's actually Spain!

These are a couple of the visual graphs Tara and I made for the book - we got feedback from some of our classmates that these would be some of the figures they would be interested in seeing in our book. Our working title is Glorious Gray: Finding Your Color in A Black and White World. We're even planning out trips to New York City and Provincetown in Massachusetts to compare the gay cultures and gayborhoods there. I'm so pumped!

I'll keep you all posted as it's coming along - the finished product will be done by April 1st! In the mean time, I'd love to hear what any of you think about it in terms of what you'd be interested in seeing, pictures, graphs, etc. All suggestions are welcome!

New Project!

So I know I've been MIA for the past few days (I actually don't know how long it's been since the last time I posted, but I don't think it's been longer than a week...let's hope). Anyway, things are moving quickly as usual and I got an interesting offer to do a project for Saint Michael's that will hopefully last for years to come, so I figured now was the time to tell you all about it...

I'm going to be making a video for the college about the MOVE program!

For those of you who don't know what the MOVE program is, it stands for the Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts, and it covers everything from extended service on a volunteer basis for students over breaks to working with youth. Events are happening all the time throughout the year through MOVE, and I think it's awesome that the school reached out to me and asked me to put a video together for it for future students to see!

Students volunteering! Photo courtesy of Saint Michael's College.

There's always little kids running around campus, and that's because of the awesome students that volunteer to work with them! Photo courtesy of Saint Michael's College.

I should be recording and taking photographs of my first event within the next week or two, and the video should be done around June. Keep your eyes peeled for it!

In the mean time, if you want to check out more about the MOVE program, click here!