Why the 6 hour plan ride is worth it

Abigail Barnstone- Newton, MA

One of the reasons I chose to come to Pitzer is its location.  I would say 99% of the liberal arts colleges I looked at were in the middle of nowhere…. until I looked at Pitzer.   I love that Pitzer is within Los Angeles County, but forty-five minutes away from the actual city.  This way you get a nice, quiet and safe place to attend school and access to one of the biggest cities in the world.  It also makes Pitzer a school where people emphasize community: Pitzer is not a suitcase school.  We do explore the area, but we tend to do it together.  For the next few weeks I am going to tell you about my favorite places to go in Los Angeles.  This week is West LA.

If you talk to any of my friends, they will tell you that I am in Love with Santa Monica.  It is the perfect balance of beachy, city and artsy.  Not to mention the food is amazing.  At the beginning of the semester a few friends and I ventured to the Santa Monica Farmers Market where I ate the best Panini I have ever had in my life and washed it down with some coconut water, out of a real coconut.  After I finished that we hit the beach were we boogie boarded, sun-bathed, surfed and swam.  If was a nice treat and a really great spot to do some school work.  I mean who doesn’t want to do their homework on the beach?!

What I love most about Santa Monica is that is also right next to Venice.  Specifically, I really love to go shopping on Abbot Kinney Blvd.  There are tons of really unique shops and some head turning street art.  It is a fun atmosphere weather you are just trying to window shop and hang out or buy something.  Personally I am more of the window-shopping kind of gal because the prices are pretty high over there.

Creativity at Pitzer

Abigail Barnstone- Newton, MA

The first time most people step on campus it becomes pretty evident that creativity runs through the entire Pitzer culture.  From the never-ending murals to the actions and appearances of the student body, one understands that Pitzer is not your average college.

A man named Russell K. Pitzer, on the basis of social justice, founded Pitzer College in 1963.
Although the school is only fifty years old it has grown a lot, and with that the culture of creativity has grown.  As a person at Pitzer I would say I encounter creativity every day here.  Weather it is someone protesting about a social issue, tagging the free wall or talking about a reading in class, creativity and humanism is the norm.

First Day Jitters

Abigail Barnstone - Newton, MA

Almost every time I give a tour of Pitzer College someone asks me what day school starts.  I often have a hard time answering that because ever since I have been at Pitzer, I have participated in the first year Orientation Adventure.  Orientation Adventures (OA) is a required and integral part of the freshman orientation.  I like to think of them as the event that takes the edge out of the first month of college.  What happens is students arrive at Pitzer, nervous and excited.  After saying goodbye to their parents and sitting through an introduction speech to Pitzer, the first year students immediately meet with their OA groups.  OA groups are selected through student choice.  They get a list of programs ranging from sipping the best coffee and visiting the most popular museums in LA to backpacking through the mountains to surfing in Orange County.  Because these trips are picked by the students, often they become very close with the other participants and leaders. 

Meeting the participants for the first time always starts off the same.  We sit in a circle on the only patches of grass on pitzer’s campus, the mounds and play icebreaker games.   As one can imagine this situation is a little awkward, because no one knows each other.

However, by day two, its almost like people wont stop talking.  It’s almost like everyone met a group of his or her long lost soul mates.    The combination of the shared situation and activity at place seems to make people really open up and embrace the new-ness of the situation.  As someone who has participated and lead these trips, I have always felt very close to the people I have met on these trips.  I always love to think of the comparison of social interactions when the group has first met to the end of the trip (and even the end of college)

How I imagine people feel when playing icebreakers on the first day of college:

What the group looks like by the end:

Finding a good fit is more than your freshman year

Abigail Barnstone- Newton, MA

Something I always try to emphasize on my tours is the importance of looking for a school that grows with you.  From my experience, the only constant in college is change, you change classes every semester, your views change, you change, basically, a lot is going on.  With that said, there are some schools that work for you freshman year, but then not so much for the rest of college.  This was not something I thought of when I looked at colleges.  Thankfully it worked out for me, here at Pitzer.  Let me tell you why.

Pitzer is the only college I can see myself growing to the best version of myself.  This is vastly because it is part of the five-college consortium.  In my experience, freshman year I spent almost all my time at Pitzer, I wanted to get to know the other kids in my grade and the school I was about to attend for the next four years of my life.  As the year came to a close I felt like I had the foundations of a home and a family.  Because Pitzer is such a small school (Approximately. 1,000 undergraduate students), it is very easy to get to know almost everyone.  Especially friendliness is one of the number one social norms here. 

Feeling at home and comfortable has been one of the best parts of Pitzer, especially because it has also pushed me to see what all of the Five Colleges Have to off.  I like to think of the consortium as a world:  you have your home base, but you it’s important to flap your wings and experience other ways of life.   Each college was founded in different era, as a result many of the classes teach through a bit of a mirroring lens of the time it was created. 

Another way I like to look at the Five Colleges is going to a university made up of all your favorite liberal arts schools.  Take a second to think about all your top choice small liberal arts school.  Now imagine yourself going to your favorite of them, but taking classes, eating and hanging out at all of your other top choices.  Pretty cool huh?  

Something I have learned through research classes here at Pitzer, is that it is hard to prove a causal effect, without rigorous scientific research.  However, I can say that I entered Pitzer, a very shy girl with slightly low confidence, now as a junior, most people would describe me as one of the most friendly and confident people they have ever met.  Pitzer has helped me change from a slow moving caterpillar to a techno colored speed demon of a butterfly.  I don’t think I would have grown into myself this much if I had chosen to attend another college of university.  

My Interview Experience!

 

Abby Barnstone – Newton, MA

I first visited Pitzer College the summer going into my senior year of high school.  I flew all the way out from Boston for an interview, info session, and tour.   The second I got off the airplane I realized that I should have listened to my germaphobic mom, who constantly nags me to take airborn before entering the airplane… because I was sniffeling all over the place. I really wanted visit Pitzer and show my commitment to the school, but I also didn’t want to be that girl who was blowing her nose all over everybody.  So between each section of the visiting process I went into a coffee shop bathroom and “nettipotted” my nose, to create the optical illusion that I was completely healthy.

This worked for about 5 minutes into my interview… and then the sniffle attack came to conquer.  Inside I was panicking; I thought my interviewer would be scared of me and my cooties.  But then the warrior inside of me spoke and said, “listen little lady, you have flown your little tush all the way from Boston to show this place that you are the bomb, now you show them!” So I turned to my interview and gave him the low down, “Listen I am so sorry, but I flew all the way out from Boston to come to this school and interview, I have a cold, but I really care about coming here and I really want to talk with you, I hope you understand.” And of course he did, because…despite common thought that admission counselors are messengers from the supernatural world… he is a human too… and gets sick sometimes too. 

As one may guess this whole situation worked out for me.  Good thing because Pitzer was the only school I fell in love with.  Good thing it decided to give me a chance.  As Dr. Seuss once said:

Thanks for completing my quirks, Pitzer!