A Summer with Josh Johnson

It Can't Be Over Already!

     It is incredibly hard to believe how fast this summer has gone. We are closing in on our last few days of this internship and it feels like I just got here. We have hiked mountains in the nearby Adirondacks, traveled to foreign countries (Canada), given an obscene amount of campus tours and most of all had fun!  This summer with my internship I have learned soooo much.  We have met with senior staff members all over campus, been able to sit in on interviews, and contact a lot of prospective students.  It has also been really cool learning so much about the admissions process and seeing it from a different perspective.  It has been AWESOME having the opportunity to work with people like the Dean of Admissions, Terry Cowdrey, and our fearless boss, John Gursky. As interns, we have all grown so close in the span of just a few months. Just the other day we were talking about our first impressions of each other and laughing about how differently we act now, compared to our first day together. Our office currently looks like a “paperwork bomb” exploded in it creating one of the biggest messes you have ever seen! The rest of Payson Hall must think the interns are insane! Whether Blake is smashing her elbow into Caitlin’s ribs on the floor or we are wildly beating on the table in what has become a periodic intern drum circle. I often find myself laughing nearly to the point of tears in our conference room!

This past weekend was our last weekend together so we have been doing some fun things to end our summer. Something that we had all been looking forward to is our “Pick an Intern Party.” We had a fun idea to choose each other’s names out of a hat then arrive at our farewell party dressed like that intern. I chose Lyndsay out of the hat. She is an amazing runner here at SLU, so I dressed up in running clothes and grabbed a water bottle to best imitate Lyndz. Every intern had hilarious costumes; Evan dressed as Caitlin, Lyndsay was Blake, Blake was Evan, Caitlin was Bela, and Bela stole a bunch of my clothes and dressed like me.  It was a really funny night, check out the picture to see all of our ridiculous outfits. We planned on having a big sleep-over at Lyndsay’s townhouse but instead we all ended up passing out early in our own places. But we did do some fun slumber party things like have snacks and play board games. It was a great way to bond before we all head our own ways. We have already been making plans for an intern reunion when Evan and I return from Denmark.

        I cannot believe within one week I will be in Denmark! It will be such an awesome experience and I think I am going to have a blast. At the same time it is hard for me to imagine being away from SLU for a semester, as this has turned into my home.  For those of you who have been following my blog please feel free to keep in touch while I am in Denmark! Thanks for following my summer at St. Lawrence! Peace!

Cascade and Porter

           One of the coolest places to take advantage of near St. Lawrence is the Adirondack region. This past weekend some of the interns (Evan, Lyndsay & Bela), our housemate Carl and I climbed two of the high peaks in the Adirondacks, called Cascade and Porter. There are so many opportunities for hiking, biking, canoeing, and simply taking advantage of nature surrounding SLU.

Every year the Outing Club at SLU hosts a tradition here called “Peak Weekend.” The goal is to get at least one St. Lawrence student on every one of the 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks. This past year I participated in Peak Weekend and I hiked mountains called Dial and Nippletop. I was told before the trip that this was a “moderate hike.” It ended up thunder-storming during the entire hike which was over 15 miles. Not my idea of moderate, but it did end up being a blast. We were soaked through, sore, and cold; yet everyone on the trip ended up having TONS of fun. I would definitely say that it is one of my favorite SLU experiences thus far and I would do it again in a heartbeat! Here is picture of my group from this past fall.

So, last weekend we decided to hike a peak. We decided no matter what the weather was like we he had to go because we had been putting it off. We left at about 9:00 AM on Sunday. Lyndsay drove with the help of “Nancy”, Bela’s GPS system. The clouds looked slightly ominous on our ride to Cascade, but we committed to it no matter what. The hike up Cascade was not bad and we all stayed dry until we reached the top. Cascade is one of the smallest high peaks, but has a pretty steep incline. When we finally reached the top, there was so much fog that we couldn’t see anything. It was still fun to say we accomplished it. I have included some of the pics from our trip. After completing Cascade we decided to continue on and finish Porter as well. By the time we started hiking Porter, the skies opened up with a torrential downpour. We got SOAKED during this part of the hike, yet it made it that much more memorable and eventful.

 

 

There were a lot of laughs between Bela cursing nature, Evan hiking up only able to use one arm, Lyndsay helping Ev along the way and all of us slipping and sliding in the mud. If you are ever in the Adirondack region, make a point to hike at least one of the high peaks. It is a guaranteed good time and I hear Cascade has one of the best views. I hope to hike it again on a clearer day! I believe I have completed 7 of the high peaks after this weekend. I still have a long way before I become a “46-er” but I hope to complete them all one day.

 

Dragons, Slings, Picnics & Poker…

          Just recently SLU installed lots of new equipment in the Stafford Fitness Center. My favorite new addition is a fitness biking game. The machine has a large flat screen attached to the front of a stationary bike. You can select different modes on the machine to actually bike different courses, distances, and set a pacer to keep you on track. The program keeps track of your mileage and you can sign in with your user ID when you return to the machine to save your stats. It will even set goals for you along the way. My current goal is to bike the distance of a marathon. I’m slowly working my way towards this goal; I am about 50% of the way to the marathon distance. So, in my opinion this machine is really cool, but I haven’t even gotten to my favorite part. There is one mode where to motivate you and set a pace, you chase dragons. The goal is to collect coins and match them to dragons of the same color. You receive points for each dragon you catch. Then your total is compared to others that have used that game. It is a lot of fun! I generally do a 10 minute “Dragon Chase.” It seems pretty easy but when you are chasing them up hills and pedaling like crazy, it gets really exhausting. I have been improving after each chase; I hope to make the leader-board one day. It is a lofty goal… but you know, dream big.

With awesome new additions to the fitness center and a constantly updated athletics complex, St. Lawrence’s facilities continue to impress me. This past week our athletics complex was ranked the 20^th best in the nation by the Princeton Review. It is a huge honor and it is crazy to see the company with which we are on the list, generally the others are significantly larger than SLU. Check out the rankings here!

This week Evan, Bela and Caitlin had their send off events. It was really lonely in the office. With a lot of tours and a busy schedule I hardly saw the other interns this week. Unfortunately, on the way back from his send off, Evan got into a minor car accident and hurt his arm. When Evan returned we went out to the drug stores in search of a sling. Please know that all drug stores in Canton close at 9:00 PM, so we had quite the adventure trying to buy a sling late at night. Evan ended up getting a sling and the campus EMTs were very helpful. You will notice in the photos that Ev is in kind of a rough shape, but I think he will survive. 

This picture of Evan in a sling makes me laugh!

 

This week we also had an Admission BBQ at the townhouse fire pit. It was a lot of fun bonding with the staff outside of the workplace! We had a blast and chowed down on burgers and hot-dogs. John Gursky, the Admissions Counselor in charge of our internship, will be blogging about the BBQ, so make sure you check his blog out!

Lastly, our town house has gotten really into poker this week. We had a poker night last night. We started off playing Texas Hold’em. I wasn’t very good at all. Our housemate Carl and I were the first to be eliminated from the game. Bela also taught us a new game called “Dirty Queens.” I like that game a lot. It is more based on luck and the wild cards can change the whole game. I included some pictures of our poker night. I did much better with the Dirty Queens game, but it was just a lot of fun hanging out, laughing a lot and relaxing!

 

So overall, this week was a lot of fun! I know this blog was kind of jumbled with many different things, but so was this week! There is always a lot to do here in Canton and my week consisted of dragons, slings, picnics and poker.

FLAPJACK ATTACK!

            Evan, Blake, and I came to work this Monday proudly wearing matching shirts that exclaim, “I Ate It All!” We woke up early before work on Monday and drove to Potsdam, just 10 minutes up the road, to the Village Diner. At the restaurant they challenge their patrons to consume the largest pancake imaginable.  The rules for the contest include a one hour time limit, no helping other contestants, and you can’t puke in the restaurant (outside or in the bathroom is OK, our waitress informed us.)

Monday morning the interns went to the diner confident that we would all finish and wear our shirts to work. However, when five enormous pancakes came out of the kitchen our confidence dwindled. Lyndsay and Caitlin gave a valiant effort, but were only able to finish about half of their flapjacks. Evan was champion finishing first, consuming his breakfast in a mere 17 minutes. Blake and I promised ourselves that we could complete the challenge. After nearly doubling Evan’s time I finished, looking a little green in the face. I don’t think that I have ever eaten that much in a single meal in my life. During the last ten or so bites I felt like I was going to explode. Blake finished moments after I did completing the trio of winners.

There is an encouraging atmosphere at the restaurant as the other customers cheered us on during our last few bites. When your flapjack is entirely consumed, a large cowbell rings and t-shirt is delivered to your table. Also, one of the coolest aspects of the contest is the school scoreboard. The diner keeps track of all of the students from different schools in the area that complete the challenge. We were able to add three points to the SLU board on Monday, but we definitely need to pick it up a little bit in order to beat the schools located in Potsdam. So, I challenge all SLU students to head over to Potsdam and attempt the Flapjack Attack!

This is us after the competition! (Sorry Lyndsay!)  And the ride home, obviously not feeling too
hot...