Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the efforts of our Barnard Bloggers, who took time out of very busy schedules to share their thoughts and lives with us.  Each of them fully lives up to the famous title of “Strong, Beautiful Barnard Woman”!  We are proud to have them as members of our community.

And we can’t wait to meet those of you who will be joining us on campus this fall!  You are busy these days, too.  You’re getting ready for final exams of your own, and looking forward to a well-earned rest before you get ready to start your first year of college.  We hope that reading about the experiences and activities of our students has helped give you a sense of real life at Barnard College. 

Our Enrolling Students Website will answer many questions about what comes next, including Residence Life, Health Services, New Student Orientation, and much more.  It also provides essential forms that need to be submitted throughout the summer (the first of which is due May 30!) and a timeline to follow.  Please visit the site soon and regularly: http://www.barnard.edu/admiss/matric_new/index.html

Good luck with the end of your semester, and have a wonderful summer!

Barnard College Admissions

For those unacquainted with the concept, The V Show is one of Columbia’s more amusing campus traditions, an original student musical performed every Spring. This year marked the 114th year of the V Show, and if I may say so, the best one ever (including the time a young Rogers and Hammerstein wrote it– not kidding about that, they actually did).

I have the pleasure of knowing a number of people involved in the show, so you can rest assured that my opinions are totally unbiased. I would mainly like to send a shout out to Katie Hathaway, who composed/lyricized this amazingness. I would also like to point out to all you newly-accepted Barnard women that Katie is a sophomore. She is a sophomore. And she is the composer/lyricist of the largest production on campus (she may have had some help from her co-composer/lyricist, also a sophomore). That should pretty much warm the cockles of any theatre/music student’s heart. Or at least I think its amazing.

Also, because Katie is awesome, and a number of other Barnard women participated in the writing/acting/performing/dancing, etc, this years’ show was completely Barnard-centric. Last year, the V Show acted like Barnard didn’t even exist, and it was disappointing. This year’s was amazingly empoweringly Barnard, partly because I knew most of the jokes about us were made by my friends and in the spirit of good collegiate fun. If you’re in NYC this weekend, SEE ITTTTTTTTTT.

If you’re not, here are some spoilers that will make you weep with amazingness:

Judith Shapiro, outgoing Barnard President, was one of the principle characters. She was played by a Barnard Junior, who got J Shap exactly right. She was “larger than life,” and amazing! Also, J Shap attended the show at the same time as me, and she was reportedly laughing hysterically at herself. I also overheard her tell a friend “that was a lot of fun” after the show. They also referred to her dog as “my majestic ebony poodle, Nora,” and she was referred to as a “cruel and pretty dictator” by the head of CU Security (a shout out to CU President Bollinger’s comments to the President of Iran).

Whenever someone blew their rape whistle, EVERY SINGLE Barnard woman in the cast came running to her aid, including President Shapiro (who apparently keeps a spare whistle in her bra).

The song “Strong Beautiful,” which includes the line “Raise your Barnard Bear (raise your bear!)!!!” (an homage to the mini Barnard bears each student gets at commencement). This is also a rousing Barnard-pride anthem. (Katie wrote it!!!!!)

A giant paper mache Barnard bear.

The principle Barnard student being thrown into the Nexus hole, and then being rescued by J Shap.

And finally……. the principle Columbia student announcing that she’s planning on transferring to Barnard, which was met with a roar of spontaneous cheering from the audience.

It was awesome. And you can check out more here: http://www.thevarsityshow.com/v114/

I was particularly awed by the 20 recipients of the aforementioned Bear Pin. I have no idea what these pins are or what they look like, but I want one. I also have no idea of how to get one, since the reading of the resumes of their recipients was one of the most overwhelming experiences of my life. I know many of the Seniors honored with the pin, but I had no idea they were able to juggle so many activities so successfully. 20 is a small fraction of the over 500 seniors in total, but to some extent every Barnard student should be recognized for her multi-tasking and time-management skills. Each of my colleagues honored that night participates in multiple student activities– many while maintaining full time employment on or off campus– and all managed to contribute so meaningfully to college life that multiple people nominated them for their leadership skills. Because that’s what Barnard is about, giving yourself to the College and having the College give you something right back.

I don’t know how to get a Bear Pin or why I was specifically nominated or selected for this award, but I can tell you that putting time and effort into Barnard College is one of the most rewarding things about being a student here. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re in Smart Women Lead (awesome!) or Taal dance group (also awesome!), participating in college life enriches beyond measure your life while in college.

I just wanted to repeat what Jen said in her message- Congratulations class of 2012! Everyone here at Barnard is so excited about our next class of “strong, beautiful, Barnard women”. Enjoy the rest of high school, and know that you have a wonderful four years to look forward to at Barnard.

Our blog “project” is winding down, but if you have any questions at all over the summer, or just want to chat about how amazing Barnard is (bc I could go on for hours ) please email me (KT2245@barnard.edu). I’m so excited to meet all of you next year, some of you may even be my residents!

Welcome to Barnard!

Kelly Ann

In order to celebrate, my friends and I went to Havana Central at The West End here in the neighborhood, where they were having Senior Night, a night with specials for everyone, but also a time for seniors to gather and spend time together. Everyone had either just turned in a thesis that day, the week before, or last semester. It was definitely a huge breath of fresh air to not have it on the brain, since I’ve been thinking about it constantly since at least September! Here are some of us as we headed out of the Barnard gates and eventually when we met up with our friends at Havana.

Oh I took some photos out of my window of Take Back the Night, the annual march against violence, specifically domestic violence, that happens every year here on campus. The group marches around the entire neighborhood, chanting, blowing whistles and horns, etc as a way of reclaiming the streets as a safe place. I wasn’t able to attend this year but did it last year and remember how exciting and empowering it was to march with so many strong voices all around the Morningside Heights neighborhood. Here are the pics from my window of the group returning to campus and piling into Barnard Hall for the post-walk rally:

Must run to my last college class ever…hooray!

Today’s the day!  I want to congratulate all of our admitted students on making their decisions, and I want to wish everyone the best of luck wherever they have decided to study.

For those of you who have chosen to come to Barnard, your journey has only just begun!  Get ready for exciting events during Orientation Week, and for life in New York City with an amazing group of brilliant young women!  If you have any questions about how to prepare for your first semester at Barnard, move-in, or other things, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me (jt2328@barnard.edu).  I look forward to seeing you in August!

As a Political Science major, I have to complete 2 colloquia of my choosing, usually during the 2 semesters of the junior year. But since I plan to go abroad, I took my first one during the spring of my sophomore year. Every colloquia requires a 25 page research paper, so that by the time you reach your senior year, you’re ready to write a 50-100 page thesis. Needless to say, I felt in way over my head at the beginning of the semester. My colloquium is called “Aid, Politics, and Violence in Africa,” and was pretty intense. I have an interest in African issues, but not much experience in the field and many of my classmates intimidated me, especially those who were a full year more advanced than me. The prospect of vetting my opinions each week seemed daunting, let alone having my papers compared to theirs at the end of the class– but let me assure you, if I can do it, so can you.

I kind of hate writing papers. Especially long ones. And coming into Barnard, I had practically no experience in this area. I’m pretty sure I had never even written anything close to 10 pages and now, only two years later, I have successfully written 25 whole pages. This is a huge accomplishment for me, and if you regularly do this for your high school, more power to you, and you might want to stop reading this post. But the fact is that a lot of students come to Barnard feeling unprepared for the Ivy league. The nature of Barnard students is that we’re used to being the best at our high schools, and the first year is always a bit of a rude awakening to the brilliance of everyone around you, but this is not something to be feared. Soon, I’ll write another blog about becoming a Barnard woman, but for now, just trust me that it is a process, and the same is true of becoming a good writer and student.

Even if you feel totally out of place and unsure of yourself upon arriving on campus, do not worry!!!! Writing, studying, and test taking are all skills that you will learn if you don’t possess them already. And no one gets here alone. The great thing about Barnard is that just about everyone wants to see you succeed as much as you do. I had friends, classmates, and writing fellows look at my paper before I turned it in, and everyone was helpful beyond measure. Whether its study buddies or paper proof-readers, Barnard women love helping each other out, because we’re all on the same team, working for the same goals, and we know that we perform better with everyone rooting for us.

This week’s stories include Mayor Bloomberg’s designation as graduation speaker; the naming of Achsah Guibbory, my former English professor, as a Guggenheim Fellow; an article on designer Amanda Brotman ’02; Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi speaking at Barnard; the printing of an ’06 alumna’s fiction in the Missouri Review; and the announcement of two Barnard seniors as Fulbright Scholarship winners.

Barnard students share a pride in the accomplishments of their peers and others associated with the College, so I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say congratulations to those mentioned for making the Barnard headlines, and thanks for inspiring us all!

Last weekend I competed in my final CU Roadrunners event of the semester, a four mile race in Central Park to benefit Lung Cancer research. It was a great morning, and the weather was absolutely perfect. There were about twenty students from Columbia running, so we all met up at the sundial (a common meeting place on campus- kind of like our version of the clock at Grand Central) to head over to the race together. It was a huge event- there were several thousand participants running. Its always so much fun to see everyone running together from so many different age groups and backgrounds. We all ended up finishing the race, and headed back to school just as all of our classmates were waking up (Its always funny to see other students’ faces when they find out everything we’ve had time to do before 10am).

These races are always a great opportunity to catch up with friends I don’t normally get to see during the week. It is such a supportive and encouraging environment that everyone feels welcome. Roadrunners is a great way to continue my hobby without the competitiveness of a varsity sport. I definitely would recommend it to anyone interested in staying involved with athletics at Columbia.

As always, don’t hesitate to comment or shoot me an email if you have any questions!

Kelly Ann