blog.shimer

Whimps.

So in Soc II we were going over the Declaration of Independence, and at one point I said that the colonists's list of grievences against the king was kind of whiney.  Hilarity ensued!

Government Money

Okay so my work study job? Not all that difficult. I work weekend college which––contrary to what you may think––does not happen every weekend. Weekend students meet every third weekend, and, unlike us lowly weekday readers, they get meals at Shimer. That's where I come in. Discussing three weeks worth of great books can work up quite an appetite.

But since technically I'm only reeeally working when a meal is nearing... there happens to be quite a bit of free time.

So. Let's review. Lot's of free time, but lots of hours. Only have to work every third weekend. So how did I end up with this job?

Yes, weekend college students just happen to need early mornings to cram in all those intelligent conversations.

Which means they need their coffee started even earlier than early morning.

And their breakfast set out.

In an aesthetically pleasing way of course.

Oh and they're going to need something on which to eat all that brain food. Roll some tables out? Make sure it's before people show up.

You might have to be a little particular about having six chairs at each table... (all right, maybe that's just me)

And yeah. Those mornings? Saturday and Sunday mornings? I'm not sure if you're aware... but they follow Friday and Saturday nights. So yeah. That's why I have this job.

The Field Museum

Today I went on a lovely expedition to the Field Museum, which is approximately forty seconds away from Shimer (or one train stop and a fifteen-minute bus ride, but for the CTA, that's forty seconds). I am a member, and have definitely recovered more than the cost of that membership, what with the number of times I've gotten myself and a guest in for free, and the three free tickets per special exhibit I receive. Having seen the Aztecs long ago, I went today to see the pirates. It was a very strange presentation of piracy -- forget the rape and pillage and remember the multiethnic democratic community, you guys. It was sort of awesome, but I cannot give photographic evidence, given that no pictures may be taken of temporary exhibits. I did manage to capture an incidence of piracy in the gift shop, however. The use of wheelchairs among pirates has a long and respected history, as does the use of plastic cutlasses.

I, Captain Cripple Creek, take a defenseless cardigan-wearing bookworm hostage.

We also visited ancient Egypt, where we were allowed to take pictures.

A soul house found in a tomb. Middle Kingdom, I believe.

Actual walls from the actual tomb of the actual Unis-Ankh.

Burial masks from the Ptolemaic period.

In conclusion, there is no better way to spend a Sunday than at the museum.

A Birthday

So last Monday was this girl's birthday.

She wanted to go out. Except for... it was Monday. Which means the next day is Tuesday. Tuesday isn't really Saturday. Tuesday isn't really Thursday either which, for me, is kind of like a Saturday. Nope. Her birthday was Monday.

So my roommate made her cupcakes which I decided to disguise as fat baby chicks. You know... so that people wouldn't eat them before we gave them to her.

There are a lot of vegetarians and vegans here at Shimer. Cupcakes? They might be inclined to commandeer cupcakes. Cute baby chicks? Not so much.

BUT. The poor thing didn't get to go out. Luckily the day after Friday is Saturday. So we went out Friday. How, you ask, can a college student afford to take a friend out to dinner for her birthday? Or maybe you would ask how a babysitter could afford that. Or maybe you would really hit me hard and ask how an artist could. You would probably throw in 'starving' as a cute little adjective. And though you would be completely uncreative by throwing in the cliched adjective, I would answer you.

The Answer:

What is Groupon? The Groupon fairies explain it best:

Groupon is a deal a day site for Chicago. We find the unbeatable deals on fun stuff to do and buy in and around Chicago. But here’s the catch - you only get the deal if a certain number of people join. That’s why businesses offer us these prices, because we can guarantee them volume.

Groupon = “Group” + “Coupon”

So the other day the groupon was to pay five dollars for fifteen dollars worth of food at a Mediterranean restaurant.

I am not stupid. I bought the Groupon. and proceeded to the Sultan's Market by bus.

and brought friends.

including the birthday girl who ate this:

Compliments of Groupon, of course. And what do you know, Groupon picked a winner. Good food. It was open late...

It was pretty:

And. Most importantly...

It had a sea horse. Winner!

Squashed Philosophers!

While procrastinating on a paper I clicked a magic button, which led me to this site:

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/

It has philosophers' entire works squashed into bite-sized explanations! How cool (and dangerous) is that? Seems like it'd be very easy for things to be misinterpreted when condensed so badly. It'd also be rather hard to choose what to keep in and what to leave out!

So far I've only looked at Machiavelli, and only the Very Squashed version of The Prince, but it looked...acceptable, at least. Machiavelli is probably my favorite philosopher; this doesn't mean I'd use his methods, just that I love the way he explains his ideas. He is a pragmatist, that's for sure.

Here's a quote I found while meandering through...okay, fine, while reading pages upon pages of Machiavelli quotes, because this is the sort of thing I do while procrastinating on papers. Anyway, enjoy:

"Never was anything great achieved without danger."

Christin Eli Smith

About me! 'About me' has become quite the noun these days. I sort of like it. I also like 'blog' as a verb. So right now I think I'll blog an about me.

All right so here's the thing. High school? That happened in Ohio and thankfully ended in '06. I was a guileless little girl, and all I wanted for Christmas was 'education for education's sake.' Well really I guess I wanted that by early autumn at the latest, but yeah Christmas too. To get my early Christmas present I had to ride 22 hours in a Volvo in order to end up in New Mexico––where I started out my college career at St John's College. Aaaand I loved it. So much. My first class sent me into academic euphoria, and I knew that great books and seminars could never be surpassed in the my-favorite-way-of-learning race.

Your line? "umm... What are you doing at Shimer?" Oh. Right. Okay so here's the thing. I may have been in this tiny little relationship thingy... with someone in Ohio. And then I read some Aristotle on friendship... Long story short I decided I didn't want to be a million miles away.

I transferred to a liberal arts college in the heart of it all. Antioch College. Except for it decided to close. Yes.  The college.  Closed.  I had transferred to a college from which I was then forced to transfer. Nice.

Good thing though! Because even after finding out about Shimer? Even after this enticing little article tempting me to go back to great books? I would have stayed at Antioch just to avoid transferring again. Luckily, that didn't happen. Great Books!

(Also: If they aren't lying to us and prospective Shimer students are actually reading this? I can totally answer 'difference between St John's and Shimer' questions. Had I known about Shimer when choosing a college, I would've had them. Questions I mean. But I'm sweet like that. Maybe you people just don't even have questions. Maybe you're just not sweet like that.)

The Library and its Pretty Pictures.

I work, as I've mentioned, at the Shimer library. It is a glorious job; after a traumatic or overstimulating class, I can sit with books quietly for a few hours and I get paid. For the past few days, I've been stamping all of our art books with a stamp that reads SHIMER COLLEGE.

Doré's illustration of the harpies in the Wood of Suicides (Dante's Inferno)

While stamping, I've been paging through a lot of books. I'd like our collection to be bigger -- we all would -- but what we've got now is its own kind of amazing. The Shimer collection is like your eccentric rich great uncle's private library. There may not be rhyme or reason or cohesion to what we've got, but browsing it is beautiful. I like to make myself some tea in the kitchen and sit with the art section -- it ranges from a book of Gustav Doré's illustrations for the Divine Comedy to a series on the collections of the world's greatest museums. There are words in these books, or so I hazily recall, but the pictures are the point, I think, and perfectly stunning at that. A few minutes with Magritte will cure most intellectual ills, I've found. The feel of glossy pages is highly therapeutic.

 

Magritte's La Folie Almayer

Internships and other things....

With May coming closer and closer, a lot of students are turning their attention to summer plans. It may seem as though Shimer simply doesn't have the resources to compete with other schools when it comes to things like internships, career counseling and all those all those other resume packing-activities that gradually become more and more important.

I honestly don't know how Shimer's resources in this arena stack up to larger schools since I really only have experience with Shimer. But I have now gone through the process of putting together a résumé and some other things that were relevant to my application process. So there a few things I now feel entitled to say about the process as I've experienced it here so far. I don’t know how the rest of the world will accept my efforts but I’ll get back to you about that in May.

 In the mean time, remember these ten things....

1. Resources here are only as available to you as you make them; in other words, you have to ask. Like a lot of things at Shimer, if you want an internship, or volunteer work, or anything else really then it has to be a self-motivated project. I haven't really found this to be a problem. For me it helps; I know that if I care enough to ask someone about it, then I am probably pretty interested, which is what makes me spend part of my Saturday afternoon on it when I would rather be sleeping, reading, or sewing.

2. Keep bothering people. As with anything else that is self-motivated, you have to continue to show interest. So keep bothering people for whatever you need. At Shimer people are really good at responding almost instantly to questions and requests, but you need to ask for them to be able to respond. 

3. When people do anticipate your needs and drop information about an internship which just happens to match your interest perfectly in your lap then thank them for thinking of you. Lori, who directs our student activities, has formed a habit of dropping things she thinks I will like in my mail box--some times it is information about museum exhibits but other times it is stuff about internships with an emphasis on archive and conservation work at the local Newberry Library. I hadn't really thought of doing that, but it is exactly how I want to spend a part of my summer--so I took advantage of it with very little hesitation. This is the kind of personal attention that makes Shimer a place where I enjoy living. 

4. When it comes to the actual materials, cover letter, résumé, and all those things, then ask for advice. There are people here at Shimer who get paid to help you with this and they will help you--so don't worry too much because they do know what they're talking about. 

5. Before you have someone look at that résumé, though, do yourself a favor and check the internet to get a general idea of format and things like that. Also proofread whatever you have written and remember that the people who will ultimately look at this don't know anything else about you except what you're writing right now. Is that frightening? Yes. But there are times when you have to do it.

Here are some useful websites for that kind of thing: you can look  here,   here,  here or here for some quick advice. If you just keep these things in mind when writing your drafts, the quality of what you produce will increase dramatically. And that means that you can spend less time going over format and content with whoever is looking at it for you and more time going over how to alter the wording and presentation to make your qualifications seem like a good fit. 

One of the only problems I had writing my résumé and cover letter was that you have to come out and say that you are good at something. I found that a little counter-intuitive, but when I got over my issues with that my résumé improved. 

6. There are not that many people here at Shimer, which is great in this case because it means the person looking through your drafts probably knows you. I think this allows them to give you better advice. If nothing else, personal attention from someone you actually feel like you know personally really makes this a more reassuring experience. In my own experience Lori, our Assistant Director of Student Activities, actually briefly showed me her own résumé so I could use it as a reference point for a few things.  

7. On that train of thought, I think the way Shimer is structured makes it easier to ask for things like references and recommendations. Because of the way our classes work your facilitators really do know you and every thing that is excellent about you. 

8. Always go through the specifications of the exact position you are applying for; my application required a paragraph of interest but other positions will have different specifications. 

9. Remember that as a student a lot of your achievements are going to be academic. Don't worry--there isn't anything wrong with that. But you can use your achievements in interesting ways. I founded and was president of my school History Club for three years. That says a lot about leadership and self motivation. 

10. Always address things clearly. If you haven't worked in a while, well what have you been doing? You can probably use it as some kind of achievement. A problem I had was that my high school diploma is still listed as 'expected' on my résumé because I'm an early entrant at Shimer so I won't actually graduate high school until June. Hiding this isn't really honest or a good idea. After all, this says a lot about me and the kind of student I am, so I worked on showcasing that in my résumé and treating it as an achievement rather than a side note. 

Obviously a lot more than this goes into writing up a résumé and all the other materials that go into reducing yourself to a few pieces of paper (which, as a Shimer student, I find kind of troubling). But these are mostly just things I think are different for me because I go to Shimer. Some of it, I admit, is simply what I think is good advice. 

If any of you want a little more detailed information about this process, or questions, then feel free to email me. You can reach me pretty easily at katy@shimer.edu.

Myopic Books

One of the Chicago neighborhoods I enjoy visiting is Wicker Park. There are a few shops there that I love dearly. At the moment my favorite is probably iCream, the create-your-own ice cream shop, but more on that another day. (If I wait to blog about it, then I have an excuse to go back--to take pictures, of course, not just 'cause I'm drooling as I type this...) Wicker Park also has tens of little shoe shops I won't let myself enter but melt a little every time I walk past. And then there's Myopic, among the cheapest and best-stocked used bookstores I know of.

It's not a terribly large building, but it is a multiple-story store with a basement--and every inch of it stuffed with books. The aisles are thin, the shelves are high, and it smells strongly of Old Book--the ambiance is so overpowering I can't ever stay too long or I start to feel dizzy. It's like eating so much candy that the thought of chocolate induces queasiness; Myopic is amazing, but in a rather overwhelming way.

Look, books:

And more books!

And MORE BOOKS!

And did I mention they have a cat?

I am fashionably late.

Hi! I'm Hillary. I like clothes and books. I'm not sure which I prefer more, but I did choose going to Shimer over pursuing a degree in fashion journalism, so I think that ought to speak for itself. My favorite designers are Chanel, Betsey Johnson, Nanette Lepore, Douglas Hannant, Marchesa, Anna Sui, and Givenchy. My favorite writers are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, David Sedaris, Thomas Friedman and Bill Bryson. I like to think I'm well-rounded.

Born and raised in Oregon, I struggled a bit in high school. The work itself was fairly easy for me. I just couldn't stand the way classes were structured. There were several other factors that made my experience in high school not terribly beloved, but it was mostly an intense dislike for the fact that I was only learning how to take tests. I had some amazing teachers, and was enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, as well as extremely active in the school paper, but something still didn't click. It was in discussions that I thrived, and on quizzes that I struggled. After school I would procrastinate by reading non-fiction about the French Revolution and making collages using pictures from Vogue. To succeed, I feel one really has to love what they're doing. I didn't. And then, by some miracle, I received a letter from Shimer College.

In the meantime I had been considering going to Academy of Art University in San Fransisco to study fashion or the University of Oregon for Journalism. Both wouldn't be the worst paths for me, but I would be heading into four more years of an education style that had never worked before. Shimer stole my heart. Reading beautiful old texts? Discussion-based classes? I haven't gotten my heart back since!

Somedays it's hard to put down the latest copy of Harper's Bazaar to read Adam Smith, and I often struggle to log off of style.com in favor of Dostoevsky, but I think that's just the way school is, period. The difference between now and high school is that as soon as the magazine is down and the important text is in my hands, I am blissfully happy. Now I have to go read the Declaration of Independence for my Social Sciences class, but it was lovely meeting you. Have an absolutely incredible week!