Yesterday was Valentine's Day. More importantly, to those looking for a scholarship, it was the second day of the Fourth Annual Montaigne Weekend. Forty prospective students came from all over the States to compete for the Montaigne Scholarship. Was the competition intense? Of course. Was it fun? Absolutely. Will four people come out of it with a major scholarship to Shimer College? Yes!
All they had to do, other then find their way to Chicago, was read an essay by Michel de Montaigne before arriving. Once here they wrote an essay and participated in a discussion on the text. The judges will now decide who gets the scholarship and everyone is notified around March 1. Other than the competition, the students (and their parents) got to take a tour of our campus, eat lunch in our cafeteria and scope out the dorm rooms. Current students (including Naomi Neal of my last post, who is one of last year's Montaigne winners) answered questions and chatted with the prospies throughout the two days.
To the above right is a picture of me one year ago yesterday at my own Montaigne competition. It's a horrible picture, but it brings back the exciting feeling I had the first time I set foot on this campus. I can only hope the students over the weekend felt the same way. Below are pictures of Sunday's Montaigne group. Please forgive/excuse the back-of-the-head phenomena that is my picture taking skill.
To the right is Jack Dragu from California. He's a senior in high school and really loves the idea of a place where you can read all of the time and then talk about what you read. That's probably one of the things that sold me right off the bat as well.
Above are two of the tables in the cafeteria of the Shimer group. On the far table both of the Admission staff are present as well as Aaron Garland who handles a lot of the Alumni stuff at our school as well as the school website.
To the left is Amy Pritts. She's relatively new to our school, our new Admissions Director. She spoke with a lot of the parents and hopefuls, explaining a lot of the inner workings of our school and the application process.
Below is first-year Ben Bornstein (left) eating and chatting with prospective Christian.
To the right is facilitator Barbara Stone. "Facilitator" is the correct term for the teachers at our school because, normally, they do not lecture or profess--they facilitate discussions in the classroom, make sure we're moving in the right direction and grade/help us with our papers.
Below the group heading into the dorms. This year, Shimer students have three floors of Gunsalaus Hall. This group was shown one of the sample rooms on the first floor, a one-bedroom apartment. All of our dorms, no matter the size, come with their own bathroom and kitchen.
There are no co-ed rooms, but the floors are mixed. My neighbors are boys.
Playing: Oblivion (of the Shivering Isles variety)
Classes Today: Natural Sciences 2 (Darwin), Social Sciences 2 (Machiavelli), Humanities 2 (Homer)
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