MHC summary :)
Inside my graduation announcements, I included this. It's a summary of Mars Hill College!
Dear Person whom this will be individually addressed to,
After I finished addressing my graduation announcements, I really felt like they were lacking substance. They were overly formal and didn't tell you anything about the journey. As I see it the graduation ceremony is the least important part of the process. So, here is a crash course about my college career! I found out last August that I was graduating this May, an entire year early! By taking 18 credits for a few semesters and including the college classes that I took in high school, it all added up. Immediately the lame summer of 2008 that included a summer job, was revved up to the start of “MARYANNE’S BEST YEAR EVER!”
After graduation, I am going back to Romania to volunteer for a little over two months! I went to this orphanage there, Pro Vita, two years ago and have missed it ever since. I am THRILLED to return and see the changes that have occurred and how the kids have grown. Then I’m going to sprint through as much as possible of Europe for a month. I plan on staying in hostels and getting a Eurorail pass and seeing everything achievable. Then I am coming back to New Jersey and beginning my drive across the USA to stay with my sister Sarah and her family! In Oakland I’m going have an intense friend’s drive, work at a bookstore and hopefully get a law internship as I get residency for law or graduate school. Everything is so exciting and I feel so overly lucky to have all these opportunities.
At Mars Hill I was given the "Bonner Scholarship" which is designated for students who have strong GPAs and high financial need. To keep this scholarship I have completed 140 hours of community service each semester and 280 hours each summer while in college. I didn't realize how big of deal this was at the time, but Bonner has been the biggest part of my college experience. Each week I have spent about ten hours doing some form community service, which has given me a wide perspective on social issues. I have worked in homeless shelters, food pantries, domestic abuse shelters, horse therapy clinics, river clean-ups, hunger-awareness projects, the YMCA and a ton of other places. Almost every week there is a different opportunity.
I spent the majority of my first two years in a local elementary school kindergarten class. It was nice because I could walk through the rural community, which is open farmland, to get there and the kids were really entertaining. Then I bought my breathtaking car! Using my paper route money I bought the car I wanted since I was 14, a VW Beetle convertible. I have named her June, like June Bug! After that I started volunteering at an environmental law office, called Wild South in the nearby city of Asheville. I have spent the majority of my time working on developing position statements for wind energy. (It’s not sensational, but it’s a start!) It’s been a really great crash course into law.
Bonner also provided a lot of trips; I got to work on Hurricane Katrina relief in Pass Christian, Mississippi and with refugees in Cromer, Georgia. And they sponsored my first (and now second!) trips to Romania.
In the past two years I have become extremely passionate about the environment. I know a lot of people reading this are probably alarmed that I have fallen prey to a conspiracy, but disregarding if climate change is occurring or not, there are some things we can all agree on, like we need clean air, poisoned water is harmful, and our resources aren’t unlimited. I have no intention of becoming the next Al Gore -I’m more of an Erin Brockovitch kind of girl. At this point I think I’m going to pursue environmental law.
I’ve worked a lot of on-campus jobs, from tutoring to being a Resident Assistant and Resident Director and then being the Student Body Treasurer. But I don’t think talking about managing the budget is very exciting. I did start a free store in my dorm, which is really popular and as RD I’ve hosted free monthly pancake parties!
My favorite part of MHC has been the location! Being in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains I have been able to spend a ton of time outside. I’ve been really involved in the Outdoor Center and taken trips to nearby National Forests and Parks and the Appalachian Trail. More importantly I’ve found an amazing rock, located on a river about a mile from campus in which I do all my studying. I have recently passed down the knowledge of this study location. Also, fun fact, Mars Hill College is the only college to OWN a mountain. That’s right, we own Bailey Mountain, which is about a mile from campus.
Overall there were so many fun experiences, like the how library unjustly fined me $24.76 for a book I never had in my possession and I paid it off over three semesters from change I found on the ground. I went in weekly and made tiny deposits, like seven cents. They hated me, but they should have removed the fine because I never checked out a book about leaves in South America. I want to capture all these memories in this brief note, but instead I had an even more fun idea! I have turned mailing out these announcements into a big writing project! In addition to this letter, you have recived a complimentary short story (letter) and photo of a time at Mars Hill that was important to me. You can compare with others because yours will be UNIQUE! That’s right. If you can find a repeat you’ll win, well, nothing, but the knowledge that I lied. I also wanted to include a real picture of me because although I look glamorous in my senior portrait, it wasn’t very accurate. I think THIS is the best version of myself and I endorse it.
If there are any grammatical errors, I have three weeks until I graduate, so hopefully in the next three weeks I will learn how to correct them...
Lots of love,
Maryanne Brown!
In case you ever missed anything, you now have the sparknotes!
Dear Person whom this will be individually addressed to,
After I finished addressing my graduation announcements, I really felt like they were lacking substance. They were overly formal and didn't tell you anything about the journey. As I see it the graduation ceremony is the least important part of the process. So, here is a crash course about my college career! I found out last August that I was graduating this May, an entire year early! By taking 18 credits for a few semesters and including the college classes that I took in high school, it all added up. Immediately the lame summer of 2008 that included a summer job, was revved up to the start of “MARYANNE’S BEST YEAR EVER!”
After graduation, I am going back to Romania to volunteer for a little over two months! I went to this orphanage there, Pro Vita, two years ago and have missed it ever since. I am THRILLED to return and see the changes that have occurred and how the kids have grown. Then I’m going to sprint through as much as possible of Europe for a month. I plan on staying in hostels and getting a Eurorail pass and seeing everything achievable. Then I am coming back to New Jersey and beginning my drive across the USA to stay with my sister Sarah and her family! In Oakland I’m going have an intense friend’s drive, work at a bookstore and hopefully get a law internship as I get residency for law or graduate school. Everything is so exciting and I feel so overly lucky to have all these opportunities.
At Mars Hill I was given the "Bonner Scholarship" which is designated for students who have strong GPAs and high financial need. To keep this scholarship I have completed 140 hours of community service each semester and 280 hours each summer while in college. I didn't realize how big of deal this was at the time, but Bonner has been the biggest part of my college experience. Each week I have spent about ten hours doing some form community service, which has given me a wide perspective on social issues. I have worked in homeless shelters, food pantries, domestic abuse shelters, horse therapy clinics, river clean-ups, hunger-awareness projects, the YMCA and a ton of other places. Almost every week there is a different opportunity.
I spent the majority of my first two years in a local elementary school kindergarten class. It was nice because I could walk through the rural community, which is open farmland, to get there and the kids were really entertaining. Then I bought my breathtaking car! Using my paper route money I bought the car I wanted since I was 14, a VW Beetle convertible. I have named her June, like June Bug! After that I started volunteering at an environmental law office, called Wild South in the nearby city of Asheville. I have spent the majority of my time working on developing position statements for wind energy. (It’s not sensational, but it’s a start!) It’s been a really great crash course into law.
Bonner also provided a lot of trips; I got to work on Hurricane Katrina relief in Pass Christian, Mississippi and with refugees in Cromer, Georgia. And they sponsored my first (and now second!) trips to Romania.
In the past two years I have become extremely passionate about the environment. I know a lot of people reading this are probably alarmed that I have fallen prey to a conspiracy, but disregarding if climate change is occurring or not, there are some things we can all agree on, like we need clean air, poisoned water is harmful, and our resources aren’t unlimited. I have no intention of becoming the next Al Gore -I’m more of an Erin Brockovitch kind of girl. At this point I think I’m going to pursue environmental law.
I’ve worked a lot of on-campus jobs, from tutoring to being a Resident Assistant and Resident Director and then being the Student Body Treasurer. But I don’t think talking about managing the budget is very exciting. I did start a free store in my dorm, which is really popular and as RD I’ve hosted free monthly pancake parties!
My favorite part of MHC has been the location! Being in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains I have been able to spend a ton of time outside. I’ve been really involved in the Outdoor Center and taken trips to nearby National Forests and Parks and the Appalachian Trail. More importantly I’ve found an amazing rock, located on a river about a mile from campus in which I do all my studying. I have recently passed down the knowledge of this study location. Also, fun fact, Mars Hill College is the only college to OWN a mountain. That’s right, we own Bailey Mountain, which is about a mile from campus.
Overall there were so many fun experiences, like the how library unjustly fined me $24.76 for a book I never had in my possession and I paid it off over three semesters from change I found on the ground. I went in weekly and made tiny deposits, like seven cents. They hated me, but they should have removed the fine because I never checked out a book about leaves in South America. I want to capture all these memories in this brief note, but instead I had an even more fun idea! I have turned mailing out these announcements into a big writing project! In addition to this letter, you have recived a complimentary short story (letter) and photo of a time at Mars Hill that was important to me. You can compare with others because yours will be UNIQUE! That’s right. If you can find a repeat you’ll win, well, nothing, but the knowledge that I lied. I also wanted to include a real picture of me because although I look glamorous in my senior portrait, it wasn’t very accurate. I think THIS is the best version of myself and I endorse it.
If there are any grammatical errors, I have three weeks until I graduate, so hopefully in the next three weeks I will learn how to correct them...
Lots of love,
Maryanne Brown!
In case you ever missed anything, you now have the sparknotes!