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By this point senior year, my snow boots are no longer rainproof and my rain boots no longer have soles. Until today's freeze, then, snow boots in the morning meant soggy socks all day. And rain boots at night meant skating, duck-like, across what I thought were puddles. Senior year. You just can’t win.

The damp, cold wind greeting my arrival back to Canton January 4th did not remind me of my snowy freshman and sophomore winters. Neither did the prospect of almost three months of cold wind until March and spring break. So the swim team and I, like true ocean mammals, found a warmer place to swim. 

  Courtney's masterpiece "sandman" there's not enough snow in Canton to replicate!

In the second semester of senior year it's hard not get nostalgic about everything. And I mean everything. Other seniors will attest to the fact that we torture ourselves by reminding everyone around us that whatever we're doing, we're doing for the last time. Example: "It's the last time I'll come back to campus from a winter break." "It's my last first day of classes!" "It's my last..." well, you get the picture. It's silly and futile, of course, because during the final days of anything the worst way they can be spent is in fear of the end.    

Most of us arrived back on campus just under two weeks ago, and yet it feels like we never left...it feels as if we've  been back for months.  It's always easy to get back into the daily routine of things here...things just fall back into place and pick up where they left off.  That's not to say it isn't exciting, however, because it is!  Getting to see all of your friends again after a 5 week break is one of the best parts about getting back to campus.

I adore finals week. No sarcasm intended. It's true that the prospect of a December and most of January away from exams, 8:30 classes and the 24-hour-room sounds appealing. But really, finals week was wonderful, and it marked a welcome close to a whirlwind semester I still can’t grasp is over.

This is it...the last week of classes for the Fall semester...or should I say, the last four days.  We don't have class on Friday because it's "reading day," so we have a little bit more than just a weekend to learn everything we need to learn for those Monday finals.  My brother goes to Cornell, and they get more of a reading week, which I think would be nice and I would definitely take advantage of it, but I suppose there are many who would not, so this is the way it goes.

We've reached crunch time.  The two weeks after Thanksgiving break are always busy and full of papers, projects, presentations and studying.  Luckily for us, St. Lawrence has just about the longest Thanksgiving break there is among colleges and universities, so most of us come back feeling somewhat rested.

I could almost smell pumpkin pie from my well-worn spot in the library as campus began to empty for Thanksgiving break. Last week was great—our first white dusting meant screams of joy and extra hot chocolate from the student center—but we’re all embracing a welcome pause from the “pre-pre-finals” crunch. Strangely, however, it’s not turkey and cranberry sauce on my mind this weekend. It’s olive oil. And all the Spanish foods I came to love last semester abroad that won’t have a spot on my family’s Thanksgiving table.

My first Spanish café con leche, at the Plaza Mayor in sunny Salamanca

While I was on tour last week, a prospective student asked me, "What traditions do you have here?" Admittedly, this is one of my favorite talking points to hit while I'm giving a tour (a sidebar to all prospective students out there- this is a great question to ask a tour guide, file this one away for future use.)  I rattled off one after the other- the chapel bells ringing every day at five o'clock, the Candlelight Service, theme dinners- but I saved my personal favorite for last. The Giving Tree.

It seems that the British pop band "Hot Chocolate" and myself now have something in common...we believe in miracles!  At St. Lawrence, our system of Academic Planning and Registration (APR) is the way in which we sign up for classes each semester.  Basically, the way it works is that a person creates a list of classes in which they are interested, chooses (usually) four of them that they want the most, and requests them, hoping for the best.  Seniors get first priority, followed by juniors, sophomores, and then freshman.

Another week come and gone already and Thanksgiving is fast approaching.  It seems crazy to think that the semester is going to be over before we know it!  This weekend was homecoming weekend, and all the St. Lawrence alumni were welcomed back to campus, from those who had graduated just last year, and those who had graduated over twenty years ago!  SLU kicked off the weekend with a homecoming pep-rally, which was followed up by a hockey game versus Union.  Unfortunately, the game didn't go the way all of us Laurentians had hoped, resulting in a 2-0 loss.