A Day in the Life of a Carleton Student

Have you ever thought, “Huh I wonder what Carleton student’s do with their time?”. Well me too. Anyway, here’s a day (Thursday) in the life of me, a typical Carleton student.

7:30 am – Wake up

Now I know what you may be thinking: “Omg! Why so early? That’s terrible!” Well I also have that thought. Luckily this only happens to me once a week. On Thursdays I have 8 am lab for one of my classes, hydrogeology, and I suffer through the early wake up because I am a geology major and I like the course.

8 am to 12 pm – Lab

Once I stumble over to Anderson Hall where my class is, I like to grab some sort of caffeine and food source from Schulze Café in the Atrium. In my hydro class (the study of ground water) we are doing a case study on a potential gravel mine in Waterford–a town close to Northfield. The mine is currently under environmental review and we are going to town meetings to learn more about what the residents think of a mine developing, and how it will affect their water supply. It has been so cool learning about groundwater processes and then immediately applying it to real examples. Today lab consisted of looking at a series of wells in the area to create something called a flow net which helps show which way and how much groundwater is flowing. Flow nets also show at what level the water is flowing, which we can use to compare different areas in the landscape to see at what point in the stratigraphy the water table sits at. This lab was quite hard and I’m afraid I woke up a little bit grumpier than usual, but I made my way through with lab snacks and my classmates.

12 pm to 12:30 pm – Lunch

Post lab I headed over to Language and Dining Center (aka LDC) to eat with my friends. I had enchilada bake, a salad, a pear, and chocolate chip cookie.  Out of the two dining halls I would say that I like the ~vibes~ of LDC better but I like the food at Burton more.

12:30 pm to 1 pm – Getting vans

After my quick lunch I go to Sayles to get keys for campus vehicles from the Fleet Vehicles Service and OneCard office. At 1 pm the lab for Introduction to Geology starts and I am one of the teaching assistants for that class (aka TA). For intro labs we often go into the field so as a campus driver and one of the TAs, I usually have to grab a van for lab.

1 pm to 5 pm – Lab part 2

At one it’s time for my second lab of the day! I like this one more because I know what’s going on and I get to answer questions and go out in the field. Today we went to three different stops about 30 minutes or so from Northfield and looked at the local stratigraphy, including the Platteville limestone, the St. Peter sandstone, Glendwood shale, and the Prairie du Chien dolostone. Then we talked about how glacial rivers shaped the landscape before heading back to Carleton to work on lab reports.

5 something – Dinner (no practice?)

When lab ends I return the van and the keys and head to Burton for dinner with my friend Thea. We don’t often cross paths on campus so we try to schedule a meal at least once a week so we get to go over the things that happened for us that week (a LOT of things happen in a week). Usually I would have practice before dinner for Syzygy, one of the ultimate frisbee teams on campus, but we don’t have practice on Tuesdays or Thursdays because a lot of people have lab and can’t make it.

7 pm – Homework

Starting homework at 7 pm is probably my ideal schedule but let’s just say I don’t always get there right away. Sometimes I have office hours as a TA from 8-10 depending on the day, so sometimes I end up chatting with other geo majors or TAs or any of my friends who come to hangout. Today I spent the evening working on a physics problem set, as I am in physics 145: Mechanics and Waves (and lab) this term. The problem set is due on Friday during class, so naturally I started it the night before it was due (this was a key error by the way). I did a bit of homework on fourth Libe (the fourth floor of the library), before going to the ground state–the bottom floor of Anderson dedicated to the physics department–to finish my problem set.

1 am – Sleep

Because I started the problem set late I ended up going to bed a bit later than intended, but I didn’t have anything until 9:30 the next day, so I still got a decent amount of sleep. I usually like to have a daily debrief with my roommates, as I live in a triple in Nourse, but alas they were both asleep.

Conclusion

As always I like to mention that no day at Carleton is like the next! Thursday is strange because I have two labs, so I didn’t even really get into the courses that I am taking themselves. Some days I have work at the CCCE, some days I have practice for Syzygy, and some I go to special events happening on campus or have more exciting evening plans–it all depends!

Hannah is a junior majoring in Geology and minoring in Classics. As a Minnesotan she considers herself somewhat of an expert on MN winters. At Carleton, she fills her schedule with writing for the Admissions blog, working as a CCCE Communications Fellow, doing geology research and TAing geology classes, and increasing voter engagement on campus. When Hannah isn’t in class, she can be found tossing a frisbee with Syzygy, crocheting, reading, walking and skiing in the Arb, thrifting, and hanging out with her besties. Meet the other bloggers!