Carl for the Weekend

While there’s nothing in the world I love more than a typical Carleton weekend with my friends, there’s something super special about the rare occasion that someone comes to visit!

This last weekend, I had the world’s best out-of-town guest, my friend Schuylar. He’s a junior who studies art and history at a large public university in the southwest. The two of us met on my study abroad in France (he’s featured heavily in my photo blog from France- the pictures are here), and he decided to visit me on his spring break!

Given that his school is really different from Carleton, I wanted to make sure that I showed him all the best bits of Carleton while he was here. Here are some of the activities we got up to this weekend, which also happen to be some of my favorite activities to do at Carleton.

Downtown

Going downtown is one of my favorite parts of being at Carleton! I love the access that I have to a variety of cuisines and activities, but it also doesn’t feel too overwhelming.

When Schuylar arrived, we grabbed coffee at Blue Monday, my traditional stomping grounds downtown. The atmosphere was the perfect introduction to Northfield.

Our other downtown adventures included a lunch at Hogan Brothers, a Northfield classic lunch spot, and most importantly, a stop at Northfield Dance Academy for Saturday morning tap class. Teaching tap classes was something I never expected to do, but after taking a tap class at Carleton with the wonderful professor who owns the studio, it became a no-brainer. Now, my tap classes are my favorite part of the week, and it was so fun to watch Schuylar try out some steps.

Class

I had to take Schuylar to class because Carleton classes feel like such a specific experience to me. The individualized attention from professors, the camaraderie and conversation, and the students make each classes so special to me.

Schuylar is an art student, so I decided to take him to my last Observational Drawing class. The class has been my favorite one this term, moving from simple drawings of cubes and spheres to more complex drawings of three dimensional space and incorporating color.

The day that Schuylar visited was a class focused on the figure. We had a student model come in and pose for us– modeling is actually a work-study position on campus– and it was one of my favorite classes of the term! While Schuylar does classes like this frequently as an art student, he really appreciated the opportunity to get back to basics and get some feedback from a new professor.

Friends

The absolute highlight of the weekend was time spent together and with friends! It was really cool to watch Schuylar interact with a bunch of my college friends, especially because he had only ever seen me in the context of study abroad.

Of course, because Carleton students (especially my friends) are fantastically wonderful, they got along swimmingly. We spent lots of time as a group, studying on the Bald Spot and attending Cavefest.

I asked Schuylar what surprised him most about Carleton, and he answered that there were so many big events like Cavefest at such a small school, and he was particularly surprised that they were all free.

Final thoughts

All in all, Schuylar (and I) had a pretty classic Carleton weekend. We even ended up on college president Alison Byerly’s Instagram. (Nobody tell her that Schuylar isn’t actually a Carleton student!)

Emma (she/her/hers) is a sophomore prospective Art History major/European Studies minor from Attleboro, Massachusetts. When she’s not in class, you can probably find Emma engrossed in a terribly long conversation in Burton Dining Hall, knitting at a Bald Spot picnic table, or perusing the museum studies stacks on third libe. Beyond blogging, she works for the Registrar’s Office, teaches adult tap dance classes downtown, and loves submitting to student publications like babyteeth and No Fidelity. She loves Carleton for the number of opportunities it offers and the close connections she’s formed with professors, not to mention proximity to coffee from Goodbye Blue Monday and early morning walks through the neighborhoods.