First Snow at Carleton, and What’s Next!

A Surprise Winter Wonderland

Last Wednesday, I woke up abnormally early and I did not realize why for the first few moments. Then my roommate excited pointed out of my window — it was snowing! I woke up early because it was weirdly colder ,but also because my roommate was excitedly hopping around the room. Because we live on the 7th floor of Watson, the view I saw was absolutely gorgeous.

A Gap Between This Snow and The Other

The last time I saw snow was more than a year ago, somewhere in Providence, RI when I visited my relatives. In the span of a year, between the two snowfalls, a lot happened. I took a gap year, went on Semester At Sea (SAS) and then worked in Cambodia, where I experienced different jobs. That made me decided to try different fields than what I initially thought I’ll be doing. I was initially looking towards Political Science and Economics, but right now I am taking entirely different things and I enjoy them a lot! I take Computer Science (CS 111.01), Digital Foundations (CAMS 111.01), Drama, Film, and Society (ENGL 100.06) and Piano lessons.

For the past week, I’ve been thinking about the upcoming winter break, winter term, and also concluding several assignments for my current classes. I’m excited to create a game for my CS project, shoot and edit an animation-based film for my CAMS final project and write an illuminating paper on my favorite movie, CaptaIn Fantastic, for my A&I, Drama, Film, NS Society.

Reflection on Current Classes

At the beginning of the term, I struggled a lot to do different assignments for the classes I took. I did not feel confident in my writing and analysis for my Drama, Film & Society class, I felt intimidated by coding in CS, and I felt out of touch with my CAMS class because I felt like I did not know enough about different filmmakers. I got some poor grades, and I just did not know where I was heading, but I decided to push through, to sit down and really focus and take ownership of my courses and interact with the materials presented to me on “a critical and intellectual level”.

Now you might be asked to do that in your classes oftentimes and be clueless about what that means. Well, I think my biggest tip here is to generate genuine feelings for the topic or the task at hand, that you are not just completing an assignment wishing for an A or so, but really doing so because you want to learn more, because you want to utilize the knowledge you gain for a greater good.

Winter Break Plans

So, the good thing about Carleton is the support I get as an international student! I won’t be flying home for the winter, I will be staying on campus and will be working with the Admissions team!

I won’t be blogging during the break, but surely I will recount for you what’s that’s like.

Winter Term Classes

For Winter Term Classes, I’m thinking of continuing down the CS major route, so I will be taking Data Structure. I am also thinking of pursuing CAMS courses with a Digital Editing Workshop class. The surprise element for me is that there exists an amazing minor called Digital Arts and Humanities that I just found out about. It’s where you can combine both aspects of Humanities and Technology. The course is called Hacking the Humanities and I can’t wait to try it!

That’s it for now! Enjoy these winter photos in the meantime. 🙂

xoxo,

Lita

Lita hails all the way from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. When not riding horses, petting them, or sketching a picture of them, she blogs her philosophical brain dumps on Medium. Other than that, Lita is passionate about social impact startups and edu-tech. She plans on majoring in Computer Science, but who knows, she could simply switch to Studio Art and spend her days drawing horses. Hey, that’s why we’re at Carleton, am I right? Meet the other bloggers!