Explanation for the Upcoming Lack of Update

There may not be an update this week, because I have sprained my finger, making it difficult to type.

"What do you do on the weekend?"

I met up with a lot of my friends while I was home over Winter Break, and invariably they would ask me, "What do Mudders do on the weekend?"

This isn't really an unreasonable question. As I've said before, Mudd is a small school. You would think being around the same 700 people all the time would put a damper on the local social life. There also exists a rumor that Mudders, being scientists and self-proclaimed nerds, don't enjoy parties. (This rumor is completely unfounded. One Mudd dorm in particular is legendary amongst the Claremont Colleges--the 5 C's--for the parties it throws.)

If you like parties, one of the benefits of the 5C's is that, on any given weekend, there's probably a party on both Friday and Saturday night. These are usually "parties" like the ones you see in movies, where you and several of your closest friends are talking, dancing, and listening to music in an open space. It's crowded, it's loud, and it can be terribly fun.

There are also smaller weekend gatherings, usually dorm-specific. For example, East Dorm, where I spend most of my time, shows a movie at midnight every Saturday and has some sort of small party every few weeks, with themes ranging from fondue to Halloween. At any given time between 9 AM and 4 AM on the weekends, you can find someone willing to play board games, card games, or video games somewhere on the Mudd campus, generally in either their dorm lounge or the lounge of their suite. Each dorm also offers something different on the weekend, ranging from board and video games in East to a typical college party (music, lights, and so on) at West Dorm. Suites--a collection of student dorm rooms with their own lounge--also throw their own parties, with themes and activities that vary even more widely than those of the individual dorms. With so many things going on, I usually find myself facing difficult decisions like "Do I want to watch a zombie movie with my friends, go to the formal party, or play another round of this board game?"

In short, unless you're only interested in extreme underwater glow-in-the-dark salamander basketball, there's always something to do at Mudd on the weekend.

An introduction, of sorts

I'm Skye, and I'm a Mudder. ("Mudder" is slang used at the Claremont Colleges for "a student who attends Harvey Mudd College.") In case you have stumbled across this blog without any knowledge of what this "Harvey Mudd College" is, I have a brief summary:
Harvey Mudd College is a small liberal arts college with a strong emphasis on science and technology. However, science isn't all we Mudders do; in order to graduate, each of us have to have a concentration (similar to a minor) in a Humanities or Social Sciences subject in addition to a science major. (Some students take an off-campus major, in which case they must have an on-campus concentration.) If I go into much more detail than that, this post will be at least 20 pages long, so I have a link to the HMC website on this blog. ("HMC" is another one of those terms that means "Mudd.")

Who am I? I'm a freshman at Mudd. I currently live in a Scripps College dorm; however, I spend most of my time in East Dorm at Mudd, where I want to live next year. I'm planning to major in engineering and concentrate in music. I'm one of the few jazz bass guitarists who's also a classically trained flute player. I took flute lessons for several years at the University of Memphis, which is about half an hour away from my house, which is about 1,800 miles away from Mudd. My training on bass guitar comes from a hodgepodge of sources--myself, my uncle, books, teachers, and the Internet.
I came to Mudd for a whole host of reasons: the professors are approachable, the professors are good teachers, the students are friendly, the students do more with their lives than just math and science, the administration is responsive to the needs of students, and the Mudd community is very close-knit and accepting of its members. I went to Mudd and not a school more focused on science because I didn't want to have to give up music and literature in order to become an engineer. I went to Mudd and not a liberal arts college because I wanted to become an engineer.

There is one problem with the above description of myself--it fits into a neat narrative, and I don't. I skateboard across campus--partly because it's a downhill ride from the dorms to the academic end of campus, and partly because it's fun. I have a bike that's currently broken in at least 3 different ways. I really like my engineering class and my psychology class, and I'm beginning to suspect that I like them for the same reason--"Oh, that's how that works! Neat!" I like to read, I like to write, and I like to take things apart and put them back together.

I am one of the many Mudders on campus, and one of five whose blogs are being linked back to the Mudd Admissions website so that those curious about Mudd can hear what it's like to live at Mudd. And since there are five of us, it's likely you'll hear very different things about what Mudd is like. Just remember that they're all true, even when they contradict each other. Every person's life at Mudd is different. Every person at Mudd is different. Everything I write here can only be representative of the way I see things. If you think what I'm saying is strange, you can check out the other Mudder's blogs to see what they have to say. (Or you can look at their blogs anyway, because they're fun to read.)

So, in conclusion:
1) My name is Skye.
2) I am a Mudder.
3) This is my blog.

Any questions?