The Hendrix Experience
By Katie Rice '10
The pansies popping up around campus signal an inevitable truth: I’m in the home stretch of my first year at Hendrix. While I’m relishing my last two months of class, I look forward to the summer with equal enthusiasm. I’ll be doing no burger-flipping!
My Spanish professor is taking a group to study in Madrid for a month, and an English professor recommended a two-week writing program in New York. Hendrix’s Career Services department also helped me get an internship as a blogger.
I'll have a full plate, but I’m only partaking in a tiny portion of the Hendrix-sponsored trips and events that will take place this summer. Professors are also leading travel-study excursions to South Africa, China, Italy and Rwanda; mission trips to Tanzania and Georgia; and a Summer Semester in Costa Rica.
All of these opportunities – and dozens of others – were advertised in mass e-mails that every student receives. It’s become very obvious to me that Hendrix wants to help students have meaningful out-of-class experiences. Plus, Hendrix wants to give students money to help them have those experiences without breaking the bank. There are stipends available to students with non-paying internships, and study abroad trips are often subsidized by the College.
The staff at Hendrix is incredibly helpful, too. When I first visited the Career Services office, I was introduced to the Internship and Service Learning Coordinator. Although I hadn’t made an appointment, she met with me and discussed the internship opportunities that were available in my home town. Within five minutes, she had suggested an internship (the blogging gig I mentioned earlier), critiqued my resume and handed me a packet of papers with other helpful information.
The study abroad coordinator, Odyssey office manager and others were equally knowledgeable, supportive and encouraging. So without a terrible amount of trouble, I will have acquired my three required Odyssey experiences* by next Christmas, perhaps even by Labor Day. And I will be a much better person for it. More confident, more cultured, more … experienced!
After my first month at Hendrix, I wrote with amazement about my fellow students’ experiences. (See “First Impressions of a Freshman”.) It seemed like everyone had gone abroad or done research or engaged in serious service work. “These are normal, average students: they stand behind you in the lunch line and sleep in the dorm room next door,” I wrote.
Since then, a sophomore down the hall has used Odyssey funding to plant an organic garden. A freshman friend got Odyssey money to travel to China for a month and help rural children learn English. Two more are headed to China this summer, and another (literally, the girl who sleeps in the room next door) is going to Rwanda.
A year ago, when I was frantically trying to pick one of the small, liberal arts colleges that all seemed so similar, my Hendrix admissions counselor tried to impress upon me what a difference the Odyssey program would make. I don’t think I really understood back then, but I’ll have to mail him a thank-you postcard from Madrid.
Katie Rice of St. Louis, Mo. is a student-writer in the Hendrix Communications Office. This is the third in a series of articles she is writing about her first year at Hendrix. In First Impressions of a Freshman, she chronicles her first month at Hendrix. In Lasting Impressions, she shares her semester-end opinion of the Hendrix community.
Hendrix, founded in 1876, is a selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts college that emphasizes experiential learning in a demanding yet supportive environment. The college has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.
