Hey, first years. Here’s a welcome: a belated welcome, nonetheless, but a welcome, from a jaded, opinionated senior who’s entering her final year with a strange combination of disillusionment and yet a stronger belief than ever in the power of the sort of education you can get, should you make the right choices, from your four years at this College.
Perhaps many of you don’t realize this, but a social stigma of mental illness exists, and it is a very bad thing. This stigma is perpetuated by Hollywood’s alarmingly inaccurate conceptions of the mentally ill. They are portrayed in films and television as violent lunatics who are dangerous and should be avoided. A general lack of understanding of mental health also doesn’t help their case — people fear what they don’t understand.
Amherst College is a community with a rich history in the arts, literature, economics and many other fields. We are a liberal arts college with the features of a smoothly-run world, with our law enforcement protecting the Mead Art Museum and patrolling the campus. There is usually a clear line between creativity and breaking the law because of this ... unless it’s vandalism.
Welcome back to Amherst! It is truly an exciting time to serve as your Student Body President. Last year catalyzed a great deal of changes to our campus, and much of the work is ongoing. Therefore, I’d like to describe some of the work that our student government, the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) will undertake over the next year.
Diner and Alsharif have both served on ACEMS since their first year. Diner is currently on the Board of Directors, and both are ranked as med-10s, the equivalent of “crew chief” on a standard corps.
Welcome to campus, first-years. We hope that Orientation is treating you well. Enjoy Camp Amherst while you still can; classes start next week.
We wanted to use this opportunity to offer you a short introduction to our group, and to offer some advice about when to call us for urgent medical help.
Amherst College in the 2012-2013 school year was a place and time filled with pain and discomfort in more ways than one. A number of important and contentious debates sprung up on campus. Words were spewed from many different angles. On the surface this was perhaps abnormal, replacing the usually somewhat tepid and quiet Amherst awkward and filling the space with radical action and concern over laudable, progressive causes. Everyone at Amherst, faces new and old, should be aware of this.
1. Learn how to study effectively. Find your a nook inside the library or around campus (we won’t share ours because that would defeat the point). Take study breaks often. Go for a walk around the trails or simply call a friend or family member.
2. Stay healthy. Don’t fall into the routine of ordering calzones at 2 a.m. every day. Invest in healthy midnight snacks. Try to eat as healthy as the options at Val allow you. And we cannot stress this enough: get enough sleep every night.
