Snapshots of a Kenyon Summer

Name: Jacqueline McGraw (see photo 1)

Year: 2015

Summer Program: KAC Receptionist

Position Details: I worked at the front desk of the Kenyon Athletic Center for most of the summer. That just entailed checking everybody’s IDs when they came in, because since it was mostly community members, you just had to make sure people weren’t trying to use the facility if they were not a member for liability reasons. I would just have conversations [and] be friendly; that was pretty much my job. I would help out with any small tasks that needed to be done.  

Funniest Experience: We had a lot of camps come that stayed on campus and ... there was a judo camp. It was just really funny for me because they would be in their robes and they were all practicing fighting on the basketball court right at the entrance. The students who were on campus during the summer would come in, and ... they would be like, “What is going on here?”

Best Thing About Kenyon in the Summer: Definitely meeting new people. There were about 50 students on campus for most of the summer, and it was just really fun because almost every day we would all hang out at the Aclands because there were not that many people. Everybody was just happy to have anybody come over, and you got to meet a lot of people from other grades, which was just really fun.

Worst Thing About Kenyon in the Summer: The one thing that really stands out was the blackout because I was living in a New Apt at the time, and ... they sent out this email that said campus had power again. I was so excited to go back to my New Apt, and I went to turn on my light and it didn’t work. So, we continued to not have power in those for two or three more days. It was really hot during that period of time. We were also cooking for ourselves, so that was sort of a problem.

Name: Joe Walsh (see photo 2)

Year: 2015

Summer Program: Office of Admissions

Position Details: I was basically a tour guide, but obviously we don’t give tours all day. … When I wasn’t doing that, we would be sort of stuffing envelopes, sending out mailings, communicating with prospective students or transfer students, just all that kind of stuff.

Funniest Experience: In the office, we had this wall. I wouldn’t exactly call it a wall of shame, but it was sort of like funny and stupid things people said throughout the summer in the office. We just had like all these random things put up and, also, every once in a while something would get printed wrong and stuff like that. So, it was just this random wall of all these jokes and it was the kind of thing that if any random person walked in and looked at them they would have probably just thought we were in an insane asylum or something like that. It was just absolutely hilarious.

Best Thing About Kenyon in the Summer: I think that, in a lot of ways, it was still very much the same Kenyon, in that you still had the people that wanted to be here, but the people who came here over the summer even more so wanted to be here. We started calling the summer group Summa Gamma Beta (Summer in Gambier).

Worst Thing About Kenyon in the Summer: If anything, it was … why did they make the KAC hours so short? All the people liked to use the facilities, but most people would work during the time they were open. There was honestly very little to complain about.

Name: Kayla Ernst (see photo 3)

Year: 2013

Summer Program: Legal Scholars

Position Details: My project was about how the meaning of terrorism has changed through the judiciary. So, I looked at federal terrorism cases since the 1980s, and I read through the court opinions of each of the cases to see how the courts defined terrorism and treated terrorists from the 1980s to the present. I researched how that changed with the war on terror with the kind of rhetoric and the kind of characteristics they use to describe it, because it’s just kind of a concept that has never had a settled definition.

Best Experience: Really, the best thing about the study was working with my advisor, [former Kenyon] Professor Nicole Hotchkiss. That was what I really enjoyed, because she had a lot of background on the subject, so she just offered a perspective that I really didn’t know. The funniest experience was trying to work with the statistical software, because I didn’t really have experience with that. My advisor is at another university right now, and so she was trying to explain everything to me about the software over the phone, and it was just a mess contacting each other.

Best Thing About Kenyon in the Summer: It was just like everything that’s great about Kenyon but without stress. I had my research but it was on my own schedule, so I got to enjoy being here and appreciate the beauty of the campus and the professors that are here. Every night I would just take a night walk and walk all over campus.

Worst Thing About Kenyon in the Summer: The heat, especially living in Aclands. There were a few sleepless nights when I couldn’t sleep because it was like 100 degrees. So that was pretty awful.