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Off to Coast Guard!

Opportunities at Holy Cross 

One of the best things about being a student at Holy Cross it that you are handed a nearly unlimited amount of opportunities to travel somewhere, whether it be for an immersion trip or a sports game you are bound to leave campus for an interesting place!

In my case, my very first HC sponsored trip came with the annual mock trial trip to the Coast Guard Academy for a regional invitational tournament. Everyone on Friday night gathered in Hogan 3 and packed themselves into the school vans for the hour and a half journey to New London, Connecticut.

The Trip

On the way, my teammates and I sang along to 2000 throwback playlists and talked about how the first half of the semester has gone for us all so far.  Once we arrived at the hotel we excitedly grabbed our bags from the vans and ran to our hotel rooms where we unpacked. Shortly afterward it looked as though the hotel lobby had been turned into a classroom, the mock trial team had completely taken over it with casebooks, exhibits, and other various materials taking up the space on the lobby tables as we all practiced our examinations.

First Day of Competition

The morning quickly came, eventually leading to us arriving at the Coast Guard Academy and signing in for our first competition against Fordham. While we didn’t win our first couple of trials, the learning experiencing was amazing for everyone on my team as no one on the team had any previous collegiate mock trial experience before, we were all rookies!

As the day began to settle we explored the wonderful Coast Guard Academy campus (only second to the beautiful campus we have right here at Holy Cross).  Once we drove back to the hotel we had about five minutes to change before we were treated out to a night at a wonderful restaurant that had some of the most delicious pizza and cake that I have ever tasted.  At the dinner table, all of the players and coaches conversed about the activities of the day and quickly moved on to talking about other various things such as career advice and general funny stories.

Second Day of Competition

On the second day of the competition, the entire team walked into the halls of the competition with a new found confidence as we saw that even us as rookies could put up a good fight against teams that were full of veterans who had been doing collegiate mock trial for three years.

On the second day of competition, we actually ended up winning a couple of trials and generally overachieving for a whole group of rookies at a competition with well-seasoned talent!

The Tournament in Review

Looking back at the tournament, while it was stressful at certain points due to the high stakes manner of the tournament, I ended up having so much fun with all of the people across the mock trial team. I encourage anyone reading this to check out mock trial if you get the chance as you’ll make friends for life and learn lots of helpful skills along the way!
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Off into an Entire New World

What does one feel as they go off into a whole new world at Holy Cross as an incoming freshmen? 

 

As my mother’s minivan drives up Mount Saint James a rush of emotions goes through this new member of the Crusader family. Anxiety, excitement, and curiosity are all swirling around inside of me. The line of first year student’s cars finally begins to move and before I know it I’m greeted by Holy Cross students who politely tell me where to actually find my dorm building, something that I was actually quite nervous about. Continuing the journey up the hill the line of first year cars are surrounded by members of the Holy Cross student body holding and twirling welcome signs, cheering all of us on in our adventure toward college life. A few minutes pass and my mother pulls up in front of my new home for the 2018-2019 year, Hanselman.

I nervously open the passenger side door, and am greeted by some of the friendliest  people I have ever met in my life. I tell them my name and they hand me a folder while walking me through everything I need to know for moving in. Now, many of you who are still in high school may picture the hectic move-in day rush of several trips back and forth from the car to your room. Not at Holy Cross though! I was immediately assisted by an army of Holy Cross students singing and jamming out to a Bluetooth speaker as they bring all of my belongings to my room.

 

Meeting the Roommates

As I unpack all my clothes and belongings, both of my roommates enter and introduce themselves. They’ve already been on campus for a few weeks as they are both on sports teams, so after assisting me with putting everything away they give me the lay of the land, showing me the best study spots, informing of me which coffee shops have the best coffee, and helping me find where all my classes will be held. These two strangers who I had only known for a mere hour soon became some of my best friends on campus to this day. Something that the incoming college freshmen fails to realize until it hits them in the face is that social life at college is quite different from high school. No one knows what they are doing, and barely anyone knows each other. Due to this everyone seemingly comes together to help and support everyone through any difficulties that may arise as we are all just trying to survive in this new world that is so unknown to us.