Mads O'Brien '16

For Mads O'Brien, rising junior and Earth and Environmental Science/Science in Society double major, Summer at Wes provided an opportunity for productivity during the month of June. "Also I really love writing and I knew I wanted to take a writing class while I was here, but they’re really hard to get into. So doing it in the summer, you just clicked a button and you were enrolled."

Mads took Writing Creative Nonfiction with Anne Green, and thoroughly enjoyed being immersed in the coursework. "I think Summer Session really suits itself well to artistic classes—like film, drawing, music making, and writing—because that’s all you’re doing so you can really devote the rest of your day to thinking about what you’re creating. So I would have class in the mornings and I would have the rest of the day to sit in the grass and think about what I was going to write or go read that nonfiction story for class. I enjoyed it a lot because it gave you all of that time to think and mull over, which is really important for a writing class. I think I enjoyed the class a lot more than I would have if I had taken it during the school year where you’re being pulled in twenty different directions as a student."

She came to embrace all that Wes and Middletown offer during summer. "Summer at Wes takes getting used to. Once you get used to it, however, it’s a really awesome thing. You not only see parts of campus, but parts of Middletown that you’ve never seen before or get to see much of during the year. Also it’s nice that you have your chunk of thing—whether it’s research, work, or class—but once you clock out, you’re basically free because you don’t have tons of meetings to go to, you don’t have tons of homework or other obligations. You just have your evenings and your afternoons to just go and walk by the river, which no students ever do during the school year."