Procrastination // by Emily

Right now I am supposed to be doing homework, but instead I am listening to one of mah fav playlists, "the gangs all here," -- with songs like Suspicious Minds-Elvis Presley, Thunder Road-Bruce Springsteen, and Lookin' Out My Back Door-Creedence Clearwater Revival -- and stumbling; stumbleupon.com is literally what keeps me sane, and keeps my mouth watering...zomgg I love the fall

(click here for the recipe!)

and hellllooo desserts! #getmeouttahere.

(click here for more!)

I am super stoked that Halloween is tomorrow because that means DRESS UP WEIGHTS holla holla (aka just another opportunity for our awesome trainers to judge me). But like I am not even kidding I am so excited.

Its been real, over and out.

My Pseudo-80s Playlist // by Kelsey

I’m pretty sure I was born in the wrong decade. Big hair and bright, neon clothes? Sign me up. I used to tease my parents relentlessly about their horrific taste in music and couldn’t possibly imagine how they grew up with that as their main means of entertainment. But as always, Momma Suggs knows best. And now the 80’s are BACK! Cassie and I even attempted to learn a jazzercise work out video over the summer… it wasn’t pretty. If you want to try it out yourself, click here!

Now I know nothing will ever truly live up to the real 80’s, so here are a few songs with a little modern twist. I’ll even throw in a cover of my favorite 80’s classic (:

The Island (Madeon Remix) - Pendulum

Dancing On My Own - Robyn

Enjoy the Silence (Cover) - Anberlin

Spiralling - Keane

An Honest Mistake - The Bravery

Seventeen Forever - Metro Station

Bulletproof - La Roux

A Day in the Life of a HumBio Major // by Alyssa

Today was a great day on Stanford’s campus! It was a beautiful fall day without a cloud in the sky and it was a day where I was able to share all of the hard work I have put into my Human Biology Internship this past year. Human Biology is the biggest major on campus and it is one of the most flexible. You are able to design your own focus within the major and pick and choose classes you want to take. My area of concentration is Health and Human Performance. This means I take a lot of classes having to do with human performance, sports medicine, human physiology and health courses. The health courses are more broad and allow me to explore chronic disease prevention across the life course and health disparities in the United States. For my internship I was able to work with an Emergency Room doctor at Kaiser Permanente in my hometown. It was a Clinical Research Internship and it spanned from shadowing in the ED to writing a hypothetical research proposal and researching different health topics. In the ED I was able to see a lot of different cases and learn a lot about emergency medicine. I took an online course that taught me how to protect human research participants. After this online course I wrote a hypothetical study proposal that was to explore if the use of intrauterine devices for longer than five years caused an increase in breast and ovarian cancer rates. Intrauterine devices are a form of birth control that is gaining popularity in the United States. The doctor I worked with also writes a health interest column every other week for my local newspaper. I was able to do the background research for his topics and help him edit the column. The topics ranged from exploring the efficacy of fish oil pills to how to perform CPR and the productivity of multi-tasking. After participating in this internship for a little over a year I was finally able to put together a poster and present it at the Humbio Internship Fair held from 12-1pm today (October 13, 2011). It was a great experience to be able to walk around and see what fellow students have been working on and to share with others what I have been doing with my internship. The other internships ranged from sports medicine to burning man and how babies learn a language. Every Human Biology major is required to do an internship, but the topic has to relate to their area of concentration in some way. Other than those requirements, you are basically able to do whatever you wish. All in all it was a great day, and I was finally able to show off all of my hard work! :)

Summer Highlights // by Pallavi

This summer was definitely one to remember! I spent the first part working at the Stanford Center for Innovation and Global Health and playing my 11th and final summer season with the Stanford Club! Two weeks after Senior Nationals I was off to Shenzhen, China (with Alyssa and Amber!) for the World University Games!! It was one of the most memorable and exciting experiences I have had. It was so much fun to finally have the chance to play with girls that are usually hot competitors during our NCAA season! A few days after we returned from China my mum and I headed to Hawaii for a little R&R (: It's been a sweet, sweet summer...

Summer Highlights // by Alyssa

This has been the busiest summer I have ever had in my life. The summer started off like a normal summer for me. I started playing summer polo for Stanford Club with the majority of my teammates and I took Physics 21 and 22 at Stanford. I lived on campus with my teammate Monica and I discovered a love for Boba Tea. I managed to survive the physics final on the road at Nationals and our team won a bronze medal in the tournament. After summer polo was over it was time for Pallavi and me to train for the World University Games in Shenzhen, China. The World University Games (WUGs) is like a mini-olympics for college-aged athletes. There were over 140 different countries represented and about 30 different sports competed. I was fortunate enough to experience this celebration of sport alongside former teammates (Amber Oland) and rivals from different schools (including USC, UCLA, and CAL). I am not going to lie, I would have been happy if we just won one game. It was invigorating to not know your opponents and not know what to expect. We seemed to defy everyone’s expectations when we started to win and once we started to win we couldn’t stop! We made it all the way to the championship game where we played China. We ended up losing to China but we still won a silver medal! The trip had far exceeded my own expectations and I made friends that I would have never had the opportunity to meet. After China I moved back home to Marin and turned 21! I felt like I was the last of my friends to finally turn 21! And I am now writing to you all sitting on a lanai in Kauai gazing out at a beautiful beach with my family…. Life couldn’t get any better.

 

Summer Highlights // by Monica

In order to enter the top secret building, I had to parachute over and land exactly through a small opening on the fourth floor. Once I accessed the building, I spotted my target, the rouge spy who had previously infiltrated the CIA. We engaged in a dramatic chase scene, through an obstacle ridden room.

Would I ever catch the spy??

I will never know... because at this moment (5:35am) my and Alyssa Lo's alarm clocks went off simultaneously, just like they did every other day of the week. They signaled the end of my action-packed dream and prompted us to get out of bed and head over to Avery Aquatic Center for summer polo morning practice. Living on campus with Alyssa made the morning commute to the pool average a 3 minute bike ride. Having practice in the morning generally meant for an early bedtime, aside from the one night a week when Alyssa and I decided it was worth loosing an hour of sleep to stay up and watch The Bachelorette. Our summer water polo season culminated in placing third at Senior Nationals, which was held in my home town Moraga. Everyday this summer after practice I headed over to Lorry Lokey Labs on campus to continue working on a research project I started in June 2010. The model organism I work with is yeast, which is an endless source of amusement for my parents and their pun-making capabilities, most recently my father telling me I should title everything 'Yeast Meets West.' Between working in the lab and studying for a standardized test (which I must admit I thought I was finished with those after my junior year of high school) I was fairly busy until the end of August, when I moved back home to spend some time with my parents. The last few weeks of summer I'm enjoying relaxing in Moraga and helping out my Mom in her kindergarten class.

Summer Highlights // by Victoria

This summer I had an awesome opportunity to work as an intern for a local nonprofit, Help One Child, which provides support to families with foster children. Working with the team at Help One Child and playing water polo was a great and super fun experience-- the summer flew by! After water polo, I went to Spain for a week with my family and biked from Barcelona, through the French Pyrenees, and down to the Mediterranean coast. The scenery was breath-taking-- so were biking the hills! The food, as always, was the best part!

Summer Highlights // by Alexis

For the first part of summer, I stayed on campus to take a summer school class, practice with the Stanford Club team, and best of all to coach a 12 and under girls Junior Olympic water polo team. Once the summer session of water polo and classes were over, my family and I went on a vacation to Hawaii. While I was there I was able to sneak in a visit with Kim Hall, who was one of the three seniors on our championship team last year and is now a med student at the University of Hawaii. Since coming back to the mainland, I've been running around visiting old friends and getting my last fix of the socal beaches before I head back up north in time for school to start!

Summer Highlights // by Jillian

I had the ultimate summer this year. After water polo ended I spent most of my time traveling...all over the world! I went to Wisconsin for a family wedding and I had about 100 people that were related to me. It was so hard to keep track of them all! After Wisconsin my brother and I explored to Switzerland, Italy, and Greece and had the most amazing time. It was an experience of a life time and I am so grateful that I was able to create amazing memories with my brother. When I got back I climbed half dome with my mom, sister and a couple other friends. What a sight that was! It was truly an unforgettable summer!

Summer Highlights // by Kelsey

This summer was really eye-opening for me. Not only was I playing for Stanford Club, but I was also coaching the 14U girls for the team as well. The girls were amazing and promised to come watch my games this year—I can’t wait! I grew really close with them over the summer. After I left Northern California in August, I had the opportunity to shadow a surgeon at UC Irvine. I got to scrub up and observe in the operating room. I saw lots of really cool anatomy, and I can’t wait to get my hands in that someday for real! Before heading back up to school, I absolutely had to hit up my favorite burrito joint in San Clemente—Pedro’s Tacos! Me, some delicious Mexican food, and my favorite beach spot… it was a perfect way to end the summer.

Summer Highlights // by Catherine

This summer I played water polo for Socal club for the first time and worked as a swim instructor. But the highlight of my summer was my senior trip with my best friend to London!

Summer Highlights // by Cassie

This summer was by far my busiest summer yet, but NorCal treated me well. I moved out in June into the apartment that I lived in the previous summer with the Lo sisters and Alexis Lee, but this time with Kelsey Suggs, K-Bizzle, the Legend, and one of Jillian's high school friends. It definitely was a party with two bedrooms to five girls but reflecting back on it now, I loved it. Knowing that we would be waking up at the crack of dawn to play water polo every morning, K-Bizz was in bed at about 9 PM sharp every night, except for that one night I came home late and didn't call. She was worried sick about me. I'm not oging to lie, when she said, "I was so worried about you! You can't do that! I'm up an hour past my bedtime waiting for you!" with her retainers in, it was adorable. The Legend, Kelsey, and I had the same guilty pleasures, and by guilty pleasures I'm talking about Teen Wolf, MisFits, True Blood, and Say Yes to the Dress. Im pretty sure Suggs has already started planning her wedding and knows what her dress is going to look like. Next to this guilty pleasure was usually KB calling into Yummy Yogurt asking for what flavors they had that day to see if it was worth driving the 5 minutes into Redwood City to get FroYo. I'm really not sure why KB even bothered calling in because she always ended up driving over to get yogurt anyways. Our apartment being located 5 steps from the CalTrain made it pretty fun to sleep at night too. Luckily for us, we never overslept for morning work outs because we could always count on the CalTrain to wake us up at 5:30 AM sharp, EVERY.... MORNING. :)

I also worked in the city with a fellow water polo alumni, Kelsey Holshouser. I interned at a start up company called StarMaker Interactive. I loved working in the city. The San Francisco weather allowed me to dawn jeans and sweatshirts. To quote my good friend Mark Twain, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." TRUTH. I loved going into the city whether it was work, karaoke, or a Giants game, San Fran is always a lively and colorful place to go.

This summer was busy but I learned a lot with my internship, bonded more than ever with the Stanford Club girls, and just lived the dream.

Summer Highlights // by Ashley

This summer was pretty much just filled with water polo. For the first month and a half of summer I watched a lot of water polo because I was out with a torn ligament in my thumb, but I learned a lot from sitting on the bench. During the second half of the summer I trained with the Junior National Team for the Junior World Championships in Trieste, Italy. Although we didn't do as well as we had hoped to, it was a great experience and I really had a lot of fun! Oh, and the food there was DELISH!

Summer Highlights // by Kiley

I had a great summer of water polo and work. I played primarily for my club team, Santa Barbara Aquatics club. We won the 18 and under national club championship. I also participated on the USA junior national team that traveled To Trieste, Italy. Lastly I worked as a junior lifeguard instructor for the city of Santa Barbara. This experience taught me a lot about responsibility and gave me the opportunity to meet many interesting kids. I had a wonderful summer that I will remember forever.

Summer Highlights // by Kaitlyn

My summer has been a blast from hanging out on campus playing water polo with our team and taking stats 60 to working two internships one with Snapette a really awesome and fun iphone fashion and shopping app where my job was literally to go shopping and find the coolest local boutiques (so if you are ever interested to know where the best shopping in San Francisco and Palo Alto is just ask me). My other internship was one with Shauns Shades who makes designer sunglasses and for each pair bought they donate a pair to someone in need in a impoverished country. Finally I ended my summer with an amazing trip the NYC with my three best friends from my freshman dorm where we went to Broadway shows, spent the weekend on fire island, had tea at the plaza, and spent a day at the MOMA. Right before school started we also took a family trip to Kauai where we enjoyed the warm and sunny beaches, ate amazing food, and attempted surfing.

Summer Highlights // by Kate

I trained with Stanford club (obviously) until Opens. In the months of August and September I traveled to New York City with Melissa for a week where we toured around and shopped and show a show on broadway. Then I went to Catalina with my family. After that I went to our house in Tahoe for a week with a friend to relax on the lake and wake board and jet ski. Just returned from Trieste, Italy where I competed with the Jr. National team at the Junior World Championships. The whole summer I was playing water polo while also getting to enjoy myself on some fun vacations!

Summer Highlights // by Emily

This summer, as like most of my previous ones, was very water polo oriented. I was able to play with the stanford girls in the mornings because I live close-by and practiced with my club NorCal in the evenings. I nannied for a family on mondays and wednesdays in between practices for the entire summer, swam in swim meets on sundays for the menlo circus club, and tried to spend what little time we had left with my friends. Once jo's ended I spent essentially the rest of my summer with my family, went to our vacation house in Three Rivers for a week and then got ready for Stanford!

Summer Highlights // by Kaley

I played water polo from start to finish this summer! Highlights for me included winning U21 JOs with my old club team, SOCAL, and a trip to Italy with the US Jr Team for the Junior World Championships!

Summer Highlights // by Lexie

I spent most of this summer in and around here, playing polo and working on campus. I was a field counselor for the Stanford All-Sports Camp, an athletic summer camp for children ages 5-13. It was really great, because basically I was paid to play all day. I also pioneered a water polo component to the camp, definitely the best part of my job. Although the kids had a bit of trouble getting used to only using one hand to hold the ball and not standing on the bottom. You can't blame them though, some of these kids were like 3 feet tall. After work ended, I headed home to Laguna Beach for a couple weeks, then up to my cabin in Tahoe for a bit. After getting some R&R, I'm ready to get back to business.

Summer Highlights // by Lizzie

This summer was awesome! i got to spend a ton of time with my family and got to take a trip up to Oregon to see two of my very close friends. While in Oregon I got to see lots of animals, a rock garden, giant hiking areas and of course lots of green.

Summer Highlights // by Cory

This summer I played water polo for SoCal club and received 2nd place for 18&U and 1st place for 21&U in Junior Olympics. In addition to this I was given the opportunity to work with kids. I coached Splashball, taught swim lessons, and also privately tutored spanish to children under the age of 10, jobs that were all extremely rewarding and very fun.