Colorado School of Mines Harvey Scholar Travels

SEEK 2019 I was blessed to be able to use part of my enrichment grant two and a half years ago to go on a pilgrimage to World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow, Poland. It was a life changing five weeks where we started in Southern France and ended in Krakow, Poland. We stayed in monasteries and hostels while volunteering at religious sites in Lourdes, France and Czestochowa, Poland. It was the first time I had left the United States and the first time I was really excited about my Catholic faith. Since then, two and a half years of college has happened and although I haven’t lost my faith, I haven’t really grown in it. Several years ago I was invited to a big Catholic conference held by FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) called SEEK. I turned it down since I had to train for track in the spring and made the excuse that I didn’t have money. This year, I was invited again. This time, I didn’t have the excuse of training for track since I was recovering from Achilles surge...

In the spare months before my semester in NZ started (see other blog post) I worked with the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center in Jackson Hole WY. We put together a cool little project ( https://inl.gov/article/can-data-analysis-predict-avalanches/ ) that was accepted for presentation at the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW). Thus began my second international trip of 2018. My journey began in Munich, Germany where the cheapest flights landed. We (I had met up with my Mom’s b est friend, who was visitin g her friends in Germany--more on them later) spent the afternoon walking around Munich hitting up all th e touristy downtown areas. There were many, many people dressed in Lederhosen (see the man in the right background in the pic above) because the closing night of OKTOBERFEST was that evening! Although I did not get the chance to wear any traditional German clothing we had a grand time at Oktoberfest eating bratwurst (delicious), whole fish on sticks (slightly less del...

For two and a half weeks over the winter break of 2018-2019, I took a solo trip across the pond and bounced around Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. (I still can’t believe that I can write that sentence and have it be true - what an opportunity, what an experience!!) First off, the grass is SO GREEN. Irish poets with more talent and practice than I’ll ever have have already written beautiful lines about the Irish landscape, so I won’t try to find new words. The countryside is so, so, so green. It was maybe one of my favorite parts of the trip. (maybe take a listen to "Green" by Ben Rector) After having studied the Troubles of Belfast through a semester-long independent study, I hopped on a plane to explore some of the places and history that I’d learned about. Because of the timing of my major-related classes and my job, I wasn’t able to spend a semester studying abroad. This was the first time, then, that I had traveled independently a...

I decided to use my enrichment grant to attend several conferences, and it was an incredible decision. The three conferences I went to are: Strange Loop, Lesbians Who Tech, and Lesbians Who Tech Leadership Summit. Strange Loop – St. Louis, MO Strange Loop was the first conference I attended. It mostly focused on social responsibility within tech fields and the importance of creating an open and inclusive field. Yes, there were some strictly-tech talks; some of my favorites discussed U2F Authentication, Natural Language Processing, and Artificial Intelligence. But this conference was about so much more. One talk that I went to was from the creator of http://jael.ai/ . Jael is an artificial intelligence chatbot that assists victims of domestic violence by helping them out of dangerous situations, contacting shelters, and providing resources. Another talk that I went to discussed how everyone is capable of supporting social movements with their skills. It is important to unders...

A few summers ago, I went and took my first trip that began my love for traveling. I had done a lot of traveling within the United States before the Summer of 2017, but I had never gone out of country and thank Hugh and Michelle for the opportunity to do so.      As a student that is very business oriented, Mines doesn't offer a large range of courses for me to take - so I decided to try and take an interesting course abroad in order to supplement my education. With that, I spent a month in London while I took a class on Alternative Investments at the London School of Economics.      To distill most of my trip, I spent a portion of every weekday in a lab as well as a lecture in order to try and get through the material so a good portion of my time was already planned out for me. In terms of the class, I was able to get better with excel for uses in data and financial analysis as well as getting a better understanding of hedge funds, ventu...

I lived in New Zealand from February to June of 2018 and learned and grew more than I ever would have thought possible in those four months. I had heard that studying abroad could be a life-changing experience, but I was a bit sceptical. I had come to Mines knowing no one, and found and built a community where I felt at home. How hard could it be to do the same thing abroad? As it turns out, driving twelve hours from St. Louis to Golden and flying eighteen hours across the Pacific Ocean are about as different as two experiences can be. The isolation from all the worlds and people I loved hit like ice water. Another factor was that the University of Otago, where I was studying, has no engineering program, so most of the other American international students were from East Coast liberal arts schools. The culture shock was intense. Tunnel Beach, on the outskirts of Dunedin, the town where I lived Slowly, I built new friendships and began to explore the beautiful place I would ...