Q&A

Q: What is the schedule for the mandatory weekend activities?

A: We've been getting lots of calls about the activity schedule for this summer. The trip locations are previously mentioned but we forgot to include the dates. They are listed below.

July 10- Baltimore's Inner Harbor
July 17- Hershey Park (Hershey, PA)
July 24- Washington D.C.
July 31- Gunpowder Falls Park

Time Flies...

We can't believe summer is almost here! We've been working hard in the Summer Programs office to make sure your time here is the best it can be. We've posted the orientation information on our site, are gearing up for RA training, and just got our final version of the outdoor film series poster!

We'll send an email to remind you, but please don't forget to carefully read the orientation information- it answers a lot of important questions and directs you to our BWI shuttle site. If you haven't done so already, be sure to get your medical/personal information/agreement forms back to us.

Also, keep an eye on your mailbox over the next few weeks... we're sending out a welcome gift to all our enrolled students.

See you soon!

Sneak Peek

Take a peek into Dr. Andrew Ketchum's Intro to Biological Molecules lab. To learn more about the course or to download a syllabus please visit this link.

Q&A

Here at Hopkins, we do our best to help. Whether it's explaining the pre-college admissions process over the phone or helping your luggage onto the BWI shuttle on move-out day, we work hard to be a solid support system for you. We get all kinds of questions every day, and this new Q&A section will serve as a place to to ask for guidance, voice your concerns or just check in to see what your peers are saying. For our first post, we sent a very popular question over to Erin in Residential Life.

Q: "I'm not sure which program is right for me...Discover Hopkins or Summer University. What are the differences in the experience and pros and cons of both? "

A: As a Discover Hopkins Resident Advisor, I can give a lot of insight to this question.

Although both programs are academically oriented, fall under the umbrella term “Pre-College,” and interact with each other on a daily basis, there are important distinctions that may determine which program you choose.

Duration: SU: Summer University lasts for five weeks. DH: Discover Hopkins has two sessions each lasting two weeks.

Age: SU: Is open to students turning16 by June 1st. DH: is open to students turning 15 by June 1st.

Housing: SU: Summer University students will spend their five weeks in Buildings A and B, suite-style dorms. Each suite contains two double rooms and one bathroom and are separated by gender. DH: Discover Hopkins students reside in AMR II, community-style dorms. Each floor of the dorms is divided into gender, and each floor shares a community bathroom. Each room on the floor is a double.

Food: Both Summer University and Discover Hopkins students dine at FFC- the Fresh Food Café- where they will have a meal plan.
Academics: SU: Summer University students take 2-3 classes over a five-week period. These classes are taken with current Hopkins undergraduates, and are thus at a higher level. Class times vary day-to-day and tend to be more spaced out. DH: Each Discover Hopkins student takes one class during their one or two week session. These classes are exclusively for Discover Hopkins students and resemble college “freshman seminars.” Discover Hopkins classes typically last from 9/9:30 am to 4/4:30 pm, Monday-Friday

Class trips: SU: Class trips for Summer University students, because their classes are also those of Hopkins undergraduates, are not guaranteed and are left to the discretion of professors. DH: Discover Hopkins courses begin each day with lectures and typically end with a guest speaker, field trip or class activity. Potential 2010 trips include The Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Sheppard Pratt, the Babe Ruth Museum, the BGE Incinerator, Washington, DC, a local yoga studio, and various Baltimore "field study" locations.

Large-scale programs: Both Summer University and Discover Hopkins students go on mandatory, large-scale weekend programs. Summer University students attend all weekend trips, while Discover Hopkins students attend the weekend trip that occur during their session. Weekend trips this summer will included Hershey Park, the Baltimore Artscape Festival, Orioles Games, and Washington, D.C. Also, each Friday night the lower quad is transformed into an outdoor movie theater- live music plays at 7:30 and the films begin at dark. Visit the film series site to see the 2010 line-up.

Please feel free to post any further questions you may have regarding this matter.

A Day in the Life...

(The following post was written by SU student Jacob last summer.)

Hey everyone. I’m Jacob, a student in Summer University program here at Hopkins. For my time here, I’m taking Intro to Contemporary Democracy and Intro to Roman Culture. What I’ve decided to do for my first post is just to go through what one day here at JHU for a Summer University student is like. So let’s start with…

9:45 AM: In my room in Building A, the alarm goes off. Today, I don’t have a morning class, so I get to sleep in a little. Other days, I’m already in class by now. The question is whether or not to actually get up. I think I’ll hit the sleep button just once…

9:47 AM: Housekeeping comes to change the towels, so I guess I’m up. (FYI, if you’re coming here next year, it’s helpful to know that all your towels and bed linens are provided by the University and get changed periodically.)

10:15 AM: I have a project due in exactly one week which will require me to make a presentation on Roman games. Since I don’t have any more work to do for class this afternoon, I’ll spend the next hour and a half working on that.

12:25 PM: Time for lunch on the way to class. The FFC (Fresh Food Café) is busy as usual, but I’m somehow able to edge in and grab a slice of pizza before it’s all gone.

A note on food (since that’s pretty important when you’re here for five weeks): what you have to eat here is college food, so it’s probably not going to be what you're used to getting at home. That being said, there’s plenty of options in the dining hall, and when you start to get bored of the on-campus food, there’s a ton of places to eat within several blocks. But I’ll talk more about all that in another post.

12:40 PM: OK, lunch took less time than I thought it would. So I guess I’ll just head over to class a little early and start working on my Contemporary Democracy reading for tomorrow.

12:45 PM: Everyone else seems to show up early too for some reason, so I get nothing done, but rather have a good time talking with the other people in my class.

1:00 PM: Class starts. Today’s lecture is on the endings of the Roman Empire, from Diocletian to Justinian. We also talk about the rise of Christianity and how the triangular relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and the various pagan religions of the time affected society.

3:30 PM: Class ends. A conversation with the instructor carries over to Café Q, a coffee/gelato shop with a bakery, in the upper level of MSEL (the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, named for the brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower who served as the eighth and tenth president of Johns Hopkins).

An interesting note about MSE: most of the library is underground, however, each floor still has windows and natural light. There are tons of group and individual study space, so it’s a great place to go when you need to get work done.

3:45 PM: Back in Building A, I pull out German sociologist and political theorist Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation” and begin the process of highlighting and annotating.

4:20 PM: Take a break from Weber to communicate with some friends back home. Here’s another FYI tangent: If you’re bringing a computer to campus, every dorm in Buildings A and B (which are inhabited exclusively by Summer University and Engineering Innovations students) is wired for internet access, but you have to provide your own Ethernet cable (if you don’t have one, you can easily get one in the bookstore). Also, MSEL has tons of computers and there are other computer clusters available for you to use.

5:00 PM: I usually wait until later for dinner, but I’m feeling hungrier than usual. One of my roommates (our dorm is a four-person suite split into two, two-person rooms) is experiencing the same sensation, so we hit the FFC.

5:40 PM: A phone call from the outside world comes and I see that I’ve gotten a letter. My point here is that it’s easy to stay in touch with your friends and family while you’re in Baltimore.

6:00 PM: Back to Weber. It’s time to get some serious work done, so I head over to MSE.

7:30 PM: Realize I just missed the Capture the Flag game on the Upper Quad. I guess Weber is more captivating than I thought!

9:00 PM: Floor meeting. We talk about stuff that’s happening in the next couple days, like a trip to a driving range with a mini-golf course and the talent show.

9:50 PM: Back to the library for Weber’s last stand. Finally, I’m done with him at…

11:00 PM: Head back to dorm, direct computer to campusfood.com. Truly, the ability to get food delivered right to the dorms with just a click is one of the greatest innovations the internet has brought to society.

11:30 PM: Pizza Boli’s long awaited delivery finally comes. Eat and watch “South Park” with friends.

12:00 AM: Curfew and room check. (FYI, you don't have to be up until midnight every night. The RA on duty will make sure you're in your room, but they won't wake you up unless there's a special circumstance.) Now it's time to get some sleep, since I've got a morning class just nine hours away. After class, I think I’ll stop by the Hopkins Barnes and Noble (which sells way more than just books) and maybe get some ice cream at Cold Stone. Can’t wait!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So that's pretty much what a typical day in Summer U land is like. Got any more questions? Leave a comment on this post. Also, check out the Academics, Campus Life, and Baltimore threads.