On a summery Friday, in a little corner on the patio of Good Harbor Grill, I sat with Sara House, a Leelanau student who started her freshman year and will be a senior this fall. I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a while about making the most of a Leelanau experience, and I realized that our students are the ones who have the most valuable insights! Sara will give you her unfiltered scoop on thriving at Leelanau, plus some other tasty tidbits. Buckle up; we’re about to hear about orange juice concentrate, zombie fish, and The Devil Wears Prada!
Kate: If someone were coming to Leelanau, what’s your advice on how to make the most of the experience?
Sara: My number one piece of advice that I always have given to every single student, regardless of anything about them, is to just make sure that you don’t get sidetracked about who you are. You have to keep checking in with yourself: Is this how I want to behave? Do I feel good about how I’m working towards who I want to be? And is this okay and just a learning experience, or is this out of the ordinary? And that’s just one of those things where you can’t sugarcoat something about yourself or give anyone a false pretense.
Do you have any specific advice for making the most of your academic experience?
The reason I led with the interpersonal connection is that you have to have a healthy way about yourself and your life in order to even consider concentrating on your academics. And I learned that quite quickly because as soon as I realized, “Hold on, I’m not benefiting from how I’m doing this. It’s a good experience, and I love it, but it’s not at its maximum capacity.” I just needed some mental clarity to make it so.
And after the mental clarity, how did that change?
I just kind of skyrocketed. I started therapy my sophomore year and that helped alleviate a lot off myself, and got it out of my mind. Suddenly I just got really strong in my junior year. The first thing my mom said to me last fall was, “Listen, Sara, I’m not about to make this the entire thing about what I’m going to hound you on, but you need to rock your junior year.” And I did!
To continue the conversation, visit our Leelanau website!
