UMD blog hop

In keeping with all things Terrapin in honor of my upcoming impending graduation on May 21, I'm participating in a UMD-flavored blog hop.


1. Where are you right now? (You can answer literally, or you can stop giving boring answers to every question you’re asked, and think outside the box.)
I am at the least likely place for me to actually accomplish anything on my to-do list--my desk. I don't know why, but the standard-issue wooden hutch-style desk they give you in the dorms just inspires me to do anything BUT write an essay. So I'm blogging instead. I'm also in the doldrums about my car, a Ford sedan that is only six years old, but about as suicidal as your average horse (very). It's in the shop to fix an ominous rattling noise, which has created logistical problems and  general money and horse-lacking sadness.

2. What keeps you blogging? Your pride? Your mom? Wanting someone other than your cat to tell you that you’re awesome?
I think it's pretty obvious that procrastination fuels my blog. OK, OK, not exactly. I love writing this blog because it makes me feel like my horse obsession is actually valid and not a waste of time. It allows me to look back on my riding progress and look forward to having my own horse one day. Plus I hope that I can help future college riders to sift through the many options available to them.


3. What blogs or bloggers do you look to for inspiration, ideas, or just to get the blog side of your brain turned on?
I love getting small doses of horse from HORSE NATION's contributors all day. They have contests and frequent posts of all different lengths--some are journalistic, some are reflective, and some are just awesome:

Horse Nation disqualified from FEI pictogram contest

Here's a taste from the same article the above picture came from, describing Horse Nation's failed attempt to design the pictograms for the Olympic equine events:

“They rejected our entries,” said Wylie of Horse Nation. “I don’t get it. I guess they didn’t understand our artistic vision.” 

“It was like a six-year-old ate a box of crayons and then threw up all over our computer screen,” the FEI spokesperson continued. “We’re looking for something a little more sophisticated.”


 I would have to say my favorite individual horse blogs are Cob Jockey and Panic and the Pony. Both are training chronicles of sorts--I would say Cob Jockey is more about training the horse (a Welsh Cob named Castleberry's Contender), and Panic and the Pony, as you might guess, is more about training the rider--or at least, trying to quell the anxiety of training a green, opinionated Arab mare. Both are written in a very compelling way--I can tell the writer of Cob Jockey really knows a lot about training, and she has a definite plan for her pony. It's just as exciting to watch a nervous rider's progression toward improving her abilities with Panic and the Pony, though.

4. What is your most Terp-like quality? Is you’re not a Terp, well, I’m sorry, but you should be. Go out and get Terpy. Then report back with your newly acquired Terp quality.
Retreating into my shell. In my personal life I'm pretty introverted, and I have some serious Stranger Danger--I avert my path to avoid people handing out flyers; I'm not very forthcoming with what I actually think (aside from class, when I always have my hand up, all "Pick me! I know the answer! I did my homework!"); and I spend most of my time holed up in my room working. I mean, plotting.

5. If you could pick any celebrity or politician to give your blog a shout out via Twitter, who would it be?
I tweeted Jane Savoie the other day. We'll see if she gets back to me. Beezie Madden would be awesome too. I actually just got a shoutout from Rafalca Romney (Mitt Romney's dressage horse). Does that count?

Here's our conversation:
 

  Collegial Equestrian ‏ @RidingInCollege

A weird look into the future of #dressage http://collegialequestrian.blogspot.com/2012/04/future-of-dressage.html

  Rafalca Romney ‏ @RafalcaRomney

Great post @RidingInCollege! The "genetically modified weirdos" bit reminded me of my owner, #MittRomney. Keep up the great writing/riding!

6. Congrats. Wallace Loh stumbled upon your blog and wants to host an all-night party to celebrate your genius. You get to pick the campus building and the two professors who will be in charge of DJ-ing and food/drinks. Go:
I would choose the backyard of the Benjamin building. Inside, it's nothing to write home about, but out back there's a lovely garden with seating and shade where we could all listen to Belle and Sebastian and make crepes together.

As for professors...hmm. Manel Lacorte, the seriously humorous Spanish professor who really challenged me in Spanish Linguistics would be one. He also has an adorable little girl and another baby on the way so they would definitely be invited. And I'm not sure how down to party she would be, but I would love Leigh Ryan to come by. Though I've never had a class with her, I worked for her as a tutor in the Writing Center, and she has been incredibly generous and helpful with her time and advice when I was researching and creating projects for conferences, and especially now as I try to navigate my way toward a writing/editing job.

7. And finally, a serious question. What have you learned from blogging? Did you learn about writing? Did you learn about people? Did you learn how easy it is to get distracted on the internet? (But j/k on the last one; you already knew that, of course.)
I think I turned about half of these into serious questions already cause I'm a party pooper (my idea of rousing fun is crepes. But seriously, crepes rock). 

Sike, I love parties...fancy parties! This was my 21st birthday party. It was awesome.

I think I'm learning to stop second-guessing myself and to finally assert how important having horses in my life is to me. They're my escape and my challenge, and they are important in my life. I've always scrambled for a way to ride with the resources I had, but until writing this blog, I always thought of it as a luxury, as an "extra."



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Riding at the University of Maryland

You may remember that I'm a Terp, albeit a not-terribly-school-spirited one.

I would much rather spend my time making cute food rather than going to a game. I didn't make this though; Snarky Rider shared it on FB

 A big part of why I chose to come to Maryland was the on-campus riding club. I was only a member for one semester, since I found it rather fishy that four out of their eight horses were lame. I also really didn't like that we only had two horses allotted to our lesson of four girls so we had to switch in the middle of the lesson.

However, I thought it would be fair and useful to see the other side. I haven't been around the campus farm for three and a half years, and I didn't want to show badly enough to warrant the IHSA team dues. I interviewed Leandra Bitterfeld, a student instructor for the University of Maryland Equestrian Club and treasurer of the IHSA team to get some perspective on which riders are best suited to club versus team riding.

Overall: Club versus Team 

via

“The club is where you want to go if you want to learn about horses,” Leandra explains. The Equestrian Club has a barn on the University of Maryland’s 1250-acre campus. Though they do show once a year on Maryland Day, the yearly campus-wide open house, the club is a non-competitive organization focused on horse care, management, and riding. 

“Maryland is the only student-run equestrian club in the country,” says Leandra, which means that all club members pitch in. In addition to attending monthly meetings and a weekly lesson (if they choose to ride), members must do one chore per week, whether it’s haying, feeding, or mucking stalls. The lesson horses play double duty too—they are also used for equine labs in the Animal Science department. Only about half of the students in the club ride, since many are simply interested in gaining experience with horses.

The club also offers students the opportunity to learn to teach. Leandra took two tests and did an evaluation ride to become an instructor for the club’s A lesson group (the club groups members based on ability—A being advanced and E being beginner riders). She has found teaching to be just as educational for her as it is for her students: “Every time I go into the ring I’m learning so much about my riding. When I’m watching these girls make mistakes, I’m also learning so much for myself. And that’s been my favorite part of teaching—being able to share my knowledge and take so much knowledge back from it.”

via

As you would expect, the IHSA team is more focused on competition than the club. According to Leandra, the average club member is just learning to canter, while the average team member is jumping 2’ or 2’6”.  Since the team mostly attracts people who already have horse experience, they require members to at least know how to walk and trot. “The level that we’re taught at is more specialized,” Leandra says, nothing that there are rarely enough dead beginners interested to fill up a group lesson.

Since IHSA riders are not familiar with their host school’s horses, the focus is on rider performance. Potential IHSA members should not stress about the possibility of a host school horse acting up because riders have the opportunity to ask for a “re-ride” which allows them to try again on a different horse. However, this is the exception rather than the norm. Leandra says, “I’ve gotten to ride so many amazing horses that I could never afford, especially as a college student.”

The UM Equestrian Team rocks the sweatpants-over-breeches look on a cold show day! I can empathize.

photo credit: Leandra Bitterfeld/ UMET FB


Finances

• The club is financed by the Student Government, Campus Recreation Services,  member fundraising, and dues. Riding members' dues are $225 per semester and non-riding members' dues are $25 per semester. Definitely WAY cheaper than 11 weeks of lessons, which could cost anywhere from $440-660 in the DC metro area.

• The team is completely financed by its members, who pay $500 per semester to cover the use of Oatlands Stables horses in lessons and shows, IHSA fees, tack, and transportation. Members who do not have show clothes borrow from other members. “We borrow and trade and swap all the time,” says Leandra, who sometimes finds herself lending out her show helmet to two or three riders who only have plastic schooling helmets in one day.

Time

• The team is more of a time commitment than the on-campus club, since weekly lessons at Oatland Stables are 45 minutes from campus (when it's not rush hour--DC traffic is no joke) and the team attends eight to nine shows per year, sometimes staying overnight for two-day shows. The team also has occasional meetings. However, so much time spent with teammates and riders from other schools only adds to the sense of camaraderie and friendship. “The sportsmanship in the region is really strong,” says Leandra. 

• For the club it depends on the chore you have. All members are required to do one barn chore (feeding, mucking, haying, etc.) which could take anywhere from an hour to several hours, and some members also choose to ride in an hour lesson (meaning about two hours to allow for walk time on our large campus plus tacking up).

Hopefully that was useful for any of you who are trying to decide where to go to college. There are so many different incarnations of IHSA teams and clubs that comparing different schools is daunting, so I hope that my stab at it was useful--I hope it showed that just because one person had a negative experience doesn't mean that everyone does. In hindsight, I don't think I was suited to the club from the start--I was raring to continue jumping 2'6" as I was accustomed to in my high school lessons, and I was really disappointed that my group was only doing cross rails and cavalletti to keep the horses sound. I'm only just beginning to understand the gaps in my flatwork that I didn't know enough to recognize back then.

There are many other resources available to compare schools which I covered in another post. Let me know if you've ever ridden for another school's IHSA team--I'd be happy to interview you for the greater good of high school seniors :)

Choosing a college

I've always been a really dedicated--some might say obsessive or neurotic-- student. In high school, I  got straight As nearly every semester and I spent my nights carefully gluing things onto posterboard and working myself practically to tears when I couldn't understand things like how to switch units of measurement in Chemistry. So college was never an "if," it was always a "which."

For my entire life, I dreamed of being a vet, so I only applied to schools that had good resources for that field--and of course, a riding team or club:

• UPenn: This was definitely a "reach" school--as in, "out of reach" financially, but I figured I'd apply just for the heck of it.  UPenn's New Bolton Center was in the news a lot when I visited, since in 2006 all of the business with Barbaro was going on. I actually don't think I finished the application properly when I because I didn't see any point in taking the subject ACT tests when I knew I couldn't afford UPenn. Rejected.
• Delaware Valley College: Delaware Valley's equestrian team has a big presence on campus, or so it seemed when I visited it on a rainy, cold spring day my junior year.  They also seem to have a very strong program that is based on getting real-life experience supported by a lot of faculty attention. I just didn't see myself meshing there, though. Maybe it was the dreary, small campus, or the fact that nearly every student I saw was practically wearing a uniform--either a sweatshirt from another college (??? Still don't get it.) or an Equestrian Club windbreaker with jeans and sneakers.  The sameness really creeped me out, and the school is in the middle of nowhere so I knew I would have no escape. Even though I was accepted to Del Val and UMD, my choice was a no-brainer.
• University of Maryland: Maybe in-state tuition should have been on my radar, but what really drew me to Maryland was an on-campus equestrian club (which turned out to suck), as well as ties to the MD-VA Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. 

 However...by the time I was accepted, I was already several months into a veterinary internship that I HATED.  Just to give you a little taste of it, watching the routine exams and hundreds of spays and neuters (not to mention my research paper on transdermal FeLV vaccines) was so boring that I actually looked forward to when I got to watch more "exciting" surgeries like removing fish hooks from a Papillon's face. Or removing tumors from a Beagle's butt. Gross stuff doesn't bother me, but I was a little disturbed that I was actually looking forward to these animals' misfortune just to break up the monotony.

When the vet supervising me assigned me to dissect a recently-aborted (and still warm) sausage-link string of kittens for the educational value, I decided that I really couldn't handle this (on top of reading boring science reports) for the next eight years. So shortly after my acceptance letter arrived with a pre-veterinary scholarship, I switched my major from Pre-Vet/ Biology to English, the other subject I really enjoyed (and was much better at than science). The switch was very easy to do at such a big state school.

Sometimes I really regret my decision to give up that scholarship--like right now, as I'm looking for jobs and my loan payments loom over my head. But I know that eventually I'll find a job. And I'm glad that I was able to keep what I love as a hobby, a reward, rather than turning it into work.

Keep posted over the next few months to see if I still feel that way when I'm jobless and still living with my parents in August or October. Oh God. I can't even think about it. I'm going to end this post now.

Here's a list of resources for college riders, courtesy of Equisearch:

• Delaware Valley College IHSA student blog

• Choosing to Ride in College--from the perspective of a Dartmouth student

• College Riding Hones Life Skills--definitely true, especially time management and networking!

• How to Find Equestrian Scholarships for College--high school students, get on this NOW. Scholarship applications of any kind always take way longer than you'll think, and you often need to give teachers or trainers time to write recommendations.

• Choose the Right College Riding Program

Don't forget to tell me about your college riding experiences and advice in the comments! How did you choose your school?