Every week, The Thrill features a member of a student-support organization to bring awareness about the various resources available to the student body on campus. This week, we’re featuring Hannah Wendlandt ’19. Stay safe this weekend, and know that there is always someone you can talk to if you need help.
If you want to speak to a PC, they have Office Hours in the new Health and Counseling Center. Drop by and talk to a PC every Sunday-Thursday, 7-9 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays 5:30-7:30 p.m. Or call their 24/7 hotline at 740-398-3806.
Cats or dogs?
Dogs!!!! I only ever grew up with dogs, so honestly I don’t really know how to interact with cats and they make me feel rejected. I love how open and friendly and wholesome dogs are, how they make you feel like an awesome person. Really I just want to be a dog when I grow up. Also, look at my sweet child’s face:
What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?
The best meal I’ve ever had is as follows: ham, collards, cornbread, butter beans with chow chow (which is, for those of differing culinary background, the south’s answer to kimchi,) sweet potatoes, and pound cake, all lovingly prepared by my Great-Aunt Anne and Great-Grandma Virgee.
Why do you love Kenyon?
I love Kenyon because no one, faculty or staff or administrator, makes me feel like I have to choose between my various academic interests. I get to be unabashedly interested in cell signaling, Greek lyric, and ontological implications of modern neuroscience all at the same time. Aside from that, though, the people here are so incredibly interesting and multi-faceted and kind and beautiful??? I love a lot of people on this campus. They’re what keep me here when the going gets tough.
What’s something good that happened to you this week?
Something good that happened this week is that I asked a professor to be my major advisor and she said yes!!! She’s a bomb lady biochemist and a dog mom (also a mom mom) and she’s ridiculously kind, which I admire so so much.
What’s your best advice for staying sane?
My best advice for staying sane is to take the time you need to just do what makes you feel right, or whole, or capable/strong/badass. If that’s yoga, great! If that’s producing music, wow and also A+. If that’s lying face down on your bedroom floor for half an hour, a.) I’ve been there, and b.) that’s awesome. Do that. I think it’s pretty common here to feel like any time you take for yourself is unacceptable or unproductive, because you’re not actively working or studying or whatever. That’s totally not true, though – it’s those kinds of activities that allow us all to be centered, functional humans, and you should be proud of doing something so kind and important for yourself. Find what feels good and work against the rhetoric that says that’s academically unproductive.
Why did you want to become a PC?
I wanted to become a PC because I want to pay forward all of the help that I’ve gotten from friends, family, and mentors, especially in the ridiculous pressure cooker of my high school. I didn’t really realize how toxic that culture was until I got to Kenyon, and had to explain things like suicide clusters, explain what they were and why they were happening in schools near where I grew up. In retrospect, I’m really frustrated at and sad about how situations of mental health were handled in my school, and I’m really glad to be actively working against a culture like that at Kenyon.
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