Coffee: Fuel for Staff and Students Alike

A certain internationally known coffee company that originated in Seattle, Washington (and whose original store is about an hour’s drive from Saint Martin’s campus at 1912 Pike Place) has been keeping the Admissions office going during the month of December. The feverish response to “coffee run” in our office is not unlike the frenzied application dash that many seniors make when they realize that it really is time (or past time) for them to be applying to college. We whip out our personalized VIP (coffee addict) status coffee cards, wrap them carefully in sticky notes with our orders desperately scrawled and punctuated, and thrust them upon the poor unwitting worker who thought it would be a great idea to sneak out and grab some caffiene.

When the laden-down drink bringer returns, we look up long enough to grab our coffee of choice, smile gratefully, and then return to work. As the buzz of artificial energy quickly sets in the entire office basks in a shared feeling of purpose and renewal, and the processing of applications continues on.

Perhaps our intensity has been amplified by the general feel of campus as students have also been spotted for the last two weeks hunched up over mugs of scalding Joe and messy stacks of heavy books and crumpled notes while preparing for their finals. The Saint Martin’s Student Ambassadors (who @connectsmu follows) have tumbl’d and tweeted their test anxiety, their study-induced sleep deprivation, and the final relief of being done and traveling home.

As a Prospective Student with Christmas Break approaching and graduation drawing ever nearer for seniors, you are probably also gearing up to a near-manic state. Take my advice: go get some coffee, find a quiet place to study, and turn up the tunes. You will find, as all of our busy Saints did, that the craziness leading up to tests fades almost immediately once you have taken them. Sure, there is that faint anxiety over how well you did, (did you select B or C on that last multiple choice question?) but the main point is, you finished.

You all know where I am going with this–studying for finals is the same as applying to college. It’s very important and can seem like the ‘end all be all’, it is easy to become stressed and obsessed, and it is a huge relief the moment you are done.  

Over the past week I have been reviewing answers to a student survey of reasons why students had not yet applied. The most popular answer? Application cost. The second most popular? Time. The third? “Don’t know enough about the university”.

I’ve got good news for those of you who may fall into these categories: our online application is free, and with the holiday break quickly approaching finals will thankfully be out of the way leaving extra time to finish up those last couple of applications. As to the third, if you have browsed our website, joined our mailing list, and still want to know more about SMU we are still offering campus tours and meetings with faculty and counselors. We even have one final Spirit Day open house on January 28th. If you are a transfer student, Spirit Fridays continue throughout the school year.

As the Saint Martin’s students head home today or tomorrow, relieved to have another semester under their belt, we in Admissions will continue to chug coffee and track down missing application pieces.

I just ran out of Americano. Drat.

–Emilie Schnabel