Joe's blog
Class of 2010, Biomedical Sciences/Pre-Dental Major, from La Crosse, WI

Hey everyone! Seeing as this is my first blog and you have no clue who I am, I'll start by telling you about myself. My name is Joe Schwartz and I just started my sophomore year here at St. Norbert. I am a biomedical sciences/ Pre-Dental major from Aquinas High School in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, which is right on the Mississippi River about three and a half hours southwest of DePere. Aside from my studies at SNC, I also play goalkeeper on the men's soccer team. I'm pretty much your standard college guy; studying hard during the week and hanging out with friends and relaxing on the weekends (assuming there's no big exam in the upcoming week). The majority of my fall season is divided up evenly between class, soccer practice and games. In my spare time I like to spend time outside playing just about any sport or maybe lay low and watch a movie.
Being a science major, I spend a lot of time studying in the library or in the science building working with my TAs. I am currently enrolled in two science classes: Organic Chemistry I and Quantitative Analysis. Both are chemistry courses and keep me pretty occupied between the two. I also am taking two general education classes, Intro to Theology and US History. I love the Spanish language and wish I could be taking another course and pursue a minor in Spanish but would like to get some GenEds out of the way first. I am also a Pre-Dental major and hope to follow my dream of becoming a dentist by attending dental school after my time at SNC.
As I said before, I spend a great deal of time practicing and playing with the soccer team. We're having a decent season although our record doesn't necessarily reflect that. We've lost some tough games to some of the best teams in the nation but are still undefeated in conference. Our team has a pretty impressive tradition going. We have been the representatives of our conference in the NCAA tournament and also have had a share in the conference title each of the past 5 years. We're a fairly young team led by a group of outstanding seniors and we're all starting to finally gel as a team. Between practice and games, we spend so much time together that we're more of a family than an athletic team. Right now I room with a couple soccer guys and it's a blast. When you spend 4 hours every weekday and sometimes a full weekend on a bus with the team, you have plenty of time to bond. We actually just got back from a weekend road trip to Monmouth and Illinois Colleges in South-central Illinois. We spent so much time on the bus, in hotels and on the field playing together, it's almost weird to not have the whole team within shouting distance.
I share a room with three of my good friends/teammates and live just down the hall from another group of them. We have a blast together and I'm sure you'll be hearing plenty about them in the coming weeks. Now that I got my background out of the way, I'll be able to share my weekly experiences with you and you'll be able to see where I'm coming from a little bit better. I can't wait to keep you all up to date with what's going on in my life. It's going to be an interesting insight into the life of a real student that I wish I would have had as I prepared for college. I hope to take a little bit out of the “guessing game” on what to expect as a new student. If you don't mind, I have a bit of Organic Chem to catch up on, but thanks for allowing me to distract myself for a bit! Until next time...