 My name is Sierra Erdal and I'm from Essex Junction, Vermont and I'm an English and Asian Studies double major. The faculty that I've had a chance to meet with because of my classes, they're all very helpful. I've found a lot of professors both in my English and Asian Studies major that have helped me so much with my writing and study skills and everything. My professor for Chinese philosophy, Sun Yi, she helped me so much because I'd never taken a philosophy class before and I had no idea how to write a philosophy essay at all because I'm very used to the English thesis and argument sort of frame but it's very different with a philosophy essay so she helped me break it down, she helped me study for the tests and it was very helpful. And Professor Esselstrom, who's the head of the Asian Studies department, he's helped me with my Japan application to study abroad. He's helped me try to organize my classes into what I want to take before I graduate through Asian Studies and it's definitely helped me hone what I want and get what I want from this school. Because of all this, I ended up deciding to apply to Japan, a study abroad program at Ayama Gakuen University and so I leave in March and I'm going to study abroad there for five months and I'm very excited. And I applied for a grant actually to help me pay for this, it's the Gilman Scholarship and I did get it, they gave me $5,000 which I was completely amazed when I got the email and I started crying at work. My friends that I made, my freshman year and sophomore year, they're really from all over the world actually. I met a few students from China who are exchange students, I'm actually going to meet up with one of them hopefully when I go to Japan we're planning a trip to Korea together, so like a side independent trip and I have friends from other places in Vermont who I never would have met otherwise if we hadn't chosen to come to UVM and friends from New York City and Boston, Korea, all over the place. I would say to someone who's worried about the size of UVM or the closeness of UVM, I would say it's not even an issue. For me it was totally different feel and it felt like a completely different world than the Burlington I was used to before. College is so different from high school and it's really the next step up in difficulty in classes and branching out into the world and actually like trying to find your path through everything. The things I love about UVM I would have to say I love the people here, all the professors I've met are really incredible and all the friends I've made and faculty I've met also have definitely helped me along the way and introduced me to so many new things. I love how environmentally aware the school is and makes me happy to participate in a school that considers the environment as much as I would want to. I love the dichotomy of how at home I feel here because it was home before but it's become a different home now because my grandpa actually was a professor here and so it always kind of felt like home and then I made it new, I made it my own when I got here myself so I was very happy to have that chance. The first week when we got here we had the activities fair and I was really hoping to find some clubs that I might be interested in to get involved with and I was really interested in Asian culture ever since I was little and so I was looking at Asian-American Student Union and I went up to their table and they handed out flyers and they invited everyone who was interested to come and so I went to their meetings and I really fell in love with that club. I loved the community that it offered and so much so that the next year I decided to run for the executive board and became publicist so it really I didn't know what I was going to get into by just walking up to their table but it was really rewarding in the end for me.