Gabrielle Cavalier

Hundreds of students entering their first year of college have absolutely no idea what they want to do as a career path. Some think they do, but then change it three years in. What if there was a place a student could go to for career path advice, right on campus? Well, that’s where the Hood College Career Center comes in.
The Career Center, which can be found on the second floor of the Apple building connected to Whitaker, is the place to go to when a student needs an internship, resume critiquing, career help, volunteering opportunities, etc. The Career Center has plenty of options for students to engage in networking and finding a job after college that is suitable for them.
Lana Veres, the Manager of Experiential Learning Programs, believes that gaining career experience through an internship is ideal if the student wants real world skills that apply to their major.
Alissa Hart, the Career Development Program Manager, helps students make a perfect resume and also organizes volunteer opportunities, such as the Civic Engagement week during fall break where students volunteers all over Frederick County.

Kaylene Wright

Students are beginning to feel it in the air. The sniffles during class, the embarrassing and constant coughs, and that saying among friends, “don’t get to close to me, I’m sick.”
Cold season has indeed begun. The months September through April generally have the more illness than other months. This is because people stay indoors due to the lowering temperatures outside. Cold weather itself does not cause illness, but people congregating indoors causes easy spread of germs from person to person.
Hood’s campus is no exception to this. In fact, college campuses are among the germiest places. Students live in just about as close quarters as you can get. Students share bathrooms and dining halls, and their own room with their roommate or roommates.
“The most common illness that we see in Hood’s Health Center are eye, ear, nose, and throat complaints,” Teresa Cevallos, director of health services at the Hood College Health Center, said. “The reason that they are grouped together is that it is not unusual for a student to have a sore throat along with an earache or nasal congestion.”
Cevallos says that the common cold, officially referred to as an upper respiratory infection, is also a huge complaint. “There is nearly a tie for second place,” she said, “which is gynecological visits and upper respiratory infections.”
Will Shackley, a senior at Hood, is one of the many students who have already been sick this semester. “I had a runny nose, fever, and a sore throat,” he said. “It felt like slight death.”
Meaghan Jones, another student, has also experienced sickness this school year. “It was bad. I had a fever, a runny nose, and felt extremely weak,” she said.
Due to the importance of classes, most students try their hardest to get to class. Sometimes, however, illnesses prevent even normal daily function from occurring. “It was a real struggle just sitting up in bed,” Jones said. “I couldn’t make it to class even if I wanted to.”
Other times, students may be able to make class, but risk infecting other students. “Yes, I was contagious,” Shackley said. “I infected all of my friends who hadn’t been sick already. I don’t know who I got it from.”
Posing a rarer but much more serious threat is the flu. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that flu seasons are unpredictable. Though flu seasons happen every year, they vary in severity and length.
The easiest way to protect against the flu is to get the yearly vaccine. Hood’s Health Center has plenty of flu shots available for students. “We have given 26 flu vaccines to students so far,” Cevallos said. “The majority of our flu shots are given to faculty and staff, but we still have flu vaccine available and would like more students to get them if they don’t get the flu vaccine from their home health care provider or from a local facility.”
Getting a vaccine is extremely quick and doesn’t involve much pain at all. Cevallos says that students may walk in whenever it’s convenient for the student to get the vaccine, and that no appointment is required. “Please tell your friends to come in and get a flu shot!
Regardless of the sickness, symptoms, or reason for feeling not 100%, basic safety measures can be taken to prevent spreading illness. The single most important way is to frequently wash hands. This is especially important on campus, because as already discussed, many everyday items are shared.
Other basic safety measures students can take include not sharing food or drink with others, covering coughs and sneezes, and maintaining proper sleep and eating habits

By: Chris Hamby

By: Bonnie Monnier

BY GRACE CASSUTTO // A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer was performed by a group of 11 Hood College
students this Friday February 21 and Saturday February 22.

The performance was sponsored by the college’s Equal Sex organization as a part of  its  V-Day events. According to the show’s program, “V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions.”

Laura Hanna, a junior and a V-Day coordinator, explained “Equal Sex does a production every year – last year was The Vagina Monologues.” Hanna lamented over the cancellation of the V-Day event that was meant to take place on February 14 saying, “I’m disappointed that we couldn’t have V-Day because of the snow, but I’m excited for people to see [A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer]. Some of the monologues are really powerful.”

The show was comprised of 11 performances by Hood students, covering a range of topics including rape, sexual assault, familial relationships, self-image, and intersectionality. Some monologues, such as “Rescue,” performed by sophomore Joe Denicola, were heavy pieces that brought a hush over the audience.

“My baby sister, Belle, in hysterics at 10, crying to me that the neighbor whose child she babysat had been touching her in the bad place, wrong, and me confronting him (age 13) with a barbecue skewer on his patio!” Denicola cried out, collapsing into his hands,
in makeup and costume that gave him the appearance of a middle-aged man.

“Joe’s [monologue] always gets me,” said Hanna, adding, “If any of them would make you cry, it would be his.”

The night was not without light moments, however. The audience was full of peals of laughter as sophomore Courtney Lapsley delivered her monologue, titled “Maurice,” about a “fat, frizzy-haired” tenth grader and her experiences with Maurice De Mayo in
his uncle’s dry cleaning van.

“We walked in (well, my boobs walked in first),” Lapsley says, knowing just when to pause for the audience to dissolve into laughter.

Lapsley said the experience of being involved in the show “brought me a lot closer to people. It was very inspirational, and really opened me up to how domestic violence hasn’t gone away.”

Lapsley is right. According to the One Billion Rising website, one in three women globally will experience violence in their lifetime. That means that over one billion women will be a victim or survivor of violence. It is these statistics that gave rise to the V-Day campaign One Billion Rising for Justice, started in 2013.

According to the official website, the campaign “is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice…places where women deserve to feel safe but too often
do not.”

With this mission in mind, Equal Sex President Amanda Shaffery explained to the audience that proceeds from the show would be donated to the V-Day Organization as well as The Heartly House Foundation, an organization which “serves Frederick County residents who have been impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse.”