Freshman Blogs for Seventeen

UMW’s Berkley Schmidt blogs about weather, wardrobes, and what to do to combat homesickness as one of Seventeen Magazine’s Freshman 15, who are chronicling their first-year college experiences.

For Berkley Schmidt ’15, the transition to college life has been more public than that of most freshmen. Schmidt is broadcasting the details of her year to a national audience through her blog on Seventeen.com.

As one of Seventeen Magazine’s “Freshman 15,” Schmidt chronicles her first-year experience with once-a-week posts about everything from “what to bring to college” to “how to survive a hurricane.”

Schmidt described to the world her first week as part of the UMW Class of 2015:

The second day here, as we were walking to convocation dressed in our formal attire, a storm fired away on the little town of Fredericksburg. Luckily we had just reached the covered walk when the skies opened up, but the real fun began as we reached the library. Sirens blasted as faculty and Orientation Leaders rushed us inside. We were in a tornado warning! We just had another aftershock from the earthquake that same morning and we were already in our next natural disaster.

Disasters aside, the would-be biology major is excited about her career at Mary Washington.

“I fell in love with the campus,” the Richmond, Va., native said. “People here have this energy about them that is very homelike and welcoming.”

Seventeen Magazine chose Schmidt from more than 2,000 applicants across the U.S. to be one of the 15 bloggers on Seventeen.com. The bloggers’ work also appeared in the magazine’s November 2011 edition.

Read Schmidt’s blog at www.seventeen.com/college/freshman-15.