Author: Hattie Burgher

Being able to change someone’s life is not something an individual gets the opportunity to do on a daily basis. But when Meg Abbott ’17 received permission to train a service dog for the visually impaired, she felt that through her work she would be able to do just that.

Abbott got connected to this opportunity through Guiding Eyes, a nonprofit organization that provides “superbly bred and trained guide dogs to men and women who are blind or visually impaired” and helps to “expand horizons for people to achieve life’s goals.” What initially interested her in training a dog was her desire to “gain insight in the future as I work with people who are blind or who have disabilities and need extra assistance.” In addition, Abbott said that this insight “may allow me to understand the kind of help they might need which will allow me to know how to better help them when I am working with them.”

Aside from training her own personal dog when she was younger, Abbott has had no experience in terms of training a guide dog. She isn’t receiving payment for the training; she is volunteering her time and resources to train Lizzie, the new puppy that is Gillette’s newest resident. Abbott is what Guiding Eyes would call a “puppy raiser”, someone who provides the puppy with “a home, teach[es] good social skills and house manners, attend[s] training classes and raise[s] a successful guide dog.”

Training Lizzie is difficult and time consuming. Laura Cunningham, Residence Director of Gillette Hall recognizes that. “I think Meg’s willingness to train a puppy shows how sweet and caring Meg is. Puppies are fun and cute, but they can be a lot of work and Meg is doing a great job,” said Cunningham. Abbott spends a good amount of time training Lizzie, if not all of her time. “I think something that people don’t understand about training is it is not necessarily something that you turn on and off, but it is a constant thing that is happening all of the time,” said Abbot, “so training in a sense is all day, everyday.”

Abbott had to receive permission to train Lizzie on campus from Student Life. Marc Smithers, Assistant Dean of Residence Life and Programming, and Cunningham both helped this become a reality for Abbott. Smithers said that Abbott was the first person to ever request something like this and he believes it was born out of Abbott’s “vocational desire that she has to be involved in animal therapy.”

Smithers is positive about the presence of puppies-in-training in residence halls, but was intentional about setting guidelines that “worked to place her in a part of her residence hall that wouldn’t be a disruption to the learning environment.” Things such as pet allergies were also taken into consideration.  Cunningham is also optimistic about Lizzie living in Gillette because it the “perfect place for Lizzie to be exposed to people!”

Abbott does not know who Lizzie will end up with, but Lizzie will be placed once she reaches a certain stage. Guiding Eyes invites volunteers to their puppy’s “graduation” from the program and at graduation volunteers like Abbott are able to meet the new owners. “It really makes the whole experience worth it when I will be able to see my puppy going and working for a person and changing their life for the better through the work I was able to do with Lizzie” said Abbott, “The whole experience is really rewarding.”

Personal Connection Lost, Responsibility Gained

Houghton has always emphasized making personal connections between its faculty and students. It isn’t unusual to see a professor sitting with a student at lunch or praying with a student in between classes. So does a student taking a class online through Houghton lose that personal relationship?

Houghton Online offers an increasing amount of online classes during the summer. Among the options are Literary Voices, Math in the Liberal Arts, Introduction to Psychology, and Biblical Literature. The majority of the classes offered are Integrative Study (IS) requirements, so instead of being crammed into a student’s semester schedule, the IS credits can be fulfilled during the less academically strenuous summer months.

Taking an online course through Houghton is an ideal option if a student is behind on credits, can’t attend Mayterm, or simply can’t balance certain classes with their schedule during the fall and spring semester

Sophomore Raisa Dibble said she missed the chance to learn from a professor and that it was a “big minus” of taking an online course. “I just think professors make it a little more personal and give moral support to learning,” said Dibble of traditional classroom learning. She continued to say she missed the “wall of support” that she usually gets on campus. “At Houghton, if I’m struggling with my beliefs, I have professors I can ask and talk to and classmates to bounce ideas off of. At home, I just have Google,” said Dibble.

Despite learning less from the professor, Dibble said, “I like online learning because I learn more about the subject.” Because online learning is generally self-taught, Dibble spent a lot of time reading. “When you take a class online, you have so much more time to devote to actual work rather than having to go to class,” she said as a benefit of taking Literary Voices and Biblical Literature through Houghton. “You definitely learn the material better.” She appreciated that online courses allowed her to go more indepth into the subject material because she had more time.

Online learning differs from the traditional classroom setting because it requires much more responsibility and not as much interaction. “I enjoy listening to lectures and reinforcing the information on my own, so teaching myself and being responsible for my own learning was a different experience,” said junior Casey Mauger, who took Medical Terminology this past summer. Mauger said although it was easier to focus all of her academic attention on one class, “if something was unclear it was harder to get clarity on the subject because you were basically teaching yourself.”

Junior Maisie Pipher also agreed that taking an online course demands more responsibility. “Online learning is entirely dependent on the individual,” she said, “You are in charge of learning for yourself.”

To most students, summer means warm weather, sun, and no classes. But for students who want to get ahead on credits or need the credits, summer means something a little different. Pipher relied on self-discipline to get her through Literary Voices and Medical Terminology. “Assignments crept up on me more easily during the summer when I was working and relaxing,” said Pipher. She wished the professors were more empathetic to the fact that it was summer and that she had other work to do besides academics. “There were days where I would have a long shift at work and have to come home late and finish an assignment because it was only available for 24 hours,” said Pipher, “It was like [the professors] forgot it was summer.” Mauger too thought is was difficult to balance “the business of the summer with a class.”

Dibble also contributed to the notion that it takes a lot of discipline to get through a summer course. “It’s hard to make yourself wake up and get to work,” she said, “You have to make sure to set aside time from the day to do the class.”

Writing Professor Laurie Dashnau said the challenge of online teaching comes “in terms of gauging where students are at in terms of start or middle of instructional units.” Finding the best resources to cover instructional material is also another challenge of Dashnau’s. Still, she finds online teaching to be rewarding. “One does not take conversations of face-to-face time for granted,” said Dashnau. Professors, not just students, value in-person interaction.

Although the student may miss out on an interactive relationship with their professor, they acquire skills such as self-discipline and responsibility along the way. Meeting deadlines and overcoming the distractions of summer challenge students to become more focused and more disciplined.

It’s not unusual to see several of the booths occupied by students on their laptops in Big Al’s. While some people are eating, others chatting, doing homework or perhaps working on a group project, a group of students consistently frequents Big Al’s to play video games together.

These “gamers” have become a quintessential aspect of Houghton. They spend hours down at Big Al’s, sitting side-by-side their friends, their teammates. “It’s fun to play as a group. Playing by yourself just promotes isolationism. We like playing as a team, otherwise, it’s not as fun,” said, sophomore, Ryan Campbell. “I wish I could play, but my laptop broke” said Justin Livergood, first year, who despite his broken laptops, looks on while his fellow gamers play.

The appeal to sitting in front of a computer for hours playing games is the team aspect. They often play “League of Legends,” an online game involving two powerful champions that battle head-to-head across multiple battlefields and game modes. Campbell described playing the game as: “A team game, you have to have five people. We constitute four and then we have another friend playing in the dorm…We are all playing the same game.”

Aside from “League of Legends,” this group of friends also plays “Magic: The Gathering,” collectible cards with a strategy game. In this game, you play the role of a “plansewalker”, a powerful wizard who fights other wizards for glory, knowledge, and conquest.

For Ronald “Bub” Duttweiler, a sophomore and avid gamer, gaming has become one of his main hobbies. “I started playing once I came to college last year,” he said. It’s been an opportunity for him to make friends and spend time with them. Duttweiler said that “having a friend group to play with” is one the benefits of gaming. Campbell shared his similar experience: “I originally got involved with [gaming] because I couldn’t participate in sports when I was a freshman. I’d never heard of it before that, but it had the competitive edge that I liked. So I got involved with and enjoyed it more than I thought.”

Naturally, “winning,” is a common goal shared by the group as well, according to Duttweiler. Along with spending time with friends, Duttweiler and Campbell enjoy the competition gaming entails. Duttweiler remained so intensely focused while playing “League of Legends,” that he didn’t pause to look away from his computer screen while being interviewed.

“When do they get their homework done?” wondered, junior, Mike Knapp. That seems to be the question most Houghton students contemplate about the gamers in Big Al’s.  Yet, the amount of time they spend playing games “depends on how much work [they] have,” said Campbell. While gaming is a fun activity they partake in together, ultimately, they have to manage their time like any other student to get schoolwork done. “When homework gets boring I’d rather play games,” said Duttweiler. Gaming is a way to forget about the demands and pressures of school for a little while.

Some students have differing opinions on the students gaming together in  Big Al’s.  Senior Danielle Lyndsley observed, “It’s better than being a loner and just plugging yourself in for four hours and not interacting with other people.” No matter what hobbies each student participates in, the difficulty of finding a location impinges on the ease of which friends can spend time together. When and where did the tradition of playing video games in Big Al’s come from? No one really knows, but what Duttweiler does know is that “there’s food, comfy chairs, and not really another place to do it.”