A Week in the Life of Juliet Suess

The following log is from Juliet Suess, a first-year from St. Charles, IL. Read on to see what life has held for Juliet in her first several weeks @ Oxy!

So, this is the first Juliet entry, which I know is pretty late. But I guess nothing really has happened until the last week. I mean I guess I got to Oxy, started classes, got acclimated to college life, met some cool new people (including my twin Caroline Change), and did a few fun things. The REALLY fun stuff happened last week.

Juliet Suess & Caroline Chang

Well on Thursday, my FAVORITE show in the WHOLE WIDE world, NCIS came and filmed at Oxy. And it was the best thing ever. I went and met all the stars, and I got Ducky to say hello to Ian, which he thought was super awesome even though he thought I was being super lame because I was jumping off the walls. Here are a few pictures from the NCIS set and me with some of the cast members.

Anthony DiNozzo & Juliet

Juliet & Ducky

Thursday night, Kaitlyn Dritl came onto campus, who was my recruit for the weekend; later that night, Ricka Syadfjklajdnzdahjfk (I cannot spell it, Sorry!!) came into town also. So over the next 24 hours I told them how awesome Oxy is and why they should come here, as if NCIS wasn’t reason enough.

Friday night was our first official practice...and it was an INTERSQUAD!! The recruit that was staying with me sadly left before the meet, but the other ten watched the Stripes (YEAHHH!!) dominate the Claws. The meet was awesome with everyone cheering for everyone even though the meet was just for fun. Then we all went to bed at 7:35 at night because we had practice the next day.

Saturday morning, we had our first official practice which I thought I was going to die at and it ended up not being as bad as I thought. Alex made us think we were going to run a mile and I almost cried, but it turned out we didn’t have to, thank God. Then we had a super fun team beach day at Manhattan Beach, which I had never been to before. We played some beach volleyball which my team also won (I wish I could say I helped with that…but still a trend is forming here). That night, we had SPLATTER, a campus-wide party. There aren’t words to describe the fun that ensued at SPLATTER. There was paint everywhere and people dancing on top of everyone, but it was an amazingly awesome time.

Ian Mariani having been "Splattered"

The real fun began at practice on Monday when we did 4,900 yards. And Tuesday when we all got incredibly sore, but in the amazing way where you cannot walk up the hill to get to your dorm and it takes 16 minutes to walk up for morning practice, but you feel so accomplished because you are sore from working as hard as you can. Gooooood times I tell ya. Then yesterday after our 800 kick for time, we did a 400 buddy kick, which the whole team did in a line.

That's all for now!

Picture from La Jolla Open Water Swim!

Pictured from left to right:

Jack Butcher '14, Claire Coddington '11, Miner Ross '11, Riley Kimball '12, and Tim Healy '14

Oxy Swimmers @ La Jolla!!

It's been a while since our last post...but what better way to update everyone with an account of the La Jolla swim from First-year Ian Mariani. Enjoy!

Taylor Pool felt like a bathtub today compared to the 61 degree water of La Jolla, where 5 studly Tigers took on what seemed like the entire swimming population of Southern California (and even some from Arizona) at the La Jolla Rough Water Swim. In the early hours of our much-cherished Sunday morning, 17 swimmers boarded two Oxy vans bound south for La Jolla. On arrival it was instantly clear that the water temperature was not the only worry for the 5 swimmers, as the fog lay thick over the entire stretch of the beach. Needless to say the 80 degree heat of Oxy was sorely missed.

Claire Coddington was the first to compete, swimming hard through the colder patches of the water and countless other swimmers, finishing strongly in the first big section of swimmers. Later on in the day, Miner Ross and Riley Kimball swam together in the Men’s Masters Division, both finishing very strongly around the 25 minute mark. Miner’s success is partly due to the courageous efforts of Claire and Juliet Seuss, who literally flung a replacement pair of goggles to Miner when his broke minutes before the starting whistle. Rounding out the day at 1:30, freshmen Jack Butcher and Tim Healy competed in the 17-18 division, both of them overcoming the harsh competition to finish strongly, an optimistic indicator for the two distance swimmers for this coming year.

Just as commendable were the 12 swimmers that came along to cheer on their fellow Tigers, as well as all taking a dip themselves in the chilly water before the buses packed up and headed for home, stopping only once for a team lunch at In-n-Out. Season kicks off next week with an intrasquad meet and then the first Saturday practice of the year, at which point the Tigers will again road trip to the beach, hopefully with warmer water.