My Swat Story: Kali Blain '22

She Changed Her Mind on Swarthmore

"I originally wasn't interested in Swarthmore because my mom was kind of pushing it because she knew someone who lives here. And I thought, 'If my mom likes it, then there's something wrong with it'. I ended up touring junior year of high school just to appease my mom and so I could say, 'I came, I toured, I didn't like it. You can stop talking about it now.'' Then, I fell in love with it. As soon as I got on campus, I knew I was going to come here. I thought, 'You can go home and just leave me here.'' It was the first campus that I had actually toured, which set the bar really high."

She Learned to be an RA on the Fly

"My freshmen last semester were really cool and took COVID very seriously. I think because of COVID, everything was so new to everybody, so I was learning with them. I feel like it wasn't quite the true RA experience because everything was in limbo and it's hard to replicate that. My freshman year was very different because you would have in-person meetings, events and such, whereas, it was virtual and much more relaxed because I was just hanging out with them in the lounge instead of having to do a big game night or something similar. I definitely miss my residents; we've got really close."

Mock Trial is a Confidence Booster

"I'm usually heavily involved in mock trial, but I took a leave of absence last semester because of everything going on. My friends rebooted the club and when we were starting to learn the basics it was really fun because we weren't doing academics all the time. Then, last year in the fall we started competing in tournaments, which were a little intimidating because I get nervous with public speaking. Then I realized, it will probably help me prepare for law school and if I do badly, it's not going to affect my GPA."