Oberlin Blogs

Emily Wilkerson ’15

I'm Emily and I'm originally from Niskayuna, NY, a town in beautiful upstate New York with a name that's easier to pronounce than you think it is (for the curious - /nskjun/). I came to Oberlin planning to study music but ended up finding my academic home in comparative literature and adding a major in German after spending my junior year studying at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. I love everything to do with words — language learning, literary analysis, theory and criticism, essay writing, etc. — but my primary interest is in literary translation, particularly of works written by women.

My activities outside the classroom have shifted some during my time at Oberlin, but singing has remained a constant. At the moment I'm a part of Nothing But Treble, Oberlin's oldest all-female a cappella group, and Collegium Musicum, a choir that performs renaissance, medieval, and early Baroque music. If I'm not doing work for class or singing, you're likely to find me riding my bike around campus, hanging out in my apartment, or writing in Slow Train.

After spending two semesters abroad, I'm trying to savor my last year here. That means continuing to put effort into the things I already love about Oberlin, my classes, my choirs, and my friends, but that also means stepping out of my comfort zone and trying new things: expanding my cooking repertoire, learning to swing dance, and starting work as a tour guide and a German tutor. All of that and trying to make myself slow down and enjoy everything this special place has to offer.

Entries from this blogger

The In-between Summer

July 7, 2015

I'm back in Niskayuna for the summer and somehow it's already been a month and a half since graduation. What have I been doing in all that time?

Tags:

Memories of Orientation

August 22, 2014

The first thing I remember about orientation is the excitement that came from constantly introducing myself to other people, telling them about my passions and interests and hearing about theirs in turn.

Tags:

Biking Around Munich

April 16, 2014

When I travel underground, I miss out on a lot of what's going on in Munich. That's part of why I decided not to buy another U-Bahn semester ticket and have instead devoted myself to biking. I haven't been biking around the city for too long, but I've already started seeing the city differently (and sweating a lot more).

Tags:

A Danubian Journey

March 1, 2014

Oberlin is a small place, but because I ended up there and followed where my academic interests led, I've gotten to see the world, or at least a small section of Central Europe.

Tags:

Over-stimulation

March 26, 2013

In which I gain insight into my life by going to office hours, finally reveal my schedule for the semester, ramble about my current favorite Northern European minimalists, and plug things that I'm involved with.

Tags:

NaStoTraMo

February 16, 2013

When I was in my end-of-semester-only-able-to-think-in-wordplay stage, National Story Translating Month (a nod to NaNoWriMo) was the title I almost gave my winter term project, which was translating a German short story into English. Luckily, a friend intervened and I ended up calling it "Winter Term German Translation Intensive." Alas, sometimes professionalism has to win out over cleverness.

Tags:

On Quitting

September 6, 2012

Over the course of this post, a distraction from the tempest that is add-drop turned into a potential life lesson about quitting the things that make me unhappy.

Tags: