From Dating to Fire Safety: Wharton Freshman Dishes about Campus Life in Seventeen Magazine Blog
When Katie heard about Seventeen’s Freshman 15 project in which the magazine follows 15 freshmen throughout their first year of college, she thought it sounded pretty cool. So she began the application process, sending in her bio, making a video, and submitting writing samples. Her efforts paid off when she was one of the 15 girls picked out of 5,000 applicants. Now, you can find her in Seventeen every month, read her weekly blogs, and watch video diaries about her new life at Penn.
When it comes to blog topics, just about anything is fair game. Recent posts have covered everything from moving to Philadelphia to staying fit and dating. Her favorite part of the Seventeen project so far is taking pictures. “I usually wouldn’t be so active in taking pictures of my life, but it will be something to remember my freshman year by. And I love getting responses from readers too. It’s been a lot of fun,” says Long, who is from Princeton, N.J.
Another highlight of her freshman experience, she says, is her Management 100 (otherwise known as Leadership and Communication in Groups) project, which is to create a presentation on fire safety for elementary school students in West Philadelphia in partnership with the Red Cross. “We’re preparing for the presentations now and will start to do the outreach to kids next month. We are also fundraising and creating a website — things that go beyond the course expectations,” says Long.
The team, which calls itself “Stop, Drop and Roll,” gets together twice a week to work on the Red Cross project. They’ve already organized a bake sale to raise money for superhero costumes to wear in their school presentations and are planning a speed-dating event to raise even more money for the organization.
Her project team, which includes “two football guys, a guy from Australia, West Coast kids, and East Coast kids” may seem like an unlikely group of friends, but they’ve all become pretty close as a result of the project, she says. “Now, I hang out with them, study with them, and get together a lot outside of class.”
While they are still in the middle of the project, Long says that she’s already learned some important lessons about leadership from the experience. “In the beginning, everyone wanted to take control, but I learned that if you are on a team then you need to work together because it’s more about cooperation and learning how to compromise,” she says.
Long describes the Management 100 course as very unique. “If you compare it to what is offered at other Ivies, you won’t find anything like this course. You really learn a lot about real life because not only do you work on a real project, but it teaches you how to work with others and improve your interpersonal skills.”
As for the overall experience at Wharton, she says she’s having a great time. “The business courses are practical, but at the same time I can still pursue liberal arts. I’m thinking of minoring in English in Penn’s College of Arts & Sciences,” she says, adding that she went to a liberal arts boarding school prior to coming to Wharton.
While she’s still thinking about her minor, Long says that she’s pretty sure her Wharton concentrations will be finance and entrepreneurship. In high school, she started a fashion magazine called Haute, which got seed money and became profitable within two years. “If I start a business, fashion is not a bad place to start and Wharton is a great place to be,” says Long.
