A Day in the Life with Rediet Worku

Monday is a hectic day. It starts at around 8 am with the sunlight pouring through my window. After getting ready for the day, I quickly gloss over my schedule and head out. I usually don’t have time to get breakfast, so I’ll stop by the vending machine and get a granola bar.

My first tutorial of the day is sophomore music at 9 am. Tutorials here at St. John’s are an hour and ten minutes long. On Monday’s, however, the music tutorial is an hour longer. The tutorial is divided into two parts— one is for singing and the other for the discussion. The singing portion brings together four sophomore music tutorial classes. We begin by doing vocal warm-ups, then proceed to sing chants. Once we are done singing, we all go to our respective classes for the discussion part of the tutorial. During that time, we analyze songs such as Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus.

At 11:40 am, my friends and I head over to the Randall Dining Hall for lunch. Once we’re done, I run to my room to grab my books for my next tutorial—math.

My math tutorial begins at 1:00 pm. Although math tutorials are also based on discussion, we also present mathematical propositions on the blackboard. We are currently working on Apollonius, so we tend to spend more time on the propositions as they tend to be longer.

Once my math tutorial ends, I have a ten minutes break before my next tutorial. Language tutorial starts at 2:20 pm. This semester we have read and discussed books by Robert Frost, Machiavelli, Sappho, and Shakespeare. It enables us to delve deeper into the texts, asking questions that we skipped over when reading the books.

At 3:30 pm, I head to the library to finish my seminar reading. After I finish my reading, I head over to the dining hall for dinner.

The hour between dinner and seminar is my favorite part of my day. During that time, I either read a book or watch a show.

Seminar begins at 8:00 pm. Sophomore year mainly deals with theology and literature. We spend two hours discussing and asking questions relevant to the texts.

After seminar, I head back to my room and get ready for bed.