Marybeth Beydler (A16) is a senior at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
St. John’s College: How did you decide to come to St. John’s College?
Marybeth Beydler: I was homeschooled and when I went to take my GED test I met a counselor and she told me about Colleges That Change Lives, and St. John’s is on that list. [I thought that I would] go to a 3-2 engineering program, [but] I kept looking at St. John’s over the course of the application process. When I visited, I walked around campus and it just felt right. This was a place I could see myself.
SJC: What surprised you most about coming here?
MB: I was surprised at how cordial everyone can be in a setting where you’re talking about very personal questions.
SJC: What activities and organizations are you involved in here?
MB: I’m president of the Waltz Committee. Before I came to St. John’s, I was going to go into dance and then I got injured. That’s what prompted me to want to be an engineer and go to college. The other activity is being a Kunai captain. I’d never done any kind of sports before I came to St. John’s. Then I did intramurals and I really enjoyed the environment. I got to learn how to play sports and I became a captain and have been a captain for two-and-one-half years now.
SJC: What is your favorite part of being a student?
MB: I love that it’s a really small campus, and I like being a senior because there’s a certain element of having to be a leader in the community. We live in a small enough community that you should know the people you live around. I think this is why I wouldn’t have been fine at another school. I like the community. That’s something I didn’t know before I came here.
SJC: You will be interning at CERN this spring. What exactly will you be doing?
MB: Ask me in 6 months! So I’m working on the CMS [Compact Muon Solenoid] experiment. CERN [the European Organization for Nuclear Research] has the Large Hadron Collider [and] CMS is one of four experiments on that. They collide protons and see what happens. They’re trying to discover new particles and detect different aspects of other particles. I’ll be working in the field operations group [doing] data acquisition.
SJC: What will your life be like at CERN?
MB: I’ll be living in France, on the border between France and Switzerland. [CERN] is 20 minutes from my apartment. I’ll have a roommate from Columbia University. There’s an alumnus there named Clint Richardson (A09). I get to meet him and talk to him, which is great. Between those things and living in a foreign country, it’ll be interesting.
—Brady Lee (AGI14)