Lauren Smack:

Oh my gosh, last year I think I used the Kiwibots maybe a hundred times. There were times I had to step outside because they were stuck in snow. But the cute little fellas, I don’t care. Sometimes I randomly wave at them. That’s probably weird, but I do.

My name is Lauren Smack. I’m from Bridgeville, Delaware. I currently study Sociology and I have a Dance minor. And this is my life in the pines.

Being a first-generation college student, I’m not gonna lie, sometimes it’s pretty daunting, especially the college application part. And if you’ve seen college tuition, UMaine is really affordable. But now that I am here, I feel so proud and I know the rest of my family is proud.

I missed Maine Hello, and I missed the freshman move-in. So my start to UMaine was kind of weird. For the first three weeks, I don’t think I talked to or saw anybody. Which may sound scary, but in retrospect, it actually gave me a lot of time to realize what I wanted to do here and the type of person I wanted to be. And then I started getting into more activities and then I met more amazing people. I still call my friends to this day and found people just as weird as me, like in all performing art departments, but also in my Sociology major. I found people who were just as interested in yapping and talking about the world around us.

Oh my gosh, is that Bailey? Hi!

Hey, with Lauren Smack! This is crazy.

Waking up every day here at UMaine is honestly the greatest feeling ever. I can’t lie.

The real reason I picked Sociology was, I just love learning about people, learning about different cultures, the way people interact with one another, how our society functions at its core.

And then dance as a part of it. I started dancing when I was about two-ish years old at local rec centers and then I danced all the way until I was about 12 or 13, and then the pandemic hit and then I couldn’t dance again. So then when I got to UMaine, I realized I love dancing all over again. It’s like riding a bike. Except, imagine that bike is a pirouette and then a cartwheel.

When I came into college, I actually had 37 credits to my name. So I was like, crap, no Gen Eds, no electives. And then it turns out the school was like, “Actually, you need to take a science class.” And I was like, “Science?” And then I took Astronomy and then I fell in love with Astronomy.

I had to go to the observatory at eight at night, but I didn’t care because I liked seeing the stars. I liked doing all of the math equations. I loved taking class and learning about the stars, even how to calculate how far the sun was or the orbit. And I’m so glad that UMaine made me take a science class because I was like, “Oh, I do love science.”

And we are in the Cyrus Pavilion. It’s the, like… It’s the octagonal? Octang? It’s an octagon shape of a building. Most people have probably seen it.

I say I do theatre because I don’t do a specific thing in theatre. I have been run crew in a show. I have been a choreographer in a show. I’ve done sound designing for a show. I work at the costume shop for the theatre department. So I do that too.

I’m an RA for one of the freshman dorms.

The University Singers is an audition group on campus. And I was like, “Oh, there’s a choir on campus, let me go see, audition for it.” Then I got in and I was like, “Whoa, that’s crazy.”

We have our fall and winter concerts as per usual, but we also have tour, which in the spring, we go around the area depending on what our execs choose. And we sing in churches, in cathedrals, sometimes schools, middle and high school. We did an elementary school once and they just looked at us really weird because some of our songs were either German or Latin and they were like, “This sounds good, but I don’t know what it means.” And I was like, “Yeah.”

I think the University of Maine has a lot of gusto and charm. Like some people happen to just like smile at you when you walk by. You don’t even have to know the person. The amount of times I’ve made like awkward eye contact, but we both just smile and leave. That’s like so great.

I know I can’t get that anywhere else. I could try, but I don’t think anything could top the University of Maine.

Wait, hold on. Okay, what’s your best sound?

I don’t know. Birds make me really mad. It’s the most reoccurring theme.

And she does it at the most unprompted times.