This Sunday, April 22, is Earth Day. Why this one day to recognize environmental activism? What does one day dedicated to the Earth really mean? It has been 40 years since the modern environmental movement and the first Earth Day were launched.

Next Monday, April 23, Danuta Janiszewski ’12 will showcase her newly completed exhibit, “The Power of the Period.” The works are a collection gathered from students of all five colleges, and aim to provoke deeper reflection on how menstruation has played a role in the historical confinement of women with both negative and positive stereotypes.

Well, it’s that time of the semester again: the home stretch. I know how busy and hectic it gets when trying to wrap it all up with a neat bow – it definitely is for me. Some days I find myself running around being a productive beast while some days it takes all I have to open my eyes and crawl out of bed.

We’re in the homestretch, and classes end in a month. Staying motivated has proven to be a challenge, especially for me. Here are a few ways to inspire us all to keep chugging along.

Between the number of Mount Holyoke students with iPhones or iPod touches, as well as the growing number of applications for these, finding apps can be a daunting process. However, there are some apps that are Mount Holyoke student specific, and we’ve done the research so you can procrastinate in other ways.

Up until the first year of college, most students are covered by some extension of their parents’ health insurance plan and need not pay the issue much mind. Unfortunately, the times that demand the most attention are those of critical transition. Poring through health insurance policy information and submitting paperwork is meticulous and tedious. Often full of fine print and unclear language, it’s easy for students to abandon such daunting work for other, more pressing commitments.

From wrangling pots and pans in the kitchen to pouring over resumes, there are a wide variety of student jobs on campus and they all come with their fair share of quirky incidents. Workers at the Kendall Infodesk encounter a range of people in a single shift including students, professors, staff, alumnae and local residents and their families. Checking out badminton racquets and unlocking stuck lockers seems innocuous enough, but a running list kept behind the desk is proof of how strange people can be in the pursuit of physical fitness. Here are a few of the best questions asked of Infodesk workers over the years.

This past February, the African town of Ber, Cameroon gathered for the opening of a brand new school. In Amherst, Massachusetts, a group of students were equally elated, as they tirelessly worked for three years to raise the $20,000 needed to build the school. Juniors Justin Kim, Jack Schrader, Maia Bix and Althea Schenck, members of a student-run club at Amherst Regional High School called SHUMAS, raise money to fulfill the club’s mission to “better the lives and atmosphere of communities in Cameroon.” With one school built, they are pushing onwards and already have another school in the works.

In the real world of careers and interviews, it can be difficult to express yourself while maintaining a sense of professionalism and discretion. College is the perfect time to take a chance and get a haircut that is totally out of the ordinary. Stephanie Dowling ’12 said, “I wish I had done something exciting with my hair! I love the really edgy cuts like shaving part of it. When you’re in college is the time to give it a try.”

This semester the theme is “stories of compassion, faith, failure and forgiveness.” Last week a guest speaker, Gail Herman, came to tell us the story of a frog who wanted to be in a talent show. The frog wandered around, observing many different species of animals practicing for the show. He would ask to join them, only to be rejected when he couldn’t hop like the kangaroos or sing like the birds. In the end he discovered his own talent directing the noises of the swamp, and he was a smashing success at the talent show.