Do you remember the days when students would sadly shuffle through the Grab 'n' Go line in Pulver Pavilion, longing for a hot, tasty bowl of soup to go with their sandwich and cookies? Alex Essman '11 certainly does, and she hated those days. You can thank her for cajoling dining services into providing soup for Grab 'n' Go customers every day. Essman, now in her second year of service as Johnson's Dorm President, considers her gift of soup her most important accomplishment as an SGA representative.

Essman has also been on the varsity hockey and softball teams since she was a freshman. She is a consistent contributor on the ice, but she has had an immediate and lasting impact on the softball diamond. During her first time at bat in her very first game as a freshman, Essman blasted a home run against SUNY New Paltz. The game went into extra innings, and when she got up to bat again, Essman hit another ball out of the park to win the game. Coach Katori of SUNY New Paltz was so impressed with Essman and the other Mules' performances that she took the coaching job at Colby for the softball team the following year.

Two athletic seasons were not enough to fuel Essman's competitive fire, however, so she joined the varsity soccer team midway through the season this fall. She was working at a soccer game as a ball girl when she joked with Coach Holsten of the soccer team, who she knows through hockey, "You know, I used to play in high school. I bet I could play for you guys." It turned out they were looking for a backup goalie and Essman had a spot on the roster within a few days.

Essman is a government major with an administrative science minor and hopes to someday work in the intelligence industry for a major organization like the Department of Homeland Security or the National Security Agency.

An avid outdoorswoman and hiker, Essman is in the process of hiking every 4,000 foot mountain in New England. Two summers ago, she hiked the entire presidential range of the White Mountains with her family in only two days. She has led two COOT2 trips, including one that scaled Baldpate Mountain this past August. Her dream is to one day venture hike in the Himalayan Mountains.

Of all her success, her greatest personal accomplishment may have come in San Francisco in the summer of 2007. While on vacation with her family, Essman took a moment to compete in a public bubble blowing competition called the Bubblicious Ultimate Bubble Blowout tournament. Despite the fact that it was her first time competitively blowing bubbles, she won the Northern California regional bubble blowing crown with a bubble of six inches.

Essman's victory gave her the opportunity to travel to New York to compete in the National Bubble Blowing Championship, where she eventually lost to a ten-year old boy from Atlanta, Georgia.

While in New York, Essman was able meet Lebron James, the official commissioner of the Ultimate Bubble Blowing League, who summed up the competition like this: "Bubble blowing is a lot like playing basketball--you have to give it your all and perform at 110 percent to be a champion and that's exactly what our winners did today." Whether it's grinding out a win on the field or the ice, fighting for students' food rights in SGA meetings, or blowing bubbles wherever it is that competitive bubble blowers compete, Essman, like Lebron James, always gives 110 percent.