Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I have no life until November

Yes, I'm still alive - Barely have been insanely busy lately.

I just lost my only free day during the week so here's a more accurate copy of my schedule:
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=sxk444%40gmail.com&ctz=America/New_York

I'm really getting into my honors project though. Have started preparing ideas for my bail reduction motion. Defending a murder case with no legal background to speak of isn't easy. Hopefully knowing how to do legal research will provide a step up on other law school applicants though and it's a lot of fun.

I'll try to get something more elaborate up soon.

Stephen

Monday, September 29, 2008

Recruitment!

So this past weekend I've been rushing all the sororities and I'm exhausted! I'm going through formal recruitment so I get to meet all 20 sororities and throughout the week I make a list of my favourites and I eventually join one of my top 3. It's a complicated process but I'm loving it so far! Besides that the white out game this weekend was AMAZING lol I was in the student section with Dan, Mandy, and Zach and it was the best ever! I'm so happy that we're ranked number 6...number 1 would be better but hey, it's still early in the season =p I had a lot of fun tailgating before the game, especially since I got to see some friends from home!! It's was great. I still feel pretty overloaded with work but I'm learning how to find time to study. No lie, study groups are the only way I get things done lol It's fun though, it makes the time fly by lol You know what I realized today? I wont be home for a month and a half because of games, recruitment and shows...bummer lol I'm not gonna lie, I miss having my own room. You really take it for granted lol I think it's mainly because my room mate and I don't really see eye-to-eye, that's why I'm really excited to join a sorority lol Hopefully this week will get less hectic!

Wish me luck! =)
Abbie

Friday, September 26, 2008

Busy Is The Theme of The Week

Seems we've all been busy. And thanks to all of you who have been busy reading our blogs. Keep the comments coming!

So goes the life of the college student. One week you're on top of everything on your to-do list. The next week you're drowning under the weight of your own procrastination. During the summer, I let myself get out of the habit of using my student planner. I lived by that thing last year, and I'm going to have to relearn how to live by it again. The life of the SGA President isn't pretty. I've got meetings out the wazoo, committees, luncheons, plus I *do* occasionally like to just hang out with friends on campus. I've been doing my best to show some love to the night programming crew. (Awesome job Todd and Cliff!!) Not to mention my 13.5 credits (by far the lightest academic load I've taken to date). I keep finding myself saying at 11:30 on a Sunday night, "Oh yeah, THAT homework." I've got to budget my time better. Nothing is more embarrassing than having to apologize for missing a meeting or having to admit in class that you have no idea how to answer that question because you forgot to do the reading that day.

Speaking of meetings, this upcoming week is chock full o'them. I'm meeting with all of the student government senators as well as the Presidents of all our extracurricular clubs and organizations. It gives everyone a chance to get familiar with their responsibilities and it gives me a chance to get to know everyone. Which reminds me loyal readers - Have YOU joined a club yet? Huh? Have ya? You should get on that if you haven't. Go to this website for a complete list of our clubs.

If you want to join any of them, just pop by the Student Affairs office and they can get you contact info for that group and let you know when they meet. Or just email me. I'll be here... working on my annotated bibliography...forever...
With Pride,
Jess

Monday, September 22, 2008

Hectic doesn't even begin to explain it...

So it's been a while since I last blogged. I've been so busy with everything!! I feel so busy all the time! I have 3 tests this week and they're all in my core classes....bummer. All my time is spent reading and looking over notes lol It sucks. On top of that I have my sorority recruitment session, my THON morale interview and I have 2 meetings I need to go to....talk about stress. Thank goodness for my friends and family...I don't know what I would do without them! I can't wait til the game this weekend, pep rally and a white out under the lights!! Whoot! I'm especially excited for this week to be over!!

Until next week,

Abbie

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Changing Campus

For those of you who don't know - I'm majoring in Political Science and Public Policy at Capital College (Harrisburg), so I'm actually going up there in January for the spring semester. I've been looking into the process of switching campuses recently and all the details associated with that. It's really pretty simple - one short half a page form to fill out and Boom campus change was approved.

Now for the difficult part...making connection up there. I either have or am working on contacting the following people: the head of the political science department, the honors program director, and the director of the learning center.

I really wanted to find an internship somewhere in the state capital working in a legal field, but I'm having trouble networking from here for now. I'm hoping I'll find something through my campaign work or contacts here that will open up...we'll see. Dr. Dzubak from our Nittany has been great. She has former students or members of the tutoring staff that now work up there and she's been trying to find opportunities for me to explore further.

I'm hoping that the Harrisburg Learning Center will waive their one semester at Harrisburg requirement in light of the fact that I have previous tutoring experience and certification from another Penn State Campus. I can definitely understand the necessity of such a requirement for transfer students but don't think it's too relevant in my case.

I'm hoping that I don't have to go through the process of applying to the Harrisburg honors program and that they're reciprocal with York's system, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Bureaucracy annoys me to no end - so far not too bad though.

I'll be living in on campus housing up there hopefully - actually have to work on that soon - next month is when I was told they'd know about availabilities.

The ability to schedule classes opens up in October as well, so I'm keeping that in mind as well. I can actually take political science or public policy classes considering I'm majoring in the field, Yay! I'll try to have a *VERY* tentative schedule up sometime soon for you guys.

This came off as a to do list for me rather than a legitimate blog post but this is what has been on my mind most of the week while I have time to deal with it.

Stephen

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Just curious...

You know, I am just slightly curious if anyone else in our nation notices how bad the media is downright cruel to Sarah Palin (and by publishing this blog, I by no means intend to pursue and state my political ideologies through this post, unless otherwise asked). Personally though, I have noticed a lot of media sources from newspapers, television and even magazine articles that are just hammering Sarah Palin about things that have almost no relevancy to her. Between her daughter's pregnancy and her husbands DUI from 20 years ago; where does any of this have anything to do with her abilities to be able to lead our country? In almost every media source I see speaking of her, all I see is people slamming her with things that don't even pertain to her.

I don't know; I won't rant further but I am just curious to see if anyone else was able to pick up on these things.

God bless,
Matt

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I'm in! Finally!

Hey Guys
I'm so sorry I haven't been on the blog in a really long time. It has been MAJORLY busy trying to get everything sorted out!
I have moved into the 550 lofts, which I think most everyone has heard about!
The problem is we don't have any internet yet, so it's been impossible trying to get on here and to do all my work for my classes! The ISTC Lab is my new hangout spot!
The lofts are really fun though! It has it's ups and downs, but overall I love the setting and all the people. I never feel alone cause most everyone are in my apartment all the time!
I have been accepted into the Lion Ambassador's program! I was really excited because it's an organization that is greatly talked about and it gets rave reviews! So we shall see how that will go!
More to come on the home front!
We are Penn State!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Obama visit Lancaster

Sorry for not posting this sooner, I've been really busy.

Senator Obama came to visit Lancaster last Thursday, and I got VIP seating because of my involvement in the campaign! I was literally around 10 feet from the podium it was incredible!


Around 15,000 people came many students at Franklin and Marshal and Millersville University. I met one interesting student from Millersville though I shan't talk too much about her without permission.

I haven't gotten around to uploading photos and videos yet but one of our team members has hosted pictures of the event.

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=43127686&albumId=1983284

Senator Obama touched largely on the economy and war in Iraq. Focusing on Iraqi responsibility and their 72 billion dollar surplus! Our country is trillions of dollars in debt and the Iraqi's have that kind of surplus! Madness! They really ought to be moving towards self governance which doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. He also addressed a few of the attacks from the Republican convention that was going on that week.

I was really disgusted by their convention. The whole thing was devoted to personal stories - both Palin's as mayor and McCain's experience in Vietnam. Unfortunately, I didn't learn anything new about the party platform or what they're going to do to solve substantial issues facing the country. Although I suppose that's consistent with McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis's view that, "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

Not about issues?!? We're going to be 10 trillion dollars in debt (roughly $32,000 a person http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/), the economy is tanking, and we're militarily involved in 130+ countries throughout the world. How can we afford to have an election not decided on issues?

Alright, I'm jumping down from my soapbox for now because I've got to run for dinner.

Talk to you all later(i.e I'll continue my rant at some point),

Stephen

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Sometimes, A Girl Just Changes Her Mind

I've always admired people that had a set path, a predetermined goal in mind when they came to college. I had a goal in mind pretty soon after I started, but I was also six years older than the rest of the incoming freshmen. It was all layed out: Get a bacchelor's degree in Letters, Arts, and Sciences, then go on to grad school for physical therapy. Simple.

So I've taken all but a few prerequisites, maintained over a 3.50 GPA, and started shopping around for grad programs. Then it hit me...

I don't know if I want to do this.
I don't like any of these subjects: Chemistry, Physics, Trig...I have the highest respect for people that are good at it and passionate about those subjects. But not me. I struggle with them, even with extra help. I started thinking, if I'm having trouble with these classes, how in the world am I going to survive a graduate program that is based on these subjects? Do I really want to spend the next three years away from my family to pursue something that I may not love? Then I started thinking about the stuff I really love to do. I love being on campus and helping students. I love being president and planning events. I love being able to offer guidance to anyone that asks me. I think I really want to be in higher ed.
Leave it to me to be a SENIOR only SIX credits away from graduation before I decide to make a change. Quite frankly, I freaked. Everything I've done so far has been towards the goal of P.T., and now I'm taking a 180 and headed in a totally different direction. But it turns out I can still use my degree to get into a grad program for Student Affairs. And there are no prerequisite classes for this degree. PLUS, one of the programs has a rolling admission so I can start in January.
Moral of the story is, it's never too late to change your mind. I know I'll be happy with this career.
~Jess

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

First week

Well we're into the second week of the semester (sorry I got caught up in Labor day festivities - i.e. the week of action for the Obama campaign, Lol!) The first week was a whole lot of fun - all kinds of great activities such as the intro picnic. Mostly it was great to meet all kinds of new people and make a few new friends.

Classes aren't too intense so far - a lot of reading of course but it's still only the beginning.

Most interesting for myself is an honors project I'm working on for my business law class because I want to go onto law school myself. My professor for that course has agreed to let me work on a project with her and we're meeting this Friday to get down more specific details so I'll keep you posted.

The roughest classes for me, as expected, will be world music and art history. I've never really been good with or enjoyed more creative abstract concepts like that. The art history should be tolerable because I do find the evolution of society and its influence on the art of the time interesting. Various theories about the hunting rituals of primitive painters etc. Music, I'm definitely going to be suffering through. We have a great professor, but I've always had a slight disdain for music that I have to work past.

Details of my internship have been finalized now. I submitted the completed application to the faculty supervisor. I'll still be working with the Southern York County (or SO YO as we affectionately have dubbed it) team on Wednesday nights for team meetings/phone banking and Saturday voter contact activities (canvassing, voter registration, etc). However, I'll also be spending most of Thursday and possibly some Tuesdays in the campaign office working on voter registration and voter protection activities.

Saturday I get to host my first canvass event on my own. Our team coordinator will be working at another event, so I'll be running everybody through the training. Our field organizer is supposed to stop by and help knock on a few doors but has a lot of events to work with and probably can't stay too long. I guarantee that I will defiantly post about this later because it'll be my first attempt at organizing my own event.

Be sure to check out www.mybarackobama.com for campaign updates in your area. We need all the help we can get.

Talk to you guys later,

Stephen

P.S. I love hearing from you guys. Be sure to leave a comment or send me an e-mail. The feedback I've gotten so far is awesome!

Monday, September 1, 2008

First Week!!

I have officially completed my first week at Penn State and I love it!! Getting around classes can be confusing but I've pretty much got most of them down. I'm not gonna lie, the first couple days I had the worst shin splintz of my life!! So I got a bike lol I still don't get how it works though, but I'm sure I'll figure it out lol Besides the walking, my classes seem pretty cool this semester. My latin prof. is hilarious! haha My nursing classes seem pretty cool too! I just ordered scrubs and I'm super excited to wear them to class!! I finally met my adviser the other day and she seems really nice, and really honest, which I like. I thought I wanted to take a minor in a language, but she explained to me how labels aren't everything. I'm really glad I set up an appointment with her! I didn't realize how many people were at SC until I stopped for lunch in the HUB and had to wait 20 mins to get lunch! It was insane!! I've now since learned to pack a mini lunch lol I guess I should mention something about football weekend lol It was amazing! I had a lot of fun! My friends Dan and Mandy came to visit and we had a blast! My mom came up yesterday and helped me out and I really missed her!! I can't wait til next weekend! Thank goodness next week will be an afternoon game lol I really should go and study because I have a ton of reading to do!!

Peace out!