BEDA Day #3: So Brittany and I were sitting in the middle of a crime scene...

Yes. That is my life.

Today has probably been one of the most interesting days of my life. It's definitely ranked in the Top 5. And you get to hear about it!

As as I mentioned in my previous post, today was the STARS conference, a leadership conference held on campus for all the hall governments. The conference ended up being a ton of fun. Every hall performed a lip sync/roll call to start it off and this ended with a bunch of cheers and a round of Ride that Pony. Some of the lip syncs were fantastic and everyone did a really great job.

Next, we had a keynote speaker come in and talk to us about leadership. Now personally, my favorite part of leadership conferences are the keynote speakers because they always have some amazing things to say and I always walk away with new insights into leadership. We did some really interesting activities that I've never done before, which made it even more exciting. One activity (which was my favorite) was that we were all in a giant circle and someone could step in and say what kind of leader they were. Anyone else who was the type of leader then stepped into the circle. It was neat to see all the different dynamics of leadership. My favorite was Meghan's, who said "I'm a leader that motivates other people." I like thinking of Hall Gov as the leaders that motivate the residents in our halls.

The other neat activity that we did was to lead around our partner who had to close their eyes. So the first round I led my partner around while his eyes were closed. Then he did the same for me. And then we switched it up and the person who's eyes were closed led while the "guide" protected them from running into other groups. It was interesting to see why certain people preferred the different scenarios.

Thankfully after the keynote we got to eat lunch, which was a very good thing because we were STARVING. Then we started our programming sessions. The first program I went to was called Empower-Mint and it was a self-exploration program where we wrote down a goal for ourselves and then thought of the things that were stopping us from achieving those goals. But it wasn't a simple goal. It was something that we were having a hard time overcoming. During the second session, my hall gov presented, which didn't really go too great. But we still ended up having a good time.

The last program I went to was definitely my favorite. We had to have a 5 minute conversation with someone we didn't really know and then pick three characteristics (from a chart) and make a bracelet for them with different colored beads and each bead represented a different characteristic. It's funny because it was a very simple program but I really enjoyed it and funny enough I really love the bracelet that my partner (and new friend) made me. He said I as calm (which I think is crazy since I feel like my life is a giant chaotic mess), that I'm truthful, and that I have love and compassion for all the activities I'm involved with. Needless to say, I walked out of that program having learned something about myself, which is the entire point after all.

After the programs, we got a break and I had to go to a Community Service opportunity for an organization that I'm applying for called NRHH. We decorated the covers of cards for child cancer patients to send to their friends and family. It was actually really fun and I talked to some people that I never would have expected to have a conversation with. I also got to see my RA from last year, which was great. Then it was back to my dorm to quickly change and go to the STARS Banquet....and guess what!

MY HALL WON 1ST PLACE FOR ROLL CALL:



Woot Woot!

And now, on to the funny story...the one that involves the title of today's entry.

So earlier when I was on the break from the conference I came back to my room to shower and take a little nap. Well there were some kids outside my building being loud and playing music. I ended up leaving not long after that. Apparently they were standing outside drinking (yes at 3:00 in the afternoon on a SUNDAY) and the cops came and told them off (or something like that). When I got back from my community service, they were all in the lounge on my floor, playing beer pong and basically having a party in the dorm lounge. I found this rather odd because I'm pretty sure that's way against the rules of our building, especially because I'm sure most of them were under 21.

Anyway, when we got back from the banquet tonight, my friend Brittany and I decided to do work in the main lounge. We actually ended up taking pictures with her webcam and right as one of the RA's walked by the fire alarm went off (for the second time this week btw). When we came back inside we just went back to our work. So far, mostly normal. Then at around 8:45pm one of the RA's came in and told us he was having a meeting there at 9 so he asked us to leave. So we did and went up to the 2nd floor lounge where the party had taken place earlier that day. There were still beer cans all over the place and it was actually kind of ridiculous and annoying. But whatever. I left to get some ice cream from my room and when I came back I realized one of the doors to the lounge was locked, so when my friend let me back inside we unlocked the door. Whatever...no big deal right?

Haha. Wrong. A few minutes later my RA came in and was like "Hey, wasn't this door locked?" and we were like "Ya, so we unlocked it" and she goes "Uhh...guys...this is a crime scene...that's why the door was locked."

Oops. Apparently the kids that were having the party in the lounge set off the alarm (we don't know how) and the cop was the one who locked the door so that he come back and get evidence later. And we were just sitting in the middle of a crime scene eating ice cream and writing papers. Whoops.

In all honesty, it was probably the most hilarious thing that has happened to me in a really long time. We just starting laughing and we decided it just definitely wasn't our night. But really it was quite funny. And crazy. Basically tonight was crazy. But it was fun.

And that's the way college is supposed to be. It's those great and MEMORABLE experiences...like eating ice cream in the middle of a crime scene...that makes all the work and studying and paper writing worth it. Because while we're doing all of that, we're also having fun. And being silly. And that's the best part of college...in fact it's the best part about growing up.

the end






Actually...here's a few pictures from STARS:

BEDA Day #2: The Great Part of Dorm Life is annoying people who blast music all night long...

Oh wait. That's not right.

Hello there and welcome to BEDA Day #2. I think we can guess what today's blog is going to be about ^^^^.

I love living in a dorm. Especially my dorm. I have an awesome Resident Director, an awesome RA and I work with an amazing Hall Government. What I don't like is my room. Or rather the location of it. Well actually I just hate the people who live next to me. And they sort of hate me too. It's definitely a hate/hate relationship. See my neighbors like to turn on their annoyingly loud rap music at about 10pm every single Friday/Saturday night. Sometimes it goes off at 11:30pm. Sometimes it goes off at 1:00am. I'm hoping tonight is earlier rather than later. Because I have to wake up at 8:00am tomorrow for STARS (more on this later) and if I don't get to sleep it's going to be a very hard, long day. Mostly because it's an all day event. And I need my freaking sleep!

So what's STARS? Well it's this leadership conference that is held on my campus every year. It's for all the Hall Governments on campus. We do fun things like cheers and lip syncs (something our school is FAMOUS for). Then we get to present and attend programs that different hall governments put on in their halls throughout the year. I unfortunately did not get to attend last year so I'm super excited! I'll have a full report late tomorrow night and hopefully some pictures to go with it.

I'm keeping this post short tonight because I'm in the middle of watching Country Strong and I want to finish it before I go to sleep tonight.

Thing that made life awesome today:
1)I'm listening to Charlie McDonnell's newest CD to block out the loud rap coming through my wall.
2)I got a parking spot in the parking lot of my dorm today. This never happens. It made my day :D

the end

BEDA

Well hello there. Happy April! So as some of you may know, this month is BEDA/VEDA month. In case you don't know what that means, let me inform you :)

BEDA: Blog Every Day in April
VEDA: Vlog Every Day in April

You're now informed. I've decided to take part in the BEDA challenge this year. I thought about trying to vlog every day and actually put something meaningful on my youtube channel, but I'm still having a lot of trouble learning to use iMovie (I know I'm stupid) and besides that, I honestly don't think I have the time. I mean, I'm not even sure I have the time to sit down and make sure I write a blog post every single day for an entire month. So as they say, I'm taking baby steps. I have decided however that I am going to work on my video making and video editing skills this summer, so maybe my channel will be watchable come Fall. We'll see.

Today is a pretty exciting day for me. Not only am I taking on this challenge, but it's also my first official weekend off from work. Well I guess I'm not really off. Instead, I'm officially a jobless college student. YIPPIE! Long story short, I was working at a restaurant in the town next to where I go to school and I absolutely hated it. I worked all weekend every weekend and it was starting to affect my schoolwork so right before Spring Break I quit.

So today was the first Friday that I didn't have to rush off to work right after class. So you know what I did with my day? Well first I went back to my room and called my mom to see how my sister is doing (she's been very sick this week), then I went over to the Student Union to hang out with some friends. Now, unfortunately, it's raining today, so I couldn't really just sit outside and enjoy life, so instead I came back to my room and sat down and finished my book. Which was very good by the way.

I then decided that I should probably go grab some dinner, so I stopped over at the dining hall to grab some food and then came back to my room to watch some Doctor Who and youtube videos.

In short, I relaxed. I got to do absolutely nothing and I loved it. I know it seems odd that I wanted to spend my first night off alone, but sometimes it's just necessary to get that alone time. It's really hard to constantly be running around and never have time for yourself, so even though my night may have been more eventful if I was hanging out with friends, it wouldn't have been the relaxation that I needed. I have to say it's been a pretty successful day.

Now honestly, if I do blog every day, it's probably not going to be all that exciting all the time. But there are some exciting things happening this month that I will make sure to write about. Sunday is this thing called STARS conference, which is a conference held on my campus for all the Hall Governments and it's going to be a ton of fun. I might even switch it up and post some pictures on here of the conference. Next weekend is Relay for Life...another exciting event. And the weekend after that I'll be visiting my family in Pennsylvania for a few days and hopefully we'll get to do some sight-seeing (which was supposed to happen last year) and I definitely need to take pictures of that. And then, if I'm lucky, at the end of the month Katherine and I (and maybe some of my other chapter members) will be going down to Brooklyn to help set up a library that The HPA is helping to build.

All in all, it should be a very exciting and eventful month. I hope that I'll be able to document it with words and pictures and maybe actually have something interesting on here. We'll see. :)

As a side note, I finished two books for the DAC, but I haven't written the reviews yet. Those two reviews are probably going to go up as part of this BEDA challenge, so I won't just be ranting about something random every day. I'll try and get those posted over the next few days.

Wish me luck and if your participating in either challenge this month then good luck! May the force be with you!

:)

How I'm Spending Spring Break

This week is Spring Break (woot woot!) so I'm back at home for the week. It's been really nice to be home, especially because I've gotten to spend so much time with my mom. However, I still had to bring home schoolwork...in fact I had to bring home a lot more schoolwork then I was originally planning to. See I was supposed to take all of my midterms and quizzes and such before spring break, but that didn't work out because professors got sick and things are the syllabus got changed last minute, so I had to bring home a bunch of crap to study. On top of that, because I was so behind in almost everything last week, I brought home all of that work to do too so that I could go back to school at least somewhat caught up.

Right now my big downer is this paper that I have to write for my English Lit class. It really wouldn't be too bad except for the fact that 1)I didn't too amazing on the last paper, 2)I was supposed to bring the professor an outline before spring break so she could help me, and 3)I missed the class where we did a close analysis of one of the poem's I have to write about and therefore don't know what points she thought were important.

Oops. So now I'm sitting here in the library at UNLV attempting to write a paper that I really have no idea how to write. I have absolutely no motivation to do this and can think of a billion things I'd rather be doing at this very moment. Which is in fact why I am writing this blog post. I also have to go put more quarters in the meter soon or else my car will get towed. That's not too great since I don't want to leave my stuff in this library and I have to be back here by 4:00pm to meet up with Karina (yay for best friends!).

I just realized that last sentence really had no flow and made no sense, but that's ok. At least I can recognize my horrible writing mistakes. Before I waste anymore time sitting in this library, I think I better get off the internet and actually accomplish something. Sadly I can only spend 2 more hours here before I have to get the car back home so I might as well take advantage it and get some work done.

Wish me luck and enjoy the lovely spring! :)

2011 Debuet Author Challenge UPDATE

So I recently went over the book list for the 2011 DAC and I pretty much changed my entire list. So here is a new, updated version of the books I'm planning to read (note: a lot of these have already come out but I haven't had the time to read them yet)

1)The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher
2)Unearthly by Cynthia Hand (already read)
3)XVI by Julia Karr
4)The Latte Rebellion by Sarah Jamila Stevenson
5)Warped by Maurissa Guibord
6)Those that Wake by Jesse Karp
7)In the Arms of Stone Angels by Jordan Dane
8)Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky
9)Hourglass by Myra McEntire
10)Stracrossed by Josephine Angelini
11)Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari
12)Hereafter by Tara Hudson

Rant about School

It's official. I'm too busy to blog. What the heck? I don't know how this happened but it did. So where am I blogging to you from today? Well, I'm in front of the sandwich shop in my university's student union waiting for DA peeps to show up so we can eat dinner before we meet for the first time IN THE LAST THREE WEEKS OMG. That's right. It's happening tonight. We are meeting. FINALLY.

So why am I sitting in front of the sandwich shop you might ask? Nahh. I'm not going to answer that. It's a secret. Anyway...

Today's blog entry is going to be all about the fact that I HATE MY CLASSES THIS SEMESTER. Sorry. Lots of capitals for no reason. But it's true. The only classes I like this semester are French (which I hate half the time because of the workload) and English Lit II. That's it. My other three classes are torture and I'm at the point where I have to literally force myself to go each day. That's a horrible sign considering we are only in the 6th week of classes.

The sad thing is, I signed up for subjects that are interesting, but are just being taught by horrible professors. One ignores questions, another is just creepy, and another doesn't teach but stands in front of the class and blabs about all the work she's done over the years.

The point is, school is just uninteresting and unmotivating for me at the moment. And the workload is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure I haven't gone to bed before 2:00am in the last 2 weeks due to the insane amount of homework I have. I'm almost positive I did not have this much work last semester. I mean we aren't even at midterms yet.

Well that's enough ranting for the day.

I would say that I'll try to update soon, but that require having time to sit down and actually write a blog that means something.

Until next time. :)

Long Time, No Talk

I know I haven't blogged in a really really long time. I apologize. Life has been crazy. We just finished up the third week of the semester and already there is so much going on that I can barely keep track. But tonight's blog is not about that. Tonight's blog is honestly a rant, so if that's not your kind of thing, you should probably stop reading. There's just an issue that's really been bothering me and I need to get it out. So here it goes.

I'm starting to get really frustrated with some of my friends. I mean, usually you know you have real friends when they help you out in certain situations where most people would just be like, whatever. But these couple of people have just been ridiculous. And rude. Mostly rude, which is why I'm so frustrated. Not that this is complete news to me. I guess I've started to notice over the last few months. But I'm starting to realize more and more that this isn't just a phase. This is who they are. Which is making me really not want to hang out with them anymore.

Obviously, that's my choice to make. And it's a crappy one. No one wants to realize that their friends are turning into not cool people. It's sad. I don't want to lose those friendships because we've had some really great times together. But I'm also starting to lose a lot of respect for them. It's disappointing. But people change and that's just the way it is. That's life. And as they say, there are some who just pass through our life and some who stay forever. And at least I'm lucky enough to have some friends that I know will last forever.

theendthanksforreading. :)