Hey, guys!! Sorry this entry is SoOo late. I thought I sent one in, but it mustn’t have gone through. The Internet is such a wonderful thing, isn’t it?!

Anyway, I’m at home, now. Back in Ohio until next year. WoW!! That sounds scary if you don’t think about the fact that next year is just days away.
Speaking of next year, Christmas will be here in FOUR days. Where has time gone?!

I ended the semester with a 2.84 GPA. Not anywhere near as well as I was hoping, but I make do with it. If I pull something like a 3.13 next semester, I’ll pull a 3.0 for the year. I can do it!!

Overall, I got an A, a ton of B’s, and a C in that computer class I couldn’t get out of bed for. Good thing I dropped the 8:00 time slot for next semester. In fact, I’m going to try taking all of my classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday!! I think it’ll be nice to have two days off.. to do homework and get a job, maybe. I’ll just have to sit through 5 hours of classes 3 days a week, but even at that it’s much better than high school :o).

Well, I hope you all have a great Holiday Season!! I’ll talk to you all next year!!!

Well…it’s hello and goodbye from me through this journal entry – the holidays are upon us!

After a full semester of hard work it’s nice to be able to wake up in the morning when the sun is shining and there’s nothing really pressing to stop you from being utterly lazy. I love the feeling – I’m already addicted to it.

The results of Fall 2005 are in and….***drum roll***…FOUR POINT OH! Yes, I know it is shameless of me to gloat, but what the heck, I’m gonna glorify myself anyway. A perfect score! I am currently sitting on a 17 credit 4.0, and it feels goooooooooood. A copy of my first semester transcript is posted below, for those of you who are curious to know what a 4.0 looks like on paper –

I managed to secure an A in every class I took. Air Force Leadership Lab was a pass or fail course, and as my transcripts reflect, I did pass.

Next semester I’ll be taking 6 credits of humanities and CATIA, so the workload should be a lot less. I feel most gratified – at least my 17,000 was well spent. Of course the trick is to keep it up, and hopefully I’ll be able to do that.

And it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! All the stores, of course, have their decorations up, and Christmas music piping from every nook and cranny in the mall – it’s that time of year again! I love Christmas. Personally, it is my favorite time of the year, and not just because of the one month vacation, though that does have a lot to do with it!

I’m pretty much alone in the dorms right now – I’ve gotten Break Housing up till the 23rd of December. It seems so strange – there’s no roommate (Cameron has gone back to Canada), no suitemates (Ben flew up to California yesterday and Scott’s visiting his girlfriend in Kentucky), and no one on our usually bustling hall! It’s a sensation I haven’t gotten used to just yet, but I’m enjoying it alright.

Well, that’s it from me for this semester – I’ll be back in the spring with more jiving journals! Hope you all out there have a great holiday, don’t forget to hang up your stockings, and I’ll talk to you again in the New Year 2006. Peace out, dudes!

MOTTO FOR THE YEAR: HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hey readers! Well, this one I’m writing from home. It’s kind of nice to be back but it’s cold! There’s ice everywhere so I can’t go running outside and that kind of sucks. When I was in Florida, I forgot that cold weather has its effects. Like how you have to go slow on turns when there’s ice on the ground (one of my neighbors almost got their living room taken out this morning). So anyway, I’m mostly grounded to indoor activities at the moment.

I visited my high school today and yesterday. The seniors right now are my class, and it was a reality check seeing everyone from my class last year still being in high school, and realizing that just a couple months set us really far apart. High school and college are very different places in many ways, and it struck me how much I’ve matured since I was back there. Everyone was pretty happy to see me and I was happy to see them and it was fun telling everyone what I’ve been up to and seeing how the school had changed without me. I’m really glad that I took the step to go to college early because I’m completely satisfied with where I am right now. I like being mostly self-sufficient.

Anyway, now that I’m home, I’m basically just working out a lot to get ready for my next PFT, reading, watching movies, visiting friends and enjoying non-campus food. It’s also nice to sleep in when I feel like it. Well, I better be on my way, I have to enjoy this month home while it lasts! Keep the questions coming to kenyonj@erau.edu or on the discussion board http://messageboard.chatuniversity.com/erau_ug/default.asp
Later everyone!

Hey Everyone!

Yesterday I finished my last finals and I am going home in the morning! I am so excited! I have been so busy lately and really stressed out. Even though I had only two finals, I still had projects and presentations and papers due this week. I was the most nervous for chemistry because the final exam was worth so much that my B could become as high as an A or as low as a D with that one test!!! Ahh! And Dr. Cameron said it happened to someone last year! I studied for a long time to make sure it didn’t happen to me. Calculus was my second and last final, and I think I did really well on it. Some of my grades are already posted, and it looks like I will have a 4.0 unless I really screwed up my chemistry final (which I think I did). That’s ok because I am just so happy to be going home after all this time!

Friday night my sorority had our Christmas party, and I brought my Polish friend Bartosz as my date. We had so much fun. Today I am just packing up, doing laundry, and getting ready to go home. My friend Danny is babysitting my fish (Ruby) for me over break. Danny lives close to ERAU so he is driving home. I can’t take a fish home with me on the plane, but otherwise I would. I already have lots of plans for break, and I will be writing about them for my next journal in January. Our second semester begins Wednesday, Jan. 11 th , but I may be coming back late because I want to go to a dance on Sat. Jan. 14 th . We also have no school on Mon. Jan 16 th , so I could stay almost an entire extra week and only miss three days of class. I will have to email my professors to make sure that I won’t miss too much. At least it will be nice to have snow for Christmas and then come back to sunny, hot Daytona Beach J

Well, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

~Sara

Hello EVERYONE!!!!,

Well, I have officially completed my first semester of COLLEGE!!! I am so happy/excited for myself!!! Well I still have my math final on the 12th and my meteorology final on the 14th and then I’m off for my break! My grades are good and I only missed 3 classes this semester, and it wasn’t because I skipped, it was because my lazy butt slept in!. lol.

I don’t think I am going back home to Pennsylvania for Christmas, I will probably go to my Mom’s house in Melbourne.

I told you guys how I totaled my other car right? Well I did, about 3 weeks ago or so. I got on the ball, searched eBay and found a nice car over in Orlando ! I actually bought a car off of eBay. lol, that was fun. I paid $2,000 cash for it, and I have my OWN insurance THANK YOU !, not many teens have their own insurance! So I’m low on cash right now!.

My dad offered to fly me home, but I haven’t spent a real Christmas with my mom since I was about 4 or 5, and I don’t even think I was that old, I’m going to surprise her!! Although I’m going to miss ALL of my friends back home and a white Christmas, but I talked to a couple friends of mine back home and they said they all might come down for a road trip! So that will be sweet!!

School is great and everything else is going even better! I’m going to miss all of my new friends! If any of you are reading this I love ya all!!!!! College offers great memories! I love college, it is WAY better than high school will EVER be, although I DO miss the good ol’ high school days!. lol

I have ALL of my laundry done and ready to GO TO MELBOURNE FOR CHRISTMAS! Abercrombie & Fitch gave me hell for calling off for Christmas, but they have this thing called “requested time off”! Therefore I requested time off and they got all mad, and I told them I didn’t care if I didn’t work but once a month, just as long as I don’t get fired so I can still get the discounts!!haha..

I am not sure if I will continue writing my Journal over break or not, I wish I were just to see how everyone is doing and all!! if I don’t, I will always be looking on the ERAU message board and everyone has my email —>> gibso35f@erau.edu and my aol name is once again —>> gibso2j,,, so feel free to ask any questions, for those of you who have e-mailed me, you all know that I take my time in answering all of your questions in full detail. So go ahead and ask me anything you’d like and I will take the time to get all your questions answered!

Well, just a few things before I go to everyone! I WISH EVERYONE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!! And remember, Christmas isn’t just about gettin’ presents and stuffin’ your face at grandma’s house, it’s about Jesus, love, care, and friendship! All of you better be safe over the holiday! I mean it!! lol. I wish I had more to write about, but I don’t really want to take up anymore of you guys’ time, plus my friends and I are going out and finding Christmas light displays, YES, there are Christmas lights here in Florida. lol. ..

WELL EVERYONE, THIS IS JUSTIN SAYING GOOD BYE UNTILL NEXT SEMESTER OR UNTIL I HEAR FROM YOU BY E-MAIL OR AOL! BYE EVERYONE!!!

–Justin Brett Gibson (Aero Sci-ERAU) peace!!!!

Hey, readers! I apologize, I missed my deadline for my journal last week because I was busy at home and then I was on a plane at the time that I usually do this, so I’m sorry this is pretty late. Anyway, so much stuff has happened since my last entry, it’s hard to know where to start! But I’ll start with the base visit.

The base visit was awesome. That’s really the long and short of it. After a really long bus ride up to South Carolina, we finally got to our… hotel, I guess. It feels kind of wrong calling it that, but that’s basically what it was. We didn’t get much sleep the whole time. But we did soooo much, like meet a general, PT with some active-duty airmen, fly in a C-17 to Wright-Patterson to see the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, and tour a bunch of different parts of the bases.

Coming from Florida, the temperatures in SC and OH were BRUTAL. It was like 20 degrees, and every time the wind blew I thought my whole body would freeze on the spot. When we got back to Daytona, I really appreciated the warmth, humidity and lack of wind. If you plan on doing on doing ROTC in the future, I definitely recommend going on a base visit at least once because it gives you a good feel of what the active duty lifestyle is for officers, plus it’s a free vacation!

Then, I went home to WA. It was weird being home for the first time since I came to Riddle in so many ways, but it’s hard to explain all of them. The most obvious is that you just change so much when you go to college, it’s inevitable. It was an unsettling feeling when it finally hit me that I don’t live there anymore. So really, “home” isn’t really home anymore (at least for me) and my new family is everyone I know at Riddle. I missed everyone here so so so much. As soon as I landed in Seattle, all I could think of was how much I already missed everyone. It’s actually pretty amazing how closely you become bonded a lot of the people you get to know at school.

This was my last week of school, being in maintenance, but most people have their finals for the rest of this following week. On Monday instead of LLab, we had Pass-in-Review for ROTC, where we stood at attention for a long time and marched around the field in Service Dress (i.e. all fancy). That was the end of ROTC for the semester, which is somewhat of an accomplishment, just to have stuck with it and realize how much we’ve all learned from it since the beginning of the year.

As usual, finals week was the most stressful thing ever. It seemed like all the bad stuff that could possibly go wrong all went wrong leading up to finals. For a while, I actually thought I was going to fail electricity and it was really stressful trying to figure out whether or not I was going to drop it when half the class was on the verge of failing also. I decided to stick with it though, and I’m really glad about it because I managed to get an A on the final so I pulled through with a C. Normally, I probably wouldn’t be too pleased with that, but a C is way better than repeating a course.

So from this whole experience, I learned two important things: don’t give up, even when your goal seems unattainable (believe me, a week ago, getting an A on my electricity final would have seemed unattainable) and maybe more importantly, STUDYING DOES NOT MEAN YOU’RE STUPID. It’s taken a while for me to get that through my head, but I’m realizing it’s true. Even the kid that acts like he’s a natural at everything probably studies more than anyone else, in secret of course. Don’t feel stupid opening your books, whatever school you’re at.

Since I’m going home on the 10th and am going to be off for more than a month, I have to admit that I’m almost nervous about leaving for so long. I know I’m going to miss all my friends like crazy, considering a week away from everyone made me homesick for Riddle. On the other hand, I’m also going to try to get the most out of being home that I can, because it might be the longest I’ll be there anymore, because I’ve decided to stay at school for the summer and continue working on my A&P. And next Christmas break, I’m thinking I might want to go to Europe and work on my language skills instead of going home. I’ll have to work on the financial plan for that one a little bit, but judging from the past, it seems that I have my ways of getting things to work out. And who know’s what’ll happen after that?

If you are one of the 5 million people that has e-mailed me in the past few weeks and hasn’t heard back from me, I’m getting to you. I’ve just been inundated with e-mails but when I get home I will be on an e-mail answering rampage, so expect to hear back within the next few days. And for those of you who have questions you want answered… kenyonj@erau.edu.

Later!

One more week left of classes!!!! This coming Thursday the 7th is our last class day for this semester and looking back, time has flown by so quickly.

Don’t get the wrong idea though, just because we don’t have classes doesn’t mean we are not excepted to study for our finals, everyone has a lot of work to do. I am exempt from my air traffic 2 final due to a high enough grade which I am really excited about. Luckily I can say, classes have gone by smooth for me this semester, I think I have run through only one rough spot.
To give some of you planning on coming here some advice as for what I have learned academically here since attending this August, it would be take really good notes, and study for your tests no later then 2 days before you take them. I used to study the night before, but I learned quickly that doing that is not always the best option when you have to consider time management.

Last week I went home for Thanksgiving and it was so much fun. I never experienced walking through an airport terminal to greet my parents, and what a feeling it is to do so. I got to see most of my friends and catch up with my family, it was such a good time but unfortunately, the time went by too quickly. I was not too disappointed when I had to come back because first off it’s Daytona Beach, and second I will see everyone again in only three weeks when I go home for Christmas break. This first week back just flew by; I still can’t believe next week we are done for the semester, time to start sleeping in! I really do not have too much to say for this entry which some of you could probably tell. So with that admitted, I will catch you guys later.

Hi Guys,

I hope everybody had a nice Turkey and ate some for me! I went home to St. Petersburg during this break but I got stuck on I-4 with my car, it was terrible.. I left at about 12 pm with my Friend and only went 30 miles from the school with the engine broke down. I called my dad to see what it could be, he said the timing belt first…but that wasn’t it. I had to call my roommate an hour later to come pick me up from I-4, I was in the middle of nowhere in DeBary.

After leaving my abandoned car on I-4, I called my father to discuss options, the service would have cost us an incredible amount of money here because Daytona Beach is not that big and they don’t have a lot of towing trucks that provide long distance towing. So I went through several Stations to ask how much it would cost and to see what the problem might be. Most of them replied by saying that they don’t have any towing trucks that go that far. That really disappointed me as darkness approached us. My father then knew it would cost us, but said that he will call one of his buddies to see if he can come pick me up, he owns a towing truck. He said he will charge us $1 per mile, my father couldn’t refuse because that was the only option available.

My dad’s friend picked me roughly up at about 01:00 in the morning because he left at around 21:00, he also had some trouble finding it for some reason. I was relieved when I saw him because that meant that I would be going home. The trip took 3 hours to drive back with picking the car up on the way back home. I came home and passed out, it was like 04:00.

In School. We all got out early because of the holidays and I had a an exam that I did well on. Now we are back and are all preparing for final exams. Which is the most important thing we had for the past 3 months. We really got to study for it! I have about 5 exams to study for. When I am done with them, I will be very happy to have done them and to be finished with another semester here at Embry-Riddle.

I have recently moved and am having a good time with my new roommate. We have been staying up lately from times exceeding up to 04:00, it’s fun but crazy the next morning when you have to wake up. We hang out outside the school also a lot and go to the mall to pick up some ladies J. JK. I just slept the whole day and I am starving..going to go downstairs to eat with my buddies….GOTTA love college!

Dinko.