Happy 2007 Readers!!!!

Wow, what an end to last semester/beginning to this semester! There’s so much that has happened to the school. By now, you all know of the tornado that did quite a lot of damage to the school on Christmas Day. I guess I have to start with that.

I got home Christmas night after dinner with my family to the questions from friends, “Did you hear what happened at school?” I hadn’t and was stunned to hear that a tornado tore up the buildings and the planes on campus that afternoon. It is truly a testament to the information age that this information and hundreds of pictures had traveled global in the small number of hours since the disaster. But what could be deemed a disaster area, quickly turned into a recovery area. Within days, a large amount of debris had been cleaned up, and the school was posting daily updates on erau.edu, and Associate Dean of Students Paul Bell was keeping the students updated with more detail on the social network Facebook.com.

Classes were pushed back to January 16, 2007, and students were encouraged not to return to campus for as long as possible. Though classes were delayed, the residence halls reopened as scheduled, meaning that I, as an RA, came back to Daytona Beach as scheduled for spring training.

I must digress to the end of the fall semester. Classes ended wonderfully, and my grades were ok. I’m gonna try and put forth that extra effort in some of the more boring classes this semester, but I don’t really have many boring classes this spring. Last semester, I got so much accomplished as an RA, and I’m beginning to work on a huge project for student government. EagleBay stalled, and I am going to choose to let our IT department focus on other important aspects this semester, because things are definitely hectic over there while they are helping with the relocation of many offices that were in the now defunct Spruance Hall. So I’m formulating a project this semester to make our newly adopted Honor Code into something tangible. That’s going to be a lot of work, and a lot of typing at my computer.

Just a quick mention of this year’s Task Force One. They did an amazing job at their fall event, Winterpalooza. They have the manpower to do amazing things this year, and their event was very well attended and I had a ton of fun. Hopefully you will join TFO in your first year here. They do great things.

Ok, let’s move to the present. My classes this semester are, Microeconomics (EC210), Business Information Systems (BA320), Managerial Accounting (BA312), Air Cargo Management (BA410) and continuing my Aviation Safety minor with Human Factors in Aviation (SF320). The Air Cargo Management class really excites me because it is the first course in my area of concentration, Airline Management. I’m finally going to be learning something that I’m not just going to use the skills in the future, but everything that I learn will be directly applicable to my career. Classes may be tough this semester, but I am going to thrive on them.

My life as a resident advisor is going well. I had quite a number of residents graduate last semester, and some left for other reasons, so about a fifth of my residents are new to the hall. One thing I tried to do a lot last semester was go crazy on decorations for my hall. Our holiday light display was amazing according to other halls. This semester, one of my residents, Corinne, helped me come up with a theme for the hallway, along with a crazy, extravagant, design. Though I have been keeping the theme a secret from other halls, I trust that none of you will tell them, so the theme is “Under the Sea.” Pictures will come. I guarantee it. I can do that because I have a nice new 10 mega pixel camera that I got over break. It is amazing. The only drawback is that each picture is about 3 megabytes. That makes them very hard to email.

I took a lot of pictures and video over winter break and pretty soon, I am going to make a video of all the pictures and footage and post it on YouTube. I think that site is a really good sign of where our world is going and how much it’s changed in recent years. When Time Magazine’s person of the year is “You” you know how much technology, mainly uploading, has helped to flatten the world for our generation (Read The World Is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, especially all the future Aviation Business Majors.)

To close out winter break, I want to say hi to all my friends from home who made this the best break ever. I know some of them read this, and I like to acknowledge people in these journals (free of charge, shoot me an email.) so thanks to all of them for being so supportive of me and caring so much about the state of my school.

As we preview my next entry, there are things I am looking forward to. In less than two weeks, I will be attending the Florida Resident Advisor Seminar, on the campus of the University of Central Florida. It is going to be so cool to represent Embry-Riddle’s RA staff, and I really hope that above all the cheering that will be done that weekend, our cheers are the loudest, and our school spirit shows through. I mean, we had a tornado hit our school, and we only sacrificed three class days. Embry-Riddle is an amazing place to be.

In closing, I want to note something I learned from Dr. Thomas Connolly, chancellor of the Daytona Beach Campus. Through all the turmoil and destruction that occurred during the 60 seconds of the tornado’s trip across campus, and the minutes, hours, days and weeks following in the cleanup, no one has been hurt. I think we are all thankful for that.

Until Next Time Guys and Gals,
Carlos

P.S. If you emailed me in December and I didn’t get back to you, I’m really sorry. I was so busy with projects and papers, and if you email me again, I will be more than happy to send you a reply!