Happy late Easter!  I arrived back in Daytona Beach in the evening on Easter Sunday.  I was amazed at how packed the Atlanta airport was and my plane coming back to Daytona was overbooked, so they were asking for people to give up their seats and take a plane the next day.  Well, I gave it some thought and decided that I would give up my seat, however; they didn’t need me after all and I was able to board the crowded plane.  I am glad to be back in Florida because the weather is so much warmer here than at home.

As I mentioned in my last entry, registration has begun and this semester the whole process didn’t go as smoothly for me.  I arrived at the wrong time because the line was extremely long and then I was registering for classes that were supposedly junior level classes, so they wouldn’t register me without the instructor’s approval even though my advisor approved it.  Eventually, I got it all worked out because my advisor, Dottie, is very helpful and now after several hours of running around campus I am registered for all the classes I wanted to take.  I am planning on taking classes over the summer back home and before you register for them Embry-Riddle has to approve them or else they will not accept the credits.  I filled out all the necessary paperwork and am now okay to take classes which I am excited about!

Last week was the room selection process for next year and how this works is you are given a lottery number and the higher your number the longer you have to wait to pick a room, unless the people you are rooming with next year get a low number then they can pull you forward.  I ended up getting a really high number and so did my potential roommates, so by the time my turn came to pick a room all the dorms were practically filled.  However, I did end up getting a room in the dorm I wanted because of sheer luck and I hope I won’t have to go through the process again!

This past Friday instead of doing PT I got to go play paintball!  I had a lot more fun this time than last semester because we were in smaller groups and I had an idea of what I was doing.  I did actually manage to hit some people and in return my sweatshirt was covered in paint, but it was well worth it because my team won!  The semester is winding down for ROTC and I am pretty sure we only have about two weeks left which means Pass-In-Review and finals are coming up.

Silver Wings participated in Relay for Life this past weekend and I had a good time!  The event was held on the West Lawn and all throughout the night people walked around the path (track—but it wasn’t on the track), competed in contests, and hung out with friends.  I had never done a Relay for Life before so I wasn’t quite sure about what to expect, but I had a good time and am looking forward to doing it again next year.  Silver Wings is having their Induction Dinner next weekend and I am excited because I will be officially inducted into the organization!  Next year when you are on campus looking for a club to join, think about joining Silver Wings because it is a great service organization and you have lots of fun doing the activities and hanging out with the people.

I donated blood for the first time the other day and was surprised at how painless it really was.  I had never donated before because I hate needles and the sight of blood, but some friends convinced me to do it and I am glad I did.  Now, I plan on giving blood every time I can and you get a free t-shirt!  My classes are going well and I am starting to spend more time in the computer lab finishing up group projects.  Also, my Computer class has started Dreamweaver and I am spending several hours in the computer lab for each homework assignment.  If you have any questions, please send me an e-mail.

Until next time,

Kaleigh

e-mail:sidesk@erau.edu

I can’t believe it’s already been two weeks since spring break started. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case for many college-age kids who have invaded Daytona. I hear “spring break season” is over a month since schools have differently timed breaks. Going to the beach for an hour or so yesterday with Alex confirmed my suspicions- the beach was packed. Yesterday was gorgeous and this weekend is looking to be even more so. 80s and blue skies all the way! Perfect for… camping?! Let’s just say going on the Christian Fellowship Club retreat to a hot springs area will be the strangest camping experience of my life. Whatever the differences, I know we’ll all have a wonderful time.

How can I do all of this great stuff during the semester? Well, I work ahead big time. For example, we were just supposed to turn in topic ideas for our last 10-page honors paper, but I turned in the whole thing. I’m not trying to brag with that, but just sharing the value of planning ahead so you can enjoy fun things that come up. Plus, I had an 8 hr layover in Charlotte, NC on the way to spring break in DC due to crazy thunderstorms and morning fog. Yep, quite the day, I have to say. I never thought I’d be typing up a report my first day of break.

Well, I could go on forever about the trip, but I think I’ll just let my pictures do the talking for me. I made sure to make my Facebook albums of the trip public, so even if you don’t have an account, you can check it out .

Easter was very special! I went to Calvary’s Alive 08 service. It was spectacular and many people professed Christ, so what a memorable time! It was all about the power even just one person has to change the world whether for good or for bad. If I am faithful, I can be that “one” that God will use for good. Also that day, my friend and I decided to randomly clean our buddy’s room and put some funny decorations in there too. He had given my friend staying at school for break the keys to his room and car, so we went after it the Sunday I returned. I love cleaning every once in awhile and had a great time. When we were finally happy with the result, we made some hilarious videos with two other guys on the floor and also took goofy pictures. It felt nice to do something for someone else. Being at college, it’s hard to be unselfish and serve others. That’s always a huge priority in my life, though, so I’m very happy we went through with it. He ended up being very surprised and encouraged, so hooray! You can check out our silly pictures here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=668&l=1182b&id=1231770009

Well, other than only having a month left to finish up projects, study for the last tests and finals, we’ve had lots of excitement on campus recently. For example, we had a crazy awesome army helicopter land in Spruance field yesterday. I was sitting outside doing physics in the sun when it practically flew a circle around my head. The two rotors were pretty impressive and I’ve never seen anything like that in person before. Forgive me for forgetting the name, but I accidentally deleted the e-mail about it. Maybe one of the other writers will mention it .

Also adding to a busy campus was early registration and housing lottery choices. I had completely forgotten that honors/sports people could begin picking classes on Monday until I saw the course booklet in my mailbox. Suddenly, I had to begin the registration adventure yet again. First step was looking up classes I’m supposed to take sophomore year. It looked bleak at first, with only three classes that didn’t require another prerequisite or co-requisite class, but I found two more I could take. Next, I got Dr. Kain to sign for my honors course, Dr. Wanliss to sign as my EP advisor, and Jenny H. to sign as my freshman advisor. Busy, busy, I know, but a small price to pay for always getting the classes I want. Anyway, here’s my course list for next semester:

Statics –Barsoum–

Honors Seminar3 (Climate change) –Snow–

Calculus 3 –Chakrabarti–

Solids –Wang–

Physics 2 –Reynolds–

… for a total of 16 credits

As for spring, I’m looking at a lovely mix of dynamics, differential equations, physics 3, and physics 3 lab. Not sure what else I’ll put in there. I’ve heard that there’s an electrical course that I could take to get it over with, but I don’t know.

I do love the fall schedule, though because I never have a class earlier than 9:45 and three times a week that moves to 11:45. Also, I have an hour or two between classes in the middle of the day where I can work out or work in SPRL. And the best part? I’m never done later than 3:30. Not bad, huh?

And, as crazy as the lottery result event in the Fountain Room (in the village) was, we came out just fine. Two friends from CFC who are on the floor above me in Doolittle found another girl in their hall to join with our group. We also knew of four other girls in Doolittle who wanted an Apollo room just like we did. They had a lower number (It’s a random assignment when you turn in a housing registration form), though, and they didn’t get one, so we all jumped in together and got an O’Connor room. If you have to be in O’Conner, in my opinion, our room is the best. Fifth floor and close to the elevator and big lounge but not too close. Hopefully, we’ll have many good times in that suite next year. From what I can tell, there will be many hilarious days because we all love to laugh. 🙂 If you’ll be on campus next year and want to know more about anything I mentioned in my journals, feel free to come visit us sometime!

Well, I’m going to go enjoy the weather and make it through my four classes today so I can get going on the retreat!

Hey Everyone,

I know it has been a while and I apologize for that. It’s been 3 weeks since we last talked and I have bunches of news to share with you all. I’ll let you know the results of the ERRSA elections, I’ll tell you a little bit about my spring break, and the week that has just passed. I hope everyone is doing good and I hope you enjoy!!!

Okay so the last time I posted I was telling you all about ERRSA elections, now, I was running for Vice President, and I was bidding for the position of National Communications Coordinator. Now elections are voted upon by all of the residents in the Resident Halls, and a bid process is where you are selected by the President to fill the position. When the election results came, I won the position of Vice President and I was selected to fill the position of NCC. I only could choose one, and in the end I chose Vice President. This was a great ending to the week before Spring Break.

On the Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend of spring break, I was at the beach for most of those two days. They were absolutely beautiful days and I had to take advantage of them. That Monday, I went to Orlando to visit one of my friends who was at a resort on her spring break. We spent the entire day together and went to downtown Disney at night to eat dinner and then saw the movie Vantage Point, which may I say is an amazing movie. On Tuesday, my friend and I got a hotel at the Orlando Airport, since I was leaving for Buffalo REALLY early on Wednesday morning. We sat by the pool and watched planes take off all day!!! Then I got up the next morning and went HOME!!! No one knew I was coming home so I went to my mom’s work and I surprised her, and then I waited for my sister and my dad to get home and I surprised them, and finally I was able to surprise all of my friends. Due to it being Holy Week and Easter weekend I spent a lot of my time at home in church. On Wednesday we had choir practice, on Friday we had the Passion of Christ, Saturday was the Easter Vigil and Sunday was Easter mass. I was only able to stay until Sunday, so it was a short and sweet, but AMAZING visit!

The first week back was pretty rough, getting back into the swing of things, but it didn’t take too much before we were rollin’ along again. This past Friday night we had our Relay for Life, which is a committee that I am on through ERRSA. We have been raising money all year for the American Cancer Society and at this finale we were up all night walking to raise more money. We walked from 6pm on Friday night to 5:30am on Saturday morning. After that I had to go directly to take some friends to the airport in St Augustine which is an hour away and then drive back. By the time I got home I had been up for 26 hours and was pretty much ready for bed!!!! I woke up at 4 so that I could get ready to go to dinner. As I told you all I sang at that event a few weeks ago and one of the coordinators wanted to take myself, as well as two other who  contributed to the event out to dinner. We went to one of the finest restaurants in town and had a wonderful dinner.

Classes have been going very well, it’s getting down to that time of final projects and getting in that last home stretch for the year. I am applying for a summer job on campus as a Camp Counselor and was just called back for a second interview, so I will let you all know how that goes. I hope you are all doing well in the Academia World and I hope to hear from some of you. Remember if you have any questions, or just feel like chatting I’m here for you all!!! Take Care!
Until Next Time,
Joey
AIM: HYPORBOY226
Email: Jaworksj@erau.edu
Pictures: www.virb.com/joejaworskiatc

Hey Journal Readers!
I apologize for the terribly late new entry, cuz these past couple weeks have been SO BUSY!! My gosh, it’s been crazy. Last I wrote about TFO’s fundraiser, working the Supercross! It was some crazy day.

The rain was pouring in buckets and we all looked pretty funny in our ponchos selling drinks, but it was some experience. The stadium was packed even though there was such a bad storm and the race was postponed and shortened to beat the rain but people STILL stayed to watch. We spent all night at the race selling stuff, making money and having funny people come up to us and buy stuff, it was fun!

That Tuesday, I went to my first night launch! It was gorgeous! We all drove down to Titusville to see the launch at 2AM. I’m gonna upload a whole bunch of pics today, everything from the Supercross to Launch and Spring Break in … Jersey! The launch was really great though, we actually only saw it go up for a couple seconds but the cloud it left behind was picture perfect and then the sound came like 30 seconds later, it was so cool!

Then came Spring Break!! I got to go home for that while the rest of the country was coming to Florida, but it’s okay, I hadn’t been home in a while. This break was pretty fun, since I was in India all winter break, I hadn’t really gotten to see my friends at all, so I ended up hanging out all day but having a lot of fun. My cousins came for the second weekend and my family went to New York for the Auto Show. In case you haven’t heard of the Javitz Center Auto Show, it’s like the biggest one, I think in the country. Lol yeah so my sis got into Johns Hopkins for her Masters (which is undoubtedly the best school for BioMed stuff =] ) and we were all in celebration mode all weekend! We went out to dinner, went to NY for the auto show, went to Rockefeller Center and went to the top and saw the New York skyline at night all lit up =] I love how I’ve been to NY a million times in my life, but every time is exciting and the scene at night is always, always so gorgeous. That was pretty much my Spring Break =]

I came back and I had a real slap in the face in the form of my Calc Exam. I started studying on the plane! I think I did well on it though, so I’m good =] I have a Phys exam on Tuesday ah!! Today’s Friday the 28th and there’s plans for another barbeque, but nothing too big.

I’ve been bombarded with work and spring break so I never got a chance to tell everyone about my weeks =] I hope you guys have been having a great break! My classes have been going pretty well so far. I’m working hard to make sure I get an A in physics but every other class should hopefully fall into place.

I’ve already registered for my classes next semester! It was a pretty exciting time, it’s cool. I was having MAJOR issues filling up the 12 credit requirement to be a full time student. I came in with a bunch of college credit so I didn’t need to take any humanities classes, but I still needed to take Calc1,2 and Phys1,2etc. So I couldn’t really progress too far into the AE specific courses you know? So I spent all day experiencing the riddle run around and spoke to more than a handful of counselors and heads of the engineering department, to get permission to take a specific engineering class. So now everything is worked out and next semester is CRAZY with three physics based classes ( including a three hour lab!) and a calc class. Wow, I’m going to be so busy next semester.

And don’t forget to all our accepted students; come to the sneak preview on April 12th! It’s on our DB campus and it’ll be a ton of fun with campus/dorm tours, fin aid and free food! So be sure to call us to RSVP for the event =] I work at admissions every now and then and have probably sent some of you emails about your Fin.Aid Counselor or our upcoming events, so make sure you sign up!!

Like I mentioned before I’m going to be posting a TON of pretty cool pictures I’ve taken these past couple weeks. So much has happened and I have sweet pics to prove it ;]

Take care everyone! Have a great break and remember to enjoy your senior year, it’ll be the most liberating year of highschool =]

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  Spring Break is here and next week I will register for fall classes.  Also, I will be deciding on which residence hall that I will be living in next year.  I have a feeling that the end of the semester is going to be even crazier than the week before Spring Break.  My classes are going well and I just found out that one of my grades had posted wrong, so I am actually doing much better than what I originally thought!

Last week in AFROTC, we had Operation Bottoms Up Week (OBU) and the sophomores took over the detachment and did what the juniors and seniors normally do.  My flight received a new flight commander which was great because it allowed me to see how two different leadership styles can affect a group of people.  Overall, it was a really fun week and I am excited for my turn next year.  On another note, I retook the Physical Fitness Assessment and passed!  Yeah!!!!

Silver Wings had their Beach Clean Up last Saturday and I went along because not only did I want to help clean the beach, but I wanted to see the ocean!  I was amazed at how crowded it was since it was sort of cold and breezy!  I had never seen cars on the beach before, so I took a couple of pictures. Also, there was an ice cream truck driving up and down the beach.  After having walked up and down the beach picking up trash it was nice to have a refreshing treat.  I had remembered to put sunscreen on my face and arms, but I forgot about my legs and the backs got pretty burnt.  Next time, I will remember to put sunscreen on them!

I attended the last Honors Speaker of the year—Dr. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, who talked about genetic screening.  I thought it was a very interesting talk because she covered the history of genetic screening and the different types of genetic screening that currently exist.  I also attended a lecture given by Helen Thayer, who is an explorer.  She was the first woman to travel on foot to the magnetic North Pole, and at the age of 70 she is still going strong.  Her next adventure is to Bolivia with her 81 year old husband. They are going to document indigenous people and their cultures.  I thought it was a very inspiring talk given how much she is accomplishing at her age.  If you are interested in learning more about her, check out http://www.helenthayer.com/ .

The beach bonfire with Silver Wings was cancelled because we had a huge storm and it got really cold.  Right now, I am pretty cold because here in Illinois it is still in the winter season; however, some people think it is spring because I was in Wal-Mart and saw a lady wearing a tank top and shorts.  The temperature wasn’t even in the 50s!  Maybe, towards the end of the week it will get warmer, but I don’t really have to worry about it because I am going back to warm and sunny Florida.

Until next time,

Kaleigh

e-mail:sidesk@erau.edu

It’s finally here!! Yes, indeed, glorious Spring Break begins this weekend! I’m sure I will have much to tell you about my adventures in Washington DC with my mom next time, but for now, I’m gonna go back in time a couple of weeks and let you know what I’ve been up to!

Let me begin with a somewhat funny story. I had the pleasure of finding an old video online that I wrote and co-starred in. Before my sophomore (I think…) year of high school I had the privilege of attending a summer camp for young women put on by Microsoft. With a wonderfully nerdy name like DigiGirlz, it was an unforgettable and very informative experience. One of the projects was making a promotion video. To this day, I absolutely love being goofy, dressing up, and making home videos, so I signed right up. They added closed caption later since the sound quality isn’t the best and also for deaf people to enjoy as well. Hopefully, you can get a good laugh out of it, too! Here’s the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/about/diversity/Digi_Day.wvx

Well, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll move on to classes. As I read through my blog last time, I realized how little I talk about school versus all of the fun things I get to do. I hope I haven’t misrepresented what I do down here!! 🙂 Honestly, a HUGE majority of my time is spent in classrooms and studying. I didn’t even work in SPRL the last few weeks so I could be focused. But, seeing as you all probably don’t want to hear too much about every math problem I’m working on or my study method for a random Honors seminar quiz, I usually just share an overview. Nice disclaimer, huh? But, seriously, I have been extremely busy trying to do well in my three tough classes (Calculus 2, Physics, and Programming). It’s a big step up from last semester when I only had Chemistry to “worry” about.

Last week I did hardly anything but study (and attend an ab workout class with a CFC friend :)). In math, I did practice problems over and over and made sure I had memorized all of the difficult formulas. For physics, I typed up every problem we had done in class and on the homework to work through and also memorized formulas. And finally, for programming, I made a paper for each type of syntax (loops, arrays, files, random, etc…) and the proper way to use them in a program. As soon as all three tests in “Round 2” were over, I was ready to relax!

A buddy of mine on the floor had a birthday on Thursday, so several of us went out to Carrabba’s for dinner. I had a delicious ravioli! 🙂 The next day, we were able to experience a huge storm! We even had a couple of tornado warnings. Despite the heavy rain, a few of us ventured out to the hockey game to enjoy and see our other drummer friend in the pep band (who is also on the CFC worship team with me and takes others and me to church).

Saturday, I slept in and worked on a few scholarships my mom had prepared for me to do. I also finished up the very last Physics Lab formal report (we only do three of these a semester). I left my room fairly early so I could go practice for CFC worship team. The guys had gotten a tambourine, but I just wasn’t comfortable enough with it to play. I’ll work on it and learn new rhythms from the others so I hopefully can do it for the next meeting. I’m fine with keeping beat, but just don’t know how to do anything fancy or not too insanely repetitive. Instead, I focused on truly singing with all my heart. It was a true night of worship and I loved it!

After singing, we had the privilege of having the original founder of the club, Dr. Wheeler, come and speak. We learned that CFC was the very first club on campus and the first meeting was only six people, two of which were the dean and his secretary. He was very encouraging and inspiring and led us in Communion after sharing. His words reminded me that I couldn’t give up on what the Lord has called me to do. So even when I’m feeling discouraged about grades and wondering if Engineering Physics is too hard for me or not, I need to pray and trust.

Sunday was also a great time of praise and fellowship! After the wonderful sermon, the whole church had a picnic outside. We, of course, didn’t remember to bring food, so we just had a blast playing volleyball with some little kids. They were so much fun! By the end of the hour, the group had grown and we were all laughing and playing away. Somehow, I managed to get burnt which is a very rare thing for me unless I’m at the beach.

Hmm… I suppose you might be wondering what life in Doolittle is like for me now that I’m very settled in. Well, I don’t know what to say other than it’s nice and quiet in my room. Almost every night, I go to Einstein’s with my two friends and then we play guitar hero (I’m SLOWLY improving…ha.), watch a TV show from someone’s vast DVD collection, or just sit around and make jokes. We all go to CFC and usually campus outreach stuff too. One of the stupider things we do is IM each other whether we’re just down the hall or sitting in the same room. One guy (one who just had the birthday) and I also do our best to think of creative ways to annoy the third member of our trio (drummer-worship-team guy). Really, it’s a vicious circle of teasing between all of us… 🙂

Anyway, that’s enough about our bizarre adventures for now. Other than packing, doing little homework assignments, and enjoying a daily 1 hr bike in the gym, this week has been pretty uneventful. The shuttle launch occurred, but I unfortunately had to go to bed early so I would be coherent at my physics lab. We also received the housing lottery results. I got an OK number for being a freshman. It’s kind of in the middle I guess. I’m hoping my other buddies get an even better one so we have a good chance at getting into Apollo for next year. We will find out what dorm we get in on March 25 or 26th.

Well, I’m going to finish packing for my Washington DC adventure! Only four more classes and I get a much-needed break (although I’ll probably have to study at least a little during the trip).

My name is Natalie Spencer and I approve this entry.

(Sorry, as you probably know, the presidential race is all over the news…)

spencern@erau.edu

http://www.virb.com/erauladyeagle

Hey Everyone,

BUSY BUSY BUSY BUSY BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s how I can describe my past 3 weeks. It has been insanely crazy, but it has been a lot of fun as well. I’m getting ready for spring break right now with only 2 days left!!!!  Classes have been going extremely well. I am finally understanding my Safety class which is awesome, because I didn’t do so well on my first examination. Speech is going well, we have now given 3 speeches, all of which I have done well on, Math… Well we won’t go there!!! No, it’s been going well, it’s just been a lot of work and it’s exhausting sometimes. Aero Sci is going well, I actually like that class, it’s really interesting, but it’s a lot of information to memorize. I’ll tell you about some of the extra things that I have been doing that have been keeping me so busy.

For Air Traffic Control Organization, we had the President of NATCA come and give a Q&A session for us, and it was really awesome to meet him. There was a lot of information that he had to share with us. He is featured in an article that the Vice President of ATCO and I wrote about the event:

“NATCA President Visits ERAU

On Thursday, February 21st Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) spoke to the students of Embry-Riddle. Mr. Forrey’s speech covered the current issues of the air traffic control industry and NATCA’s involvement in solving these issues. Forrey spoke briefly about his involvement with NATCA before opening the floor to questions.

Some of the major topics discussed included: Air traffic control salary issues, shortage of air traffic controllers, the elections and candidate endorsement, and the relationship between CTI schools and the Oklahoma City training facility.” When he spoke to the students, it was motivational and he encouraged them to be the ones to change the future.

Overall, it was a rare opportunity to receive some insight through the eyes of someone who has so much influence on the future of the air traffic control industry. Embry-Riddle looks forward to his return in the fall of 2008.

It was really a great experience for everyone who came. It was a little on the short side since he had previous engagements in Jacksonville. Nonetheless, it was really awesome for him to come here.

ERRSA: Well I told you all last time that I was bidding for the position of Vice President for the organization, but unfortunately I did not get it. I am, however, running for the position for next year. ERRSA has been going well besides that little “set back” and I’m really looking forward to elections for next year!!!

Bike Week: I hate bike week!!!! Just thought I might mention that! Since I do ride a motorcycle it was really cool to see all of the bikes, but there were just so many it was ridiculous and they are all showing off so there were like 6 deaths due to people not being careful. I don’t have much else to say about it but the fact that it was a CRAZY week!

Ryan Skipper Event: About three weeks ago, I was asked to sing at an event and so I decided to meet with the planner and discuss what it would be for. Well, I found out that I was singing at a vigil for the one year death anniversary of a young man who was killed due to a hate crime. I also found out that his parents would be there and I’d be singing to them. Well I knew right away that I was going to sing the song, “On Eagles Wings” so all I needed was a piano player. The event was on March 7th and I didn’t get a piano player until the 5th so we had to do some major practicing. The event was very inspiring, influential, and sad. It was such a mix of emotions. There was a documentary about his life, which brought everyone to tears and then we went over to the campus ministry for the vigil and that’s when I sang, and it was so emotional for me to have to sing, but at the end of the song I knelt down in front of his mom and held her hand, so it ended up being fine after all, and I was offered so many compliments which helped because I was so nervous to do this, but I’m so glad that I did.

BEACH:  The weather has been getting so much warmer now and it’s definitely BEACH TIME!!!!!!! I have gone to the beach more times this semester so far than I have in like the past 5 years of my life.  Every time I go to the beach I call my Mom back home in Buffalo, New York and rub it in her face! She tells me its like 5 degrees and snowing and there I am sitting on the beach. It’s sooooooooooo nice!!!

Space Shuttle Endeavor Launch:  So this past Monday night slash Tuesday morning the Space Shuttle Endeavor launched at 2:28am… OMG!!! It was so amazing to see a night launch. I will have pictures on the site for you all to see. When the shuttle lifted off the night turned into day, and it looked like the sun had just come up, it was AMAZING!! Unfortunately, that was the last night launch. Truly, a great experience!

So this is what I have been up to lately, I’ve been having a lot of fun, but I definitely need a break!! I hope you all are doing well in school! I still have not heard from anyone about getting accepted!!! Let me know!!!  Take care everyone!!!!

Until Next Time,

Joey Jaworski

AIM- HYPORBOY226

Email: Jaworksj@erau.edu

Pics: www.virb.com/joejaworskiatc

Full speed ahead. I am always moving full speed ahead!

I don’t know if I have always been this busy, and I just haven’t noticed or what. But I seem to have a thousand things going at once, and yes I counted.

About one thousand I’d say (Dane Cook joke, maybe you get it). Anyway, school is busy and I keep finding fun activities to do. I’ll go into some of those fun things later, but now we’ll see how the classes are doing.

MWF 10:30am-11:30am – Air Traffic Management III – This class is a blast! I mean it is still work and you can’t just goof around, but me and my friend Aaron have so much fun. We are in charge of about 35ish airplanes over the course of 45 minutes, and they all seem to show up in packs. We tell all the planes what to do and where to go, but we are still learning. We often have close calls where planes get way to close to each other! You get so focused on one area or airplane and forget about others. So we are working on that and the near mid-air collisions are getting less and less, which is good.

TTH 8:15am-9:30am – Aviation Legislation – Well we took our first test a while ago and I got a 79, which isn’t too bad but I definitely wanted to do better. So when it came time to take our 2nd test, I got a 90! I was definitely pretty happy with that. My group is working on our team paper now, and we keep getting more and more sections done, but we have a long way to go. I’m not looking forward to writing that!

TTH 9:45am-11:00am – Aerodynamics – We took our first test and I ended up getting a 105! I thought that I was going to do pretty good, but not that good! The class average was a 90, so everyone else did good as well. One reason that I really like this class is that the professor is constantly relating the material to practical applications. It isn’t a class where you are sitting there asking yourself, “When am I ever going to need to know/use this?” The professor usually shows interesting short videos to help explain concepts and generally makes things pretty clear. That’s good.

TTH 11:15am-12:30pm – Commercial Pilot Ops. – This is also a class where we always relate the material back to practical applications. This class is usually more of a discussion class, so we just openly talk about the subject and if anyone has any questions, you just ask. We have group work a lot, so if you don’t understand something, usually someone else does so they can explain it. Also, we’ll often make jokes in class and generally have a good time.

TTH 3:45pm-5:00pm – Aircraft Engines – Some of the stuff in this class is over my head, so I normally have to study a lot outside of class. We have gone over all the engine basics, now we are going more in depth into each part of the engine. It is definitely some pretty interesting stuff.

TTHS 7:45pm-12:00am – Flight – So I ended up passing all of my pre-progs, so I got scheduled for my actual check rides! I did my oral about a week ago and I passed! The instructor that I had was real laid back and made it stress-free, which I greatly appreciated.

We talked for two hours about weather and different aspects of instrument flying and he thought that I had enough knowledge, so I passed! Now I am waiting to get scheduled for my sim and flight, which should be any day. I’ll let you know how everything went by next journal.

So school has been busy, and I have also been working on the side, so I haven’t seen a lot of free time lately. My typical day for a Tues and Thurs is class from 8:15-12:30, then lunch and some h/w; from 3:45-5:00 is another class, then Frisbee to about 6:30; then an AOA meeting from 7:00-8:00/8:30. My typical day for a Wed and Fri is class from 10:30-11:30 then work until 8:00ish. So I am definitely glad when Friday rolls around.

In other news, Bike Week is currently going full swing. There are bikers everywhere and it’s definitely getting pretty crazy. I haven’t gone to Main Street yet, but I’m planning on renting scooters with some friends and checking that out this Saturday. I’ll be sure to post pictures just like I did last year!

Well if you are a regular reader, which I hope you are, you know that Monday night dinners are becoming a habit in our apartment. This past Monday I called up my friend and asked what he was cooking, so he went and bought the cheapest steaks they had at Publix.

They were no Steakhouse steaks, but they were pretty good.

Things have been going pretty good with AOA lately.

There are definitely a lot of cool people in there, and I’m proud to say I am a part of it. Just recently we had a charity event which involved sleeping in cardboard houses. In a nutshell, different groups on campus raise money for charity by building cardboard houses and sleeping in them overnight. Well we built an awesome house, but at about 4:00am it started pouring and the winds got up to 30 something mph. So our house kinda blew away. There are a lot of pictures and I’ll be sure to post them online soon. The next morning we cleaned everything up and AOA gave tours of the College of Aviation building. It was parents’

weekend so we gave tours all day to students and parents. I had never given a tour before, so that was fun.

As you know, I’m a hockey fan and I got to go to Tampa last Wednesday to see the Tampa Bay Lightning play! I bought the tickets in December, so I had been planning it for a while. I got them as a Christmas present for myself, so I decided to get wicked good seats. Usually I’m in the nose bleed section where I am literally in the last row. Literally. I could stand up and do jumping jacks and no one would yell at me because there isn’t a soul behind me. Just a concrete wall. So I did almost the opposite and got tickets that were 4 rows behind the glass! That was the closest I’ve ever been and it was amazing! I definitely want to do it again. I took bunch of pictures of that as well, so be checking for those in the next couple of days.

Well the last few journals I have been alluding to what my Spring Break planned festivities were, but I never said.

For some reason I thought it would be fun to build suspense and not tell you what they were, but now I’ll tell you. On second thought…I better wait till next journal! Or not, I guess I’ll tell you now. Well, it’s probably no surprise but I am going to go snowboarding in Colorado!!! I’m wicked psyched. I am going with my friends Cris and Aaron and we are meeting up with Alex who lives in Colorado. We’ll leave on Friday and come back on a Wednesday. I’m so pumped, you have no idea.

There are several reasons: 1. It’s friggin Colorado! No Florida, no heat, just snow and coolness. 2. I get to go snowboarding. I love snowboarding. 3. It’ll be the first time I get to snowboard with my friend Aaron. He lives in Pennsylvania so he grew up boarding, but we have never gone together. 4. My friend Cris has never gone before. He’s only seen snow a couple of times, but we convinced him to go buy a board with boots and bindings and a full wardrobe! I’m sure he’ll pick it up quick, but until he does he will be our source of entertainment!

So I think that will wrap it up for this journal! I’ll be posting all those pictures shortly, so be sure to check for those. Well hope everyone is having a good year, and if you’re not, hopefully you’ll be in Daytona next year, because then it will definitely be a good year! Later!

-Blake

email: wasteofsoap@yahoo.com
pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasteofsoap/
videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=blakeguiles

Hey Journal Readers!

These past two weeks have been pretty busy!

It turns out I didn’t make the O-team this year :/ I guess I’ll try again next year. I’m now running for the Student Representative Board for the College of Engineering for next year! This is a whole elections process with campaigning and the like. Just to be allowed to run I had to get 50 people to sign a sheet nominating me for the position. I handed that in this past Friday and now have a candidates’ reception to attend to on Tuesday! After that, there’s a long process as to how to run and so many rules to follow, it’s def. not like a high school election.

TFO has been pretty good this semester. I’m the only non-exec board in the Speaker committee and it’s been going well so far. I’ve found different speakers to come and talk to us about things going on around campus. Last week we had SGT, the aerospace engineering honor society come talk to us about admission and their values and such, very informative. Touch n Go also came and gave us a presentation about their organization, which is basically the hub for events on campus. They’re the ones that are going to have events for Freshman orientation (ie a hypnotist) and they organize concerts too!

I’ve been sick on and off for the past two weeks =/ I had the flu one weekend (the long one) and thought I completely got over it, but it left me with a bad cough for a little while. Thankfully (I think) things have mostly been going wrong during the weekends which allows me ample time to sleep and get over whatever sickness I have that week. At least I get to go home in … 13 days! I’m looking forward to the trip. It’s going to be the first time since last summer that I’ve actually stayed in my house for more than 4 days! yay! The scary part is after I come back, within a month and a half, I have to take my finals! yikes! Riddle ends so early compared to what I’m used to. My last day of finals is April 29th! In high school, my last day of school was June 28th. I get an extra two months of summer!

My plans for this summer include taking a chem. class that should transfer to Riddle, hopefully getting to do some kind of research project with a prof. at Rutgers. Then I’m going to look into learning how to fly a plane possibly either this summer or next. Years ago I went to this space camp at a college back home and I want to be the counselor for it, I think it’d be so much fun! That’s all for the summer!

This past Friday I took a calc exam, which I’m so sure I aced! Saturday, I attended this really awesome leadership seminar! I definitely wasn’t expecting to have fun at a seminar about leadership, but it was great! We did all these different workshops. I went with TFO and we split our club up so that as a club we’d all get to go to all of the workshops. The first workshop I went to was called FISH! If you google FISH! Philosophy, you can find out more info about it. It was basically about how having the right attitude about work makes all the difference. The more you think something is boring, the more boring it’s going to become. I enjoyed the workshop, we actually got to do activities instead of just sit and listen to someone lecture. Then I went to a workshop called “All in Favor” this one was primarily about the decision making process and how to avoid spending two hours discussing something that only requires two minutes. We had a mock budget cut and had to cut budgets from student clubs at a college and had to do so in a pretty diverse team. I met a bunch of cool people too. Most of the people who attended the seminar were RA’s , TFO people, or…a few others. Anyways, the last seminar was about how to make a personal impact at Riddle, what your legacy will be. All three were an hour long and it was pretty enlightening if nothing else. After the three seminars, we had a really freaking great speaker talk to us.

His name was Kirk Wiesler and his presentation style and material were amazing. Usually, I can’t stay awake through a seminar or lecture like this (motivational) after a half hour, but the entire hour and a half that he spoke, it was interesting. He gave us great tips on how to keep the audience, keep a team going strong and motivated at all times. He also suggested books that we should read, not because they’re business books that are boring, but because they teach you through stories that matter. Here, I’ll post a list, incase anyone is interested.

QBQ – John Miller

The Big Moo – The Group of 33 and Seth Godin

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future – Daniel Pink

The Cookie Thief – Kirk Weisler (the speaker)

Those are the books he suggested, I’m probably going to get one to read for my trip back home =] I ordered the big moo for my plane ride, from amazon, about 30 seconds ago.

So bike week started and it’s pretty scary and NOISY! Oh my, all day you can hear the ‘vroom vroom’ of bikes. I go downstairs to get food and it’s crazy how loud it is even inside! I heard though that this year’s bike turn out has been substantially lower than the previous years, so I can’t imagine how noisy it was then! Anyways, I’ve posted some pictures on our way to Target of bikes and the area around here. Daytona had a water crises so we had to buy water and such because you couldn’t drink out of the fountains or sinks foe awhile! oh no.

I’ve got a lot of work to do, so I’m gonna get to it. I hope everyone has a spectacular week! And if you’re on break already, I hope it’ll be great. Bye everyone!

Spree

Spring Break is only two weeks away!!  All of my classes are going to have tests right before spring break, so I will be in need of a break by the time it gets here.  The good news is I only have one major paper to write for the rest of the semester and it’s for my Honors class.  I have already picked my topic and now I just have to do the research and actually write the paper.  Also, on the same topic, I have to give my class a fifteen to twenty minute PowerPoint presentation.  Hopefully, I will be able to get a good head start on it before spring break.  In my Computer class, I am going to start learning how to use Dreamweaver and create my own webpage.  I think it will be interesting because I haven’t done any webpage design before.

Last weekend I was pretty busy because Silver Wings participated in Charity House.  Charity House is an event that takes place on the West Lawn, in the center of campus, and various organizations compete against each other in building a cardboard house, relay races, Guitar Hero, and an egg drop.  The purpose of the event was to raise money for Star Shelter—the local homeless shelter.  Silver Wings decided to build a giant R2-D2 from Star Wars and I think we did a pretty good job in getting it to look like the actual one.  I will try to get a picture of the completed R2-D2, so you all can see what it looked like.  Overall, the event was a lot of fun and Silver Wings ended up taking third place.  I am looking forward to doing it again next year!

I got to go on my first flight through ROTC this weekend!  I was thrilled and enjoyed being able to take the controls for the first time!  The other person flew first to Flagler County Airport and then we landed and switched seats.  I was really nervous and it reminded me of my first time driving a car; hopefully, just like driving I will get better.  Right now, I am not so good at taxiing and if anyone was watching they were probably wondering what I was doing.  The airplane liked to wander over to the side of the runway!  I can say that I did a much better job at flying than taxiing and I would love to get my private pilot’s license someday!  My favorite part was when the instructor did a 60° turn and we were pulling 2 G’s.  I did post some pictures of the new airplane (only about 4 or 6 weeks old) and Embry-Riddle from the air.  Hopefully, I will get to do another flight this semester!

ROTC Mid-Terms are over—I passed the inspection, answered my knowledge question correctly, and did really well on the test.  I was pretty proud of myself and hope to do just as well for finals.  The PFA was last week and I was ready to take it; unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete the test, so I have to take it sometime soon.  ROTC just set up a mentor program and you could sign up if you wanted to join, which I did.  So far, I have met with my mentor twice and I am really learning a lot about what AFROTC is like after the first two years, which I find really helpful because you know even better things are ahead.    Also, we are planning on going to the movies next week which I am looking forward to.  On Friday morning at PT, they had this event called “Big Week” where they announced who received pilot slots and who will be going to Field Training.  I enjoyed watching it because there were a lot of really excited people and it lets you know that your turn will be coming soon.

Upcoming events—besides all of my tests—include a beach clean-up with Silver Wings, the last Honors Lecture for the semester, a beach bonfire with Silver Wings, and of course Spring Break!  Last weekend, I got to go to Joe’s Crab Shack because we were celebrating a friend’s birthday.  I ordered a hamburger because even though I like seafood, I love hamburgers and it was really good! Don’t forget to take a look at my pictures!

Until next time,

Kaleigh

e-mail:sidesk@erau.edu