Happy Monday everyone! Or should I say one of the busiest Mondays ever! I hope your weekend was great! Congratulations to the Denver Broncos on their Super Bowl 50 win! It was really an amazing game. Defensive and offensive. I don’t really follow football, but I did go for the Carolina Panthers solely because I liked the color blue on their uniforms. Anyway, it’s the 5th week of school! One of the craziest weeks scheduled so far! As for today, I had class from 8:00a – 12:00p. I lucked out and did not have a quiz in Physics today. Everyone was exhausted and I am assuming the teacher was too. From 12:00p – 5:00p it was studying after studying for my calculus exam tomorrow. 5:00p – 7:00p was an officers meeting for Society 4 S.P.A.C.E. We got a lot accomplished! We decided on our trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the website, and also decided to host a fundraiser next Tuesday! Progress!
Unfortunately this is not the end of my day. 7:30p – 8:00p dinner, 8:00p – 9:00p studying for calculus, again, 9:00p – odd hours of the night studying calculus with a friend – whenever I sleep is humanities homework. So a very packed and crazy Monday/Tuesday. However, I really am excited for this week because I have my first NASA Solar System Ambassador (SSA) telecom with NASA! Super exciting! I have to complete my Orientation and Training tomorrow along with my other homework. At this rate, this week may never end!
BUT it is a holiday week! A double header…almost! Valentine’s Day is on Sunday! A time for love and love and more love. I am a very crafty person and have a lot of fun creative gifts for my boyfriend. I also plan on making cupcakes for my friends. For all of you Valentine’s Day celebraters, have fun! Love and give someone a hug! Or a cupcake! President’s Day is on Monday and we do not have school. Yay break!
Almost a break for me, I have a research meeting, lunch meeting, fundraising meeting, and officer meeting on Monday so looks like more going and going. I will tell you this, one thing about Riddle that I love is that it doesn’t matter if it is the classes, or the clubs, you will ALWAYS be busy. For a person like me, who loves being busy, I absolutely love it. If I am not busy, I will find something to do whether that is to finally start my Russian Rosetta Stone, read, or watch Netflix. When I am busy, I feel like I am creating the best out of life. I am in college, this is the time to work your butt off for the career you want, and I feel like I am fulfilling that to the max! It makes me happy.
Speaking about college and career, registration for summer classes is on Wednesday! For the crazy people like me, I will be attending Summer A and B. However, for those of you on the fence about summer classes, here is some advice from someone who took summer classes last semester, me. I personally LOVE summer classes. It is tough and condensed, but you get the chance to get ahead and leave the “not so fun classes” for the summer, therefore you knock them out a lot quicker. It gives you a quicker graduation date, which means starting your career quicker. Think about it.
Anyway, it’s off to dinner and more studying/homework for me. Have a great week everyone and study hard!
Since I last wrote, I’ve made much advancement as far as my flight training is concerned. I am pushing the 100-hour mark, but nevertheless I believe that it is all for a good cause. Since my failed check-ride last August, I’ve been able to perfect many maneuvers. Some maneuvers themselves may have been to the Practical Test Standards (PTS), however I realized: why would you ever want to be ‘flirting’ with the tolerances? By perfecting all of my maneuvers and flight activities, I have a better chance at achieving my goal of Private Pilot. I am not saying I am a perfect pilot, because let me get that straight; nothing in this world is perfect. What I am saying is that I am currently a much better pilot than I was before I came here (ERAU).
The flight department, and most importantly my instructor, has been helping me a great deal along the way. I’m glad to see that all my studies and practices are finally paying off. There still is a lot more coursework ahead of me and I do not see this as an opportunity to close the book. Like others have said before me, “a good pilot is always learning.” With that in mind, it is always good to re-read many topics in your text to maintain knowledge and possibly re-learn topics you may have forgotten.
During my free time, I write articles for our school newspaper, The Avion. So far I’ve completed three assignments and am currently working on two for this week. Although I dread the thought of writing, I find that once I get going, it’s hard for me to stop. I do enjoy writing; it’s just the motivation part gets me once and a while. I know, how ironic, right?
One weekend, a bunch of friends, including myself, took a trip to St. Augustine, Florida. What a really great day it was too, perfect flying weather! We rented three aircraft and flew from KDAB to KSGJ. There got a ride into the town, where the spent the day sightseeing. While there, we visited the Castillo de San Marcos, the Old Slave Market and the statue of Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida. The trip itself was relatively inexpensive, due to the fact that we all split the aircraft bill. Driving of course would have been cheaper, but when you go to a flight school and have your pilot’s license, you tend to fly a whole lot more.
This month our school was one of the few to offer its students a fall break. I spent this time back up north with my family, and had a blast. It had been awhile since I’ve seen my parents and what NY actually looked like during fall. Fall itself is nice, until you actually have to rake up the leaves and clean away all the acorns. Glad I don’t have to worry about any of that down here in Florida.
While back home I also got a chance to visit the neighborhood, as well as some friends, and even took a trip back to my high school and saw some of my former teachers. I then realized that I was glad to finally be in college. The freedom itself is most enjoyable, but at times can be your worst enemy if not used properly.
Happy October! I can’t believe how fast this semester is going! We are a third of the way into classes and I’ve had a test in each one. All of them are going well and I’m learning a lot of information that is very relative to the real world. In fact, my favorite class this semester is probably my Insurance class. The professor is really nice and he does a good job of teaching so everyone can understand. On the first day of class, I was afraid that I would find it so boring; however, that has not been the case at all. Another class, Professional Selling, is starting to become exciting as we began our selling role-plays. I think practicing my public speaking skills is always a good thing and this class will help me realize what I need to work on. Overall, I think this semester’s classes are turning out to be alright.
Last weekend, I was able to attend a dinner hosted by the Air Force Association and Arnold Air Society. The purpose of the dinner was to give us a chance to interact with the older Air Force Association members. I was happy to have a reason to get all dressed up! The picture is of me with my next door dorm neighbors from last year. I became really good friends with both of them and part of that is because we lived next to one another. The best part about living in the dorms is that making friends is easy and you know that people are around willing to help you. Anyways, the dinner was a lot of fun and it was an opportunity to socialize with friends that I hadn’t seen in a while.
Silver Wings got down and dirty over the weekend while helping out the community. The service project was helping to create a garden for low-income families in the Daytona Beach area. We dug up a patch of grass and turned it into a plot for some vegetables to be planted. Some of us planted broccoli, while others spread mulch around the various garden sections to make a pathway. It was hard work but we had fun and are looking forward to going back next month. I thought that it was fun to work hard and rewarding knowing that we were helping families get fresh vegetables. Community service is something that I enjoy doing and our campus is always advertising ways for students to get involved and help out.
Another first that I can now cross off my list of things to do is CAMPING. I had never been camping before this weekend and by that I mean sleeping in a tent out in the wilderness. My friends convinced me to go with them on a camping trip to Ginnie Springs. I decided to go and I had a pretty good time; however, I don’t know if I can say that I will ever do it again! The mosquitoes were pretty bad and I forgot my bug spray, so now I’m itching like crazy. I did set up a tent for the first time and it wasn’t as complicated as I thought it would be. The pictures are of me holding the tent and then the tent all setup and ready to be slept in. We floated down a river on inner tubes and that was my favorite part of the trip!
Let me tell you a little about myself: I’m a senior majoring in Aviation Business Administration with a concentration in General Management, I’m in Air Force ROTC and will commission in May 2011, and I hope to start working on my MBA next semester. I enjoy going to school at Embry-Riddle and the weather is an added bonus! I’m from Sidney, Illinois where snow at Halloween is not a surprise, Florida weather is nice and, if you ever get too warm you can go jump in a swimming pool or the ocean!
I was excited to come back to school and see all my friends again! This semester has been another full of firsts: my first time having my Jeep in Florida, my first apartment, and my first time living by myself. A car is not necessary to have when coming to Embry-Riddle and my freshman year I walked all over the place with my friends. My sophomore year I got a scooter and was able to go a little bit further from campus. So far I have enjoyed having my own car because it’s nice to not have to ask people for rides or have to plan around the weather when I want to go somewhere. Right now, I’m living in a studio apartment about 5 minutes from campus. I like the fact that it’s close enough to go back if I have a break between classes, but far enough to not be on campus all day, every day. After having roommates for two years, I decided that I would like to live by myself and so far I’m enjoying it!
Last weekend was the Task Force One incentive dinner. We all met up and went to Sapporo Japanese Steakhouse. The food was very good, and we had a lot of fun spending time together off campus. I have met some really good friends through TFO this year and I am very glad I was part of the organization. I would recommend any first-year student to become a part of TFO as it is a great way to get involved on campus and meet a bunch of new friends. This week, TFO is having an unofficial meeting where we all bring food and hang out one last time as TFO-ers. I am looking forward to these last few hours our organization will spend as one.
On Easter, my BA201 group (MoKurity) decided to hang out and spend the holiday having fun. We went to lunch and spent time at the beach. I think it is so great that a random group of kids from BA201 have become such good friends. Even though our group project was completed a week ago, we still meet up and goof around. We genuinely have a great time when we are together, and I am sure we will continue hanging out even past this semester.
Delta Upsilon is continuing to grow and become more and more active. This past week we took part in a canned food drive put on by Theta Phi Alpha, one of the sororities on campus. DU brought in over 100 pounds of food and we placed second! Also on Saturday, we took part in the annual Oozeball (mud volleyball) tournament. Those of you who came to the Spring Preview probably noticed a bunch of crazy people rolling in the mud and water. I had so much fun playing, especially with my DU brothers. We won two games and lost two games, but we all got muddy and that’s what matters.
On Friday some of my friends and I went to support the AcaFellas at their end-of-year concert. The AcaFellas are the male a capella singing group here at Embry-Riddle. They do a very good job, and it seems like they have a lot of fun. Check out my video of one of their songs (Apologize) at: 