I can’t believe we have already been through half of the fall semester. First, let’s go back to the beginning of the semester back in August.
About a week before the beginning of classes, I left Montreal, Canada and drove all the way south to Florida. The 1,400 miles drive takes 20 hours without traffic (I wish it took us 20 hours). Trust me, there is a lot of traffic between the New York area and Baltimore.
This year, I am living in an apartment with one of my friends. I spent a good amount of the week getting settled in the apartment which is 10 minute away from campus. I also spent many hours building IKEA furnitures. I built my bed, my dresser, the kitchen table, four chairs, and the sofa. Thanks to my mom for packing a small drill in my luggages.
I like living in an apartment off campus because I can have my own room and I am able to cook whenever I want. One thing I miss living on campus is the proximity. If I had a question on an assignment, I could just walk a few steps and knock on my friend’s door. The College of Business computer lab and the library were also a close reach.
For the fall semester, I have decided to take 18 credit hours. I am taking Speech, Western Humanities II (Renaissance to Postmodern), Airline Management, Business Law, Transportation Principles, and International Business.
Speech is definitely not my favorite class even though I know it will help me to develop skills to become a better public speaker. As of today, we have done four speeches.
The humanities class is also not in my top classes. Some of the material we are going over in class is the same than my history class from my sophomore year of high school. This class should be easy, but I already forgot the material from high school.
Airline Management is certainly my favorite class because it is an area I want to work for after I graduate from Embry-Riddle. So far, we learned about network structures (point-to-point and hub-and-spoke system), time banks, and important measures such as available seat-miles (ASMs) and revenue passenger-miles (RPMs). Now, we have just started talking about revenue management.
My longest class is Business Law with a duration of 3 hours, and we only have a break of five minute during the class. The good thing about this class is that we only meet once a week on every Monday.
In Transportation Principles, we have learned about the railroads and ports. I hope the aviation part comes soon because this is what I like the most.
My last class on my schedule is International Business. We are doing a project where we act as a U.S. based company selling a video game system trying to sell our product in foreign countries. I decided to pick Mexico since it borders the United States.
Well, this is all about my classes. I am enjoying my semester so far but I look forward to Fall Break so I can rest for a few days.
Until next time!
Nicolas
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: 
It’s finally spring, and I couldn’t be any more excited. There is so much going on around campus that I can’t even keep up. I will certainly do my best to tell you about everything! First of all, Task Force One (TFO) is finishing up our duties and trying to get set up for the new students next fall. On March 27, we took part in Embry-Riddle’s Relay for Life. We set up camp on the ERAU track and stayed up walking all night. Even when it began pouring down rain we didn’t quit, and the rain made it even more fun. The ceremony was very meaningful, and the activities all night were tons of fun. ERAU raised tens of thousands of dollars for cancer research, and the event was a huge success.
Delta Upsilon is keeping me very busy as well. We have colony meetings every Monday where we have been getting a lot of things done to establish DU at Embry-Riddle. As an officer, I also have meetings on Sunday to get ready for the next meeting and upcoming week. Recently, Delta Upsilon took part in Collegiate Kindness Day, where we painted and worked all day. Although it was an early weekend morning, we had a good time and got a lot done to help the ArtHaus improve their facilities. We are also planning on participating in more activities this semester including Oozeball (mud volleyball), which I am very excited for. This past weekend, Touch-N-Go Productions put on their big spring concert. 
This year they brought the band Sugarcult to ERAU, and they were very good! You may know Sugarcult from their songs Memory or Bouncing off the Walls. They were pretty good live, and the lead singer was a really funny guy. TNG also brought two opening bands, Luna Halo and The Sleeping. Both did a good job, however Luna Halo was more my type of genre. The crowd got a little crazy and crowd surfing was common, but it was a fun experience!
BA201- We are about to present our semester-long project this week in Business. We have been working hard to perfect our product and set up our mock companies. My company’s name is MoKurity, and we specialize in home security. The ten of us in the group have a lot of fun and have become good friends over the semester. This past Friday we painted the spirit rock in MoKurity colors and had a great time goofing off together.
Hello everyone! I hope February finds you all well. Although I must say this all the time, my semester has been getting busier and busier. About two weeks ago, I was presented an opportunity to become a founding father for Delta Upsilon at Embry-Riddle. Delta Upsilon (DU) seemed to match my values and priorities, and I had to take advantage of this unique experience. The last two weeks have been packed with DU information sessions, recruitment events, and even a retreat. I have already made many new friends and learned a lot about what it means to be DU. This week, a slew of activities are planned, including the official colonization ceremony. I am excited to be a founding member of something I know will be great at ERAU.
Task Force One has been discussing and planning many things in our meetings. On Tuesday, we voted on an incentive activity as a reward for our hard work throughout the academic year. We have decided to go to a Japanese Steakhouse, followed by bowling, which I am really looking forward to. Also we have registered for the Relay for Life in late March. These activities will be here before I know it.
January is over, even though it feels like it just began. My first round of midterms is about over, as I have already taken big tests the past week in PS142, MA112, and WX201. I have gotten the scores back for two of the three, and I am pleased with the outcome. This week I will be continuing the round of tests as I take my first BA201 exam. I also received my semester-long assignment in COM221 last week: a 15-20 page research paper. Luckily, we have a group of 4 people who work together to complete the assignment, so I will not be doing it alone. I am still enjoying my classes and professors this semester, which is a good sign.
Last weekend was the Task Force One Super Bowl party in the Student Center. We teamed up with ERRSA to offer free food and drinks for anyone on campus, and Touch-N-Go provided their projector to view the game on the big screen. The event turned out to be extremely successful. We went through 40 pizzas in less than 20 minutes and had to order 38 more which arrived at halftime. The food was good, the crowd was large, and the game was very exciting. Although the Cardinals lost, I still had a lot of fun with my fellow TFO-ers at this event.
On Saturday I drove a friend to the Orlando Airport, and since I was already there, I made a day out of it. Two friends and I hung around the airport, and got a few good pictures of the traffic coming in and out of MCO. After we left the airport, we headed to the Cheesecake Factory (my favorite restaurant) where we had an amazing lunch. The Mall at Millennia was our last stop before we headed back to Daytona. It was a great to spend a day away from campus and out of Daytona, and Orlando is the perfect place to do it.
These next few weeks will be quite hectic, but I am looking forward to having a lot of fun. The crowds are starting to pick up as we are only one week away from the Daytona 500. Also, I have expressed some interest in the new fraternity being brought to ERAU (Delta Upsilon), and I am excited to take the next step towards learning more about the organization and being involved with Greek Life. Among all of this craziness, I will also be taking a few days to fly back to Missouri, as I have a few duties at home. Remember if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks for reading.