Traveling has become a regular part of my life at Embry-Riddle. The school’s students travel from all over the world to learn about every facet of aviation. While my travels to home are not as far as others, it’s still a plane ride to get home to the Philadelphia area. This past week, Embry-Riddle went on spring break, and I was able to catch up with friends, travel, and go to a conference on emerging technologies.
Flying in and out of Daytona, I was fortunate enough to have a few friends travel with me. Even in Philadelphia, I met with a good friend in the terminal who was heading back to Embry-Riddle on another airline. At Embry-Riddle, students meet people from all over the country and all over the world. The school is a melting pot of aviation enthusiasts, which provides unique perspectives. I have been fortunate enough to make friends with a few students from the Northeast, and they frequently fly through Philadelphia to get back to Daytona – it works out great!
Fellow students have been pushing me to finally get my pilot’s license. While I am not an aeronautical science major, I did decide to pursue a private pilot’s license at a young age. With about 50 hours logged in a Diamond Eclipse, I am more than ready to take the written exam, but… I just need to study more – I spent a good chunk of my spring break studying.
On Friday, I attended The Wharton School’s “Emerging Technologies Update Day.” During the past three summers, I have worked as a summer research assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation, one of Wharton’s 25 research centers. Fortunately, one of this years conferences fell on a date I was home, and I was able to go and listen to presentations from senior executives from Intel, IBM, NBC / GE, Nokia, and Teradata – just to name a few. It was great to see familiar faces and people I have worked with the past three years. I plan on working there this summer.
Overall, spring break as productive and relaxing. It was great to catch up on sleep after a long week of midterms and a few tests the week preceding spring break. I have about a month and a half before I go home again, and by then I will have completed my first year of college!
Be sure to check back in two weeks for another post.
Until then,
Jonathan
I ventured down to Orlando with a few friends and we went to Universal Studios for a few days! What a blast! I always wanted to go to Disney World and Universal Studios since I was a kid. My family and I went to Disney when I was about three but I do not remember the experience all that well. It was only two years ago when both my parents and my sister could all have the time off from work and me from college (RIT) to go to Disney. And now, this past week I was finally able to go to Universal Studios. I have always been a big fan of amusement parks as they take you away from all your worries in the world and they make you to feel like a kid again.
I tend to forget that I am 1200 miles away from home, soaking it up in the sun, going to the beach, and I have only an hour’s drive to Universal Studios. It’s a whole new atmosphere down here in Florida and my mind sometimes forgets where I am really at…
When I was not relaxing outside, I spent the rest of my time working on my NASA competition projects and created a few digital space art images. Here is just one picture I designed over the break.
It’s Spring Break time!!! This is the final few days until we go for Spring Break. I am so excited, I am going back home to be with family and old High School friends for an entire week. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re away at college, it makes you appreciate the opportunity to see family, no matter if it’s 3 days or a month. My mom is looking forward to me coming back home, she is so excited; she is taking off from work that day! Even though the excitement for the break is high on campus, we still have classes going on. On Friday before I leave, I have a test in Instrument Pilot Operations, which I think is the hardest one yet! I have been studying long and hard for it and I think I’ll do great.
Outside of classes, we had Greek Week last week. It was a lot of fun. The end of the week, I participated in the Up till Dawn Finale event as a Morale Captain. Up till Dawn is an organization that does fundraising activities, the proceeds of this go to the St. Judes Research Hospital that helps kids with cancer. The event was 12 hours, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. It was a long night but we had dances, food and a ton of activities. We had trikes and a bounce-a-bout and also a black jack table. We even played Gatorade pong! This week we also had the ERRSA Elections. The elections went very well, and everyone that I wanted to be in office got in. First generation will be having their elections in about two weeks.