HALLOWEEN!

My favorite holiday is finally here! I love being on campus around Halloween- there’s so much going on. Tonight is all about halloween club parties- there are 3 major ones going on. There’s two parties downtown: Monsterbash [[annual halloween party for UMBC students]] at Bedrock, and another halloween bash at Bourbon St. Monsterbash usually gets around 1,000 UMBC students, while the party at Bourbon St. has been promoted to other campuses and will probably attract about 1,500. These are apparently right next to each other, which makes for easy party-hopping

There’s also a Halloween fishbowl [[fishbowl is a club about 4 minutes off campus that a UMBC organization co-hosts a party with every Thursday. It's always packed & tons of fun]]. Phi Kappa Sigma, a fraternity, is hosting the halloween fishbowl, with one of their members being the DJ.

I think I’m going to be heading downtown- who can resist two huge dance parties right next to each other? I haven’t found a costume yet [[i'm a procrastinator]], but a group of my friends are going as Disney princesses- I’m going to be Pocahontas! As soon as I get off of work [[at 4]] I’m heading out to the fabric store to prepare for tonight. Can’t wait!!

 

♥Jen

Rock-A-Thon

Each semester, my sorority [[Phi Sigma Sigma]] holds an event called Rock-a-thon. Basically, we rock in rocking chairs for 25 hours outside of the Commons [[our student union]] in order to collect donations for the National Kidney Foundation. This semester, we started at noon on this past Tuesday and ended at 1pm on Wednesday. Rock-a-thon is on of my favorite events- even though it was FREEZING cold outside, we had a ton of people visit. The all-male acapella group on campus came to sing for us, one of the fraternities came and taught us some of their dances, and a lot of the other fraternity guys brought food/hot chocolate all night long. My shift was only from midnight to 2am, but I stayed out until 4am because I was having so much fun! I was really tired the next day, but it was totally worth it!

 

♥Jen

Stress Free Zone!

So each semester, during exam time, the Student Government Association [[SGA]] puts on something known as the Stress Free Zone. This is basically a series of giveaways and fun activities that students can partake in to try and get rid of some stress from exams, if even for a little bit. In the past, the SFZ has been centrally located in one large room, with the exception of a breakfast giveaway outside in front of the academic buildings.

As an SGA senator, I will be working on the SFZ this year, and I plan to completely revamp it. I will be working to do bigger and better activities, give away good food [[chipotle, anyone?]], and most importantly, move most of the items offered to more populated areas of campus. Some of the things I plan on doing are:

-Having a giant wall that students can paint on

-Four square

-Giveaways [[gift certificates, coffee, electronics, etc.]]

-Food! [[Chipotle, Chic-fil-a, Sorrentos, Krispy Kreme, Panera, etc.]]

-Musical performances

-Craft stations [[make your own stress ball, decorate your own coffee mug, etc.]]

-Late-night hot chocolate/coffee and cookies giveaway in the library [[around midnight]]

-Nap zone

I also plan on making the idea of the SFZ “cooler”. We always give out free t-shirts, and I want the design this year to be something students really want to wear. I also want to rope off areas of campus where we are holding our activities with caution tape, and make them clear “stress free zones”. I’ve been trying to get more suggestions from the SGA and other students in general, so if you have any, feel free to post them here!

♥Jen

Scavenger Hunt pt. 2

So we didn’t win :(

But it’s okay- finding some of the things on that list was crazy, and while it took a long time, it was so much fun.

I have a couple of other things to update on, but I have to run to class so I’ll post tomorrow morning. I just wanted to let you all know how the hunt went!

 

♥Jen

Scavenger Hunt

A group of students organized a campus scavanger hunt that’s taking place from today (really at midnight last night) until early Sunday afternoon. Teams of 2-20 people were supposed to sign up online beforehand with a team name and team captain. I’m the team captain for my group- it’s me and about 10 of my friends. The list is pretty intense [[see here: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~andsil1]], and I’ve been running around campus in between work and classes today trying to gather stuff. A lot of my group members don’t have classes tomorrow, so we’re going to get a lot of the stuff then. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome…hopefully we win!

 

♥Jen

Going green

UMBC has been pursiung quite a few green initiatives- my favorite being one that I just saw this morning.

Each residence hall [[and apartment community]] has a front desk that is responsible for sorting mail & doing other things to make the residents happy- including giving out free toilet paper [[that's right, we don't have to buy our own!]]. Anyways, I work at the front desk in Erickson, and as I was giving a resident toilet paper, I noticed that we have brand new, environmentally-friendly TP! It’s made from recycled paper & is biodegradeable

Woo!

 

 

♥Jen

Almost Over!

So the dreaded midterm time is almost over, at least for me. I had an exam in my political science class and a speech presentation last week. I had a statistics exam yesterday evening, have a sociology test tomorrow, and an accounting exam on Friday. In college, a lot of your classes will have exams/projects due around the same time, often within just a few days of each other. Keep this in mind when preparing & studying throughout the semester- you definitely want to be keeping up with your work. Otherwise, when it comes to that week of exams, it’ll be really hard to prepare for everything.

That being said, I kind of didn’t do that with my STAT class, and ended up cramming the morning of [[oops!]]. I think I did fine on the exam, but that feeling of going into it unprepared reminded me why I like to keep up with my studying, even when there’s no test or assignment coming up anytime soon

 

p.s. I love my little, and she loves me! Revelation was amazing… [[see post below]].

 

♥Jen

This week is crazy….

So as I mentioned in my last post, I went out of town this weekend. My boyfriend goes here, but is from Maine, so we drove up there (which took 8 hours each way) to meet his family & celebrate his birthday. Anyways, it was amazing, but I obviously didn’t get much work done :/

We got back on Monday night, and I had an exam and a speech presentation to give the next day! I got up super early to go to work at 6am on Tuesday, and studied the whole time I was there. Luckily, I was able to do really well (I think) on both, but I was definitely ridiculously stressed out for all of Tuesday.

I also have assignments due this afternoon that I didn’t get to get done over the weekend- I’m taking a break from them now to write this, actually- but I think I’ll get those done too.

On top of all that, it’s secret sapphire week for my sorority, Phi Sigma Sigma. I’m taking a little, which is basically a new member who I am supposed to mentor and support during her new member process. I know who my little is, but she doesn’t know that I’m her big…yet. This week all of the littles get tons of gifts & clues from their big, and they have to try and figure out who they were matched with. Friday is Revelation, where we finally reveal ourselves to them (in a creative way). Sapphire week is so fun, and so exciting, but also really time consuming- making a huge basket of gifts and getting them secretly delievered every day of the week is hard work!

I’ve been relaxing too, though- listening to music & hanging with friends. I just can’t wait for the weekend!!

 

♥Jen

PostSecret Comes to UMBC

For those of you who don’t know what PostSecret is, it’s a really cool project that was started about 4 years ago. Frank Warren, the creator, asked people to send in secrets anonymously on postcards- the secret could be anything as long as it was true and had never been told to anyone else. Over the years he’s received over 250,000 secrets and has posted them online and in a series of books for the world to see. Some of them are funny, some are sad, but all are very creative and awesome to look at. If you’ve never heard of this before, be sure to check it out at www.postsecret.com.

Anyways, last night the Student Events Board brought him to campus to speak. The event started at 8pm, but people were lining up at 6pm. I got there at 6:30 and so I was able to get a seat in the event, however, there were people who were turned away. There was also an auxillary room with live feeds, so that more people could enjoy the speech.

Frank spent the first 45 minutes or so talking to us- sharing stories, “never before seen secrets”, and some of the background information of the project. He’s a great speaker [[really funny and well-spoken]], but my favorite part is what came next. There were two microphones on each side of the room, and the audience was invitied to come up and ask questions, tell a story, or share their own secret. Some of the things shared were so personal and moving, and you could tell that the entire room had a newfound sense of inspiration throughout the whole thing. The secrets shared ranged from alcoholism to embarassing childhood memories, but they had a common theme- the person sharing them was able to do so in a room full of supportive people, and was able to get something off of their chest that they’d never been able to before.

It was definitely one of my favorite campus events of all time

 

♥Jen