After being away from school for 8 months, in a completely new state, job, and lifestyle, it feels like such a long time since I was last taking classes. Coming back to the school school and seeing campus again after my time away was a great feeling. When I drove onto campus memories of my freshman year, the first time I had come to ERAU Prescott and seen it as home, seemed to flood my brain.  I couldn’t help but smile at how much I have changed in the last two years, my first two years of college. In fact, I can confidently say that I have changed more as a person in my first two years of college than I changed from the end of the 4th grade to the end of the 12th grade.

In this blog entry, I’d like to take a chance to reminisce about the beginning of my freshman year, when my transformation truly began.

College is very different from high school. It is way better. Like many high school seniors plagued with senioritis, I was “so ready to leave” and “uber sick of” high school. I remember getting so excited when my schedule came in the mail for my first semester of college. I went right to my brand new computer with my course catalog in hand and looked up the description of each class while I typed each day’s schedule into an excel spread sheet, like the nerd that I am.

The freshman year of college is a huge adjustment and it’s all about learning how to prioritize your time, live on your own, and a little about your coursework too, I guess. College gave me the chance to start over and be myself in a very accepting environment. Embry-Riddle gave me the chance to go to a school where everyone, like me, has a dream that they are working towards.

It was so exciting to move into my dorm room and meet my new roommates. I was so anxious to get started with my new life that I slept in my room the day I checked in. Most of my roommates stayed in the dorm that first night, although I think one or two went to stay with their families in their hotels. I remember looking up at the ceiling that was about two feet from may face in my loft bed, trying to go to sleep but staying awake thinking about how this was where I was going to live for the next four months, the first time I’d live away from home, and how strange, new, and exhilarating it was.

Rooming with students of my major gave me an instant group of friends that I have so much in common with. Traits and quirks that I had always exhibited, I found I shared with several of the students in my classes.

I don’t know that I have ever felt as good on my birthday as I did on my first birthday at Embry-Riddle. I am a September baby, and after a couple weeks into the school year, I was prepared for a little sadness on my first birthday away from home. Unexpectedly, my roommates went all out to make my birthday outstanding. They all went and painted the rock for my birthday, bought me a cake, and a gift, decorated my room with streamers, woke me up by signing “Happy Birthday” to me, and made sure that I couldn’t feel an ounce of remorse at not being home for my birthday. It was a very uplifting experience.

As I assume it is for almost everyone, my freshman year in college was very different than anything else that I had experienced before. It was really surreal. At first, it didn’t feel like school at all, actually it felt like I was at summer camp. I remember sitting in class on my first day and watching the clock as it approached 9 am, the end of my 8 am class. It may sound silly, but I was actually expecting to hear a bell ring at the end of the hour, but instead the professor simply announced that class was over. I walked out of the classroom in a daze. On the one hand, I felt a little weirded out that there was no bell in college, and on the other hand, I was excitedly reveling in my liberation from the bell.

For the first two months of school I was so wrapped up in all of the new people, clubs, classes and experiences that I didn’t have time to really miss home.

After a while though, it sets in that this isn’t summer camp. Not only is this still school (but don’t get me wrong, it’s way better than high school), it is your home for eight months out of the year, and you change so much over your first few months without realizing it. Until you go home and see how little has changed there, you don’t realize how much you as a person have changed.

College changes your entire outlook. While you are in school you are free to be whoever you would like to be. For the most part, the parental control in your life is switched off. The final say on when you sleep, when you eat, when you go to class, what clubs you join, whether or not to go to parties, even what brand food you eat is your choice.

During a summer internship at the Johnson Space Center in high school, one of my mentors told me that “There are three things you can do in college – sleep, study, and party. Now pick two.” For the most part I have found this to be true.

Balancing all three is very difficult because the more time you spend on one activity, the less time you have for the other two. If sleep and grades are your priorities, you can get 9 hours of sleep every night and make the Dean’s List, but you don’t have much time for partying.

You will also learn to live on a budget in college, basically dirt poor for a few years. One time, during my freshman year, my mom sent me $50 in the mail. I thought “Awesome! Now I can go out and party with my friends.” But as I was getting ready I realized that we were on our last roll of toilet paper so I decided to go grab some before the evening started, but then as I got into my car I saw my gas tank was empty. Well, there went that 50 bucks.

Although I love my life as a free college student, I miss the days when Pop-Tarts and Fruit Loops replenished themselves in the cabinet, doing my laundry was free, I ate name brand food, and I had great water pressure in the shower.

In college, for the first time ever, you don’t leave peer pressure when you go home at night, because you live full time with your peers. You learn about how people with completely different upbringings compromise to get along. You will have roommates that you love to hang out with and others that you will have to work through minor to major annoyances with.

One thing a freshman never needs to worry about at Embry-Riddle, is feeling welcome and finding a place at school. It is very easy in this small school to get involved in clubs and organizations. In addition, fellow students are friendly and looking to make new friends just as much as you are, and the faculty members are extremely supportive and willing to help you succeed in any way that they can.

My freshman year at Riddle was nothing short of amazing. Although my life has continued to change, and in some ways get better, I am sure that I will remember my freshman year of college as one of the best years of my life.

Waiting in line during my Orientation in August 2007

The Rock on my Birthday Freshman Year

The back of my birthday rock

The decorations that my roommates put in my dorm room Freshman year for my birthday

My suitemates and a couple of our friends a couple weeks into freshman year at the top of Thumb Butte at sunset

As this is my first Blog, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce myself. This is my third year at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, studying Aerospace Engineering, with a concentration in Astronautics. I am also pursuing an Electrical Engineering Minor.

I am originally from Spring, Texas, which used to be about 20-25 miles north of Houston, but as Houston has expanded to meet us, Spring has now practically become North Houston. Before school I lived with both of my parents, my younger sister, three dogs, and a cat.

My current classes are Aircraft Structures I, Aeronautics I, Space Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and Engineering Economics.

Last semester I was away on an internship with NASA’s Cooperative Education Program at the Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA. From January 20 through July 31st, I worked in the Aircraft Simulation department developing a software program for generating Monte Carlo Simulation Scripts and designing hardware components for the Aircraft Simulation Cockpits. A return to school with a little taste of what lies ahead in my career, and a renewed excitement to continue with my studies.

My extracurricular activities include Horizons Newspaper (ERAU Prescott’s Campus Newspaper), Silver Wings, Campus Academic Mentoring, Embry-Riddle e-communications, and 1,2,3 Step Dance Club. For Horizons I write, edit and do layout as a Columnist and the Diversions Section Editor. Silver Wings is a service organization that supports the community through events like highway cleanups and canned food drives, as well as supports the military through events like volunteering to help out at events like the Veteran’s Day Parade at the Veteran’s Hospital. I have been President, Development Officer, and Activities Officer for the club in the past. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was selected to be a College of Engineering Campus Academic Mentor, where I teach and mentor a group of freshman students each fall with their Faculty adviser in a class called College Success, and more commonly referred to as UNIV 101. As an Embry-Riddle e-communications student employee, I write this blog, as well as help support the Facebook account for ERAU Prescott (http://www.facebook.com/embryriddle) and I post tweets at ERAU Prescott’s Twitter account (http://twitter.com/ERAUPrescott) and on my own Twitter account (http://twitter.com/Riddle_Kerianne). I am also a member of the ERAU Social Network (http://embryriddle.ning.com/). 1,2,3 Step Dance Club is a fun outlet for me. It is a dance club where students bring their own knowledge of dance styles and teach the rest of the class. For example, I came to one class and taught Country-Western Line Dancing, Wheel Dances, the Texas Two-Step, and the real Cotton-Eyed Joe Dance. Other students have taught lessons like Latin Dances including the Tango, Salsa and Meringue.

I consider one of my greatest achievements to be having a life on top of all of my classes and extracurricular activities (which can be quite challenging at times), a factor which I have found to be vital to my success as a student.

In my spare time you will likely find me writing, reading a science fiction novel or science magazine, scrap-booking, sketching, painting, hanging out with my friends, or starting spontaneous dance parties.

So that, in a nutshell, is me. 🙂

This picture was taken last February at the Dryden Flight Research Center during my 6.5 month internship.  Dryden is an alternative landing site for the Space Shuttle when weather prevents it from landing in Florida.  When the shuttle does land at Dryden, it rides piggy-back on a 747 back to Florida.  In the picture I am sitting in the cockpit of one of the 747s that carries the Space Shuttle Orbiter back home.

My first week of classes officially ended around noon today, and if this post has a time stamp, you will see that it is past 1:30 am.  Everyone in the dorm is still up watching movies, or playing ping pong and Super Smash Bros.  All in all, this week went very well.  All of my teachers seem very nice and although a couple of them manage to go off on crazy tangents not related to the curriculum, I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.  Probably the biggest thing that happened to me this week was getting hired by Horizons, the school newspaper, as a graphic designer.  I’m excited for the opportunity and already completed a couple projects the past few days.

My favorite class is definitely Intro to Engineering (a.k.a. the Lego class).  That is literally what the class is about…building Lego robots, programming them on the computer and making them follow lines, carry balls into a hole, or in my case, creating a battle bot 🙂  Later in the semester we’ll be building motorized blimps that will have to race across a building.  I’m one of three or so mechanical engineers in the class (everyone else is studying aerospace engineering with the exception of a couple electrical engineers), which is ironic since it’s essentially a robotics class and the minority group in the class will be majoring in a robotics field.

Last Sunday was our AFROTC orientation, which took almost all day after all the events we had.  The class seems like fun, but very demanding.  Cadets are only required to participate 5 hours per week: 2 hours of physical fitness, 1 hour of classroom studies, and 1 hour of “leadership laboratory” which consists of drill and ceremonies.  There is a small catch however; in order to become the model cadet that the unit is looking forward, much more is required.  I plan on joining the color guard team, which meets for 2 hours 4 days per week.  I’ll just have to see how heavy the homework load is to make sure I can balance everything, but with my schedule spaced out the way it is I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work out.

Everyone here in the dorm is pretty cool and we all get along.  It is true that up until yesterday there were people living among our group of 20 that we hadn’t seen, but I think I’ve met everyone now…I certainly hope so at least.  Tonight, we did something called Ice Blocking.  Our RA, TJ, went and bought blocks of ice and we went to a large hill by the soccer field and slid down on the ice.  It’s a ton of fun and I’m almost certain we’ll be doing the same thing next weekend.  The second highlight of my day was the long awaited arrival of Mac OSX Snow Leopard.  It was released today and although it doesn’t have too many new features, my machine is much faster now.  One of the other guys in my dorm is a die-hard Microsoft fan, and I’m 100% Apple, so we get in a few laughs beating on each other’s system.

I put off taking pictures of my room long enough, so here they are:

Phew, finally I made some time to blog! I have been so busy these last few weeks. Moving into my apartment was a lot of hard work, but it was so worth it. I’m about 10 minutes away from school and about 2 minutes from all the stores in Prescott Valley. My apartment is a good size and I definitely feel like home already, although the first night alone was creepy and it sucked! But now I’m doing good. Still have about 7 more boxes to unload, but then I will be completely done! My boyfriend and his family are coming up this weekend to help me do that and get completely finished and organized. lol.

The last days in California were definitely hard! I miss my grandmother and friends a lot, but I know many of them left for college as well. My last week there consisted of mainly packing and then trying to cram in friend time before I left. I saw a few, but not all of them. 🙁 But some of my friends don’t leave til mid-September so I was thinking about paying a visit some weekend. This way I can see my grandma and make her feel better and have an official “see you later” with my remaining friends. lol.

Oh man, I don’t know if many of you got to do this, but the U-haul experience was pretty awesome, bust soooo slow. I had to drive a 12′ U-haul (completely packed) for 5 hours to my boyfriend’s house. It was so crazy and the trip felt pretty long, but it was awesome being so high from the ground! The next day my boyfriend’s dad drove it up the mountain to Prescott because that was the part that made me nervous!!!

Ok, so my classes…They are all completely amazing and ‘m not just saying this because I know teachers have access to viewing these. haha. I genuinely enjoy my classes! I have two classes Monday and Wednesday and three classes Tuesday and Thursday and one class Friday! On MWF I have computers. My professor is very laid back and as long as we get the work done he isn’t so worried about missing some class time. Which is cool, because Friday is a study hall day for reading and two follow-up quizzes. Well, I already read and as soon as those quizzes come up, I’ll do them. That means I have Friday off!!! Ok, my other MW class is Microeconomics. I switched from History of Art into this class. At first I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to follow along with my teacher’s accent, but after a while I got used to it. And he made the class so much fun that I seriously remember just about everything we went through! TTh I have Principles of Management and Intro into Aviation Business and Industry with the same professor. I really enjoy her because she is extremely helpful and makes learning easy. The last class TTh is Speech, which I am so proud of myself for taking. I knew I would need this to help me work on talking in front of crowds. Although it may be scary at first, I know this will help me more to get used to being in front of everyone.

As you can see from how much I wrote about my classes, I really do enjoy them and all my classes seem to fit together perfectly! It is amazing how much more I get out of them when I’m learning material that seem to link together and fit perfectly! Last bit is that I’m super excited about the sorority group I’m wanting to join. They are all such great girls and I knew this would be the best way for me to meet girls and have some friends up here. Ok, well I got to get ready for class. Talk to you all later. Take care and don’t procrastinate with homework!!!

What a weekend!  We left San Diego dark and early Wednesday morning and after stopping at an outlet mall and getting food, we finally arrived in Prescott.  After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, we drove around town showing my mom the school and downtown (she didn’t come with my dad and I last time) and just relaxed.  Then we got another early start and got to ERAU to unpack the car before 8 o’clock.  Luckily, it didn’t take too long to get unpacked and go through the various stations for my Eagle Card, Finance, etc.  We were all pretty exhausted after all the meetings, which were spread out across the whole day.  On Friday, we came back early again for more meetings and in between a few, we managed to make it to WalMart.  Money sure does go fast when you’re just walking up and down aisles and realize exactly how much “stuff” you need for a little dorm room.  Today my roommate, Trevor, and I just chilled.  After a 7 o’clock ping pong game, which probably woke up people in the dorms to either side, he went golfing and I decided to check out the school’s brand new student activity center.  I stayed for a while playing burnout on a full arcade style steering wheel and chair setup.  Since then, it’s been on/off ping pong and youtube videos.

It’s been surprisingly easy to adapt to Embry Riddle, and I think I owe most of that to my visit during spring break.  The food has been great compared to what I’ve experienced at other cafeterias and I really can’t complain about my dorm.  Although we’re in the “trailer park” at the back of the campus, our dorms are the largest on campus and, as you may have figured out, we have a ping pong in our common room shared by about 20 students.  No more than 10 people are there at a time and it’s been great for meeting people.  I think I like it better than the 4-square dorms on the rest of the campus where I stayed during my ambassador visit.

Later today, I began looking forward to classes Monday…mostly to see how different (or similar) it will be to high school.  I guess that will probably be my next blog post.  I plan on posting pictures of my dorm then also.

Has anyone else had one last jam-packed week to savor while they are away?  I know I have!  Over the past five days I have been hanging out with my friends on Lake Havasu, which is only about an hour and a half from campus (and I am sure you will be familiar with that area during the semester ;D ).  Since the weather there is a bit hotter than in Prescott, being on the lake is just about the only way to stay cool.  So, naturally, all five of us guys (and a couple of parents) were out on the water as long as possible!  We went tubing, we lounged on a beach, we cruised up to the California/Arizona border, and just did what we could to savor the last few days of us being together this summer.

I got home from Lake Havasu in the afternoon yesterday, 8/18 and had to do the majority of my packing last night.  Hopefully I didn’t miss anything THAT important!  Now I am just getting ready to leave.  My whole family (including my two dogs) are going to be on our way to Embry within an hour’s time.  Unfortunately, we are driving and since we are taking two cars, I have to drive one…well, I guess I have to get used to that drive sooner or later  :).

This last week before leaving for Embry has left me in a daze.  It has all gone by so quickly that I can’t help but think it wasn’t enough time  ):  but what’s done is done and now I am off!  Hope to meet you all soon!

Wow!  For the first time in the two and a half weeks I’ve been at Embry Riddle, I have time to get in my jammies and write a blog!  YAY DOWN TIME!!

Since I arrived August 2nd, life has literally been going two hundred miles an hour and I’m just now starting to catch up and breathe again.  Volleyball is CRAZY during preseason, what with multiple practices a day plus hydrotherapy and hiking up mountains at the speed of light.  (My coaches have super long legs.  Which is kind of a disadvantage for us little 5’4″ people, especially in trying to catch up to them.)  I can’t complain though…I have to say with full confidence that I am in the best shape of my life!  It only gets better from here!

When I first arrived, I was scared to death.  I am so thankful for Facebook, because I was at least able to talk to a couple girls on my team before I actually met them.  It was easier to get to know them when they had already given me advice on what to expect from both school and the upcoming season.  I wasn’t as homesick as I would’ve been had I been completely alone.  Of course, it does help when I have one of my friends from high school come with me to be on the same team!  That was definitely a plus.  I soon got to know everyone on the team, and now I know that I shouldn’t have been intimidated at all!  What with six freshman and four returners, I know that we are all pretty much in the same boat with everything.  As for homesickness?  I most certainly still have it.  Even with friends and teammates to help, it still hits pretty hard.  I haven’t ever been away from my family for so long, so I really miss hanging out with them.  My siblings and I are especially close, so it’s hard to be away from them for so long.  They just started their first day of school and I missed it, so I had to talk on the phone for hours to catch up with the latest elementary school, junior high, and high school drama!  That phone bill will be rackin’ up pretty soon…

However, there are plus sides.  During the span of my stay so far, I’ve definitely made a few personal records:

1) I have hiked (more or less sprinted) Thumb Butte, Granite Mountain, and a biking trail which name I can’t recall.  One was super steep, as in forty-five degrees uphill, one was ten miles round-trip, and the last one was all of the above.  Growing up in the White Mountains of Arizona, I knew of all the hiking trails and biking trails and outdoorsy stuff within a twenty-five mile radius, but I never wanted to do any of it.  I consider myself a pretty experienced hiker now.  Not that that means I’m going to go home and hike for FUN, I just sort of know the ropes.  I even have my own camelback and everything. 🙂

These are some of my teammates right after the last hike of preseason!

2)  I learned how to swim!  When I was little, I took swimming lessons.  I never actually paid attention because I was too busy pretending I was Ariel from the Little Mermaid, but I took them anyhow.  My parents tried to save my life, but it was pretty fruitless as far as me saving myself from drowning goes.  HowEVER, for hydrotherapy my team has to swim back and forth across the pool using strokes that I had never executed (or paid any attention to) in my LIFE.  So while everyone was doing the breast stroke, side stroke, back stroke and freestyle swimming, I was trying not to swallow all the water in the pool.  Or drown.  Both pretty much unsuccessfully.  Now, thanks to much concentration and a wonderful teammate who was on her high school swim team, (I love you Cassie!), I can not only save myself from going to the bottom of the pool like a boulder, I can actually (sorta) keep up with the team!  THAT is a feat that I doubted I would ever accomplish!

3)  I cleaned my room.  Enough said.

Cute huh?  Mine is the bunk bed, and my roommate Teri’s is the bottom one. 🙂

So this whole college experience thing is working out just peachy so far.  School starts on Monday, right after my team gets back from Texas (which we have to miss orientation and all the fun stuff for).  There’s something good to be said about having classes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so Monday will be a recovery day for me.  I am so excited for my classes though!  Which I have to miss the second day of, because we’re going to San Diego on Thursday of next week… but hey!  College is about spontaneity, right?   Get ready, because here comes life!

Wow.  Time just flew by this week.  I leave for Embry Riddle at 4:00 am tomorrow morning, which I am not looking forward to.  It’s kind of a bummer that I can’t help drive there since we’re taking a rental car (you have to be over 25), so I’m taking Season 4 of the TV show 24.  We just finished packing everything into the car, and seeing how much space it took in a minivan, I have NO IDEA how it’ll all fit in my little Dodge Caliber.  I keep finding stuff around the house that makes it’s way into yet another box or backpack.  I just hope it gets easier and easier to pack as the years go on.  Right now I have mixed feelings about leaving…I’m excited to start school at ERAU, but I’m still a little anxious.  Either way, I’m sure I’ll have a great time and right now I’m just looking forward to orientation.  I can’t imagine how my dog, Jetson, is going to react when I get home in four months.  He can get super excited when I come home after being gone for two hours, let alone several days.  I guess my next post will either be from Embry Riddle or a hotel very close to Embry Riddle.

Below is a picture of Jetson 🙂

Jetson

I leave for school next week, and so I’ve started packing a little.  The thing is, most of the stuff I’m taking is what I use everyday, which means I’ll be doing a lot of last minute packing.  The hardest part is deciding what can or can’t go…mostly a space issue.  Right now I’m pretty excited about starting in a couple weeks.  I’m curious as to how I’ll adjust to the crazy school schedule.  Since my last post, I’ve learned to drive my new manual transmission car pretty well, except sometimes I’ll stall if someone’s really close behind me at a light and I freak out.

I’m really going to miss the beach…I’ve been squeezing in as much time there as possible.  I went yesterday with a group of friends and although the waves were barely noticeable, we did catch a couple.  I like biking even more than going to the beach, so in that way I’m excited to be going to school next week.  I’ve heard there are some really good trails not far from the campus; hopefully that will become a weekend routine for me.  If anyone reading this knows of good trails, feel free to leave a comment for me.

I stopped by my high school yesterday to return the second half of my ROTC uniforms, about 25 pounds worth.  They were having their indoctrination for the incoming cadets.  Instantly, when I walked in, I realized how small all the high schoolers looked, especially the freshmen.  It’s funny since I was one of them just a three months ago.

I better get packing 🙂

I am super excited to start school, but also scared and hurt to leave my friends and family. I know it is hard for all of us during this transition, especially if you are moving out-of-state, knowing you won’t be able to see them again for a long time! But I know I will make it and when I do see everyone again, it will be a nice reunion.

Well, I got my apartment in Prescott Valley, it is about 20 mins from Embry-Riddle. I also got all my utilities set-up, so I am ready to go. I’m moving in on Monday the 17th. I cannot wait!

And then 3 days later we got orientation, and I definitely have those excited butterflies fluttering around. This is the start of my new life. I got all my new furniture and clothes and everything I needed for my apartment. I’m just getting everything packed this week and slowly saying goodbye to my beloved grandmother that I have lived with for 16 years of my life. It is really hard for her to let go, but she is so proud and understands. Everything is going so smooth. I can’t believe I was able to afford my first year without using money from my own pocket! I’m glad I worked hard for those scholarships, but I know I’m not done, still gotta work hard for next years’ scholarships. But I know I can do it again. I’m excited for my classes.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention I changed my major, I’m going into Aviation Business Administration now. This is a great opportunity for me, I can now make sure that I’ll have a job no matter what. If not as a pilot, at least somwhere into management. Hopefully both, but you never know how planes will be years from now, they may not need pilots, I’d rather be prepared.

So, that’s all that’s new from this past month. I can’t wait until school! I hope everyone else is having a smooth transistion. See you all in about two weeks.