Monthly Archives: September 2011

Yay for Fall Semester!

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Oh my! School has already been in session for a month now!

I can’t believe it, time has been whizzing by! This semester I am taking only twelve credits, but it is certainly challenging. I have U.S. Foreign Policy with a new professor, Dr. Fields, he is great. The class is heavy with reading, but I enjoy it. Dr. Fields has been especially great at making each student in his class feel recognized by taking the time to get to know every person’s name and a little about them. It is things like that that make me really enjoy the fact that I attend a small school. I am also taking Business Law. I like this class a lot, though I already know many of the materials covered because I am considering law school after graduation and the course is very basic, but still helpful. My final class is the notorious….Chinese! I am still on the Chinese Track which I love, so I am taking Chinese five and six right now. The thing I like most about the Chinese Track is that I have the class every day and I am very familiar with my classmates so I am never hesitant to speak in front of the class, which is a must.

The most exciting thing of this semester for me is being a Resident Assistant (R.A.). It has been so much fun meeting all of my residents and helping them adjust to Riddle life, I have been really enjoying it.  Also this semester I am a Campus Academic Mentor (CAM) for the GSIS program. I sit in on the college success class that freshman are enrolled in and help new students with any questions that arise. That has also been fun because I have gotten to meet many of the new students.

I am excited for the rest of this semester, I can hardly believe midterms are only a couple weeks away.

Start of Fall 2011

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This year has been hectic so far. Not only am I now an MSIII in the Army ROTC program here at ERAU, I am taking some difficult classes and trying to adjust living in a new apartment with two of my friends. I feel though that despite the heavy workload, jam-packed schedule and copious amounts of reading I have to do, this year will get even tougher. So far the other Army cadets and I have been placed in charge of leading Eagle Company under the supervision of our cadre and MSIV’s. So far I have been the platoon sergeant and squad leader but my toughest role is going to surface when the most difficult part of our semester rolls around, the Fall FTX. I’m a bit anxious for that but I hope it will be alright.

Classes so far are great, I am taking History of Terrorism (been looking forward to this since freshman orientation), Studies in Global Intelligence I, Information Protection and Computer Security and some more classes. They are all interesting and I can’t wait to take my Counterintelligence course next year! Because this year has been so jam packed I haven’t had much time to do many social activities. My friend Angelo and I managed to take a break in our schedules and visited our friend Anna and the notorious Liesl Hall in their volleyball game last week. Our team did a good job and it was inspiring to see all the freshman taking in interest in the many extracurricular activities we have offered here at ERAU. Last week we held our Activities Expo or whatever they called it when all the clubs and organizations presented booths to attract new members. I found myself convinced into signing up for several groups but I don’t think I can make them fit into my schedule just yet!

Last week all the MSIII’s and the Ranger Challenge cadets (I’ll post about this soon) went to Fort Navajo up by Flagstaff to conduct the Eagle Raider FTX to prepare us for Warrior Forge 2012 in which we will be attending LDAC. Several important informative classes were taught to us by the MSIV’s and we got to go on the Night LandNav course and to the firing range the next morning. I admit I need some practice with both but I plan on improving myself over the course of the semester in both categories. Well, this has been the start of the Fall Semester, hopefully the level of difficulty peaks soon so we can roll downhill to easy street……(This is ERAU, never gonna happen, but it can’t hurt to hope right?)LandNav Instruction

About to learn how to apply camouflage

Cadet Salas on the Firing Range

Clubs and Cross Countries!

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Almost done with the 3rd week of school, but it seems like forever since I packed up the car and drove to Riddle! Time flies when you’re having fun, right? (see what I did there? flying is fun!).

Anyways, tonight was the club fair! If you have an interest in a particular activity or like a particular object, there is most likely a club for that. From the sweater vest club to the skydiving club, Embry-Riddle Prescott has a club for you! One of my favorite clubs is the music club. I played the alto saxophone all throughout high school and wanted to continue in college, so I joined with the music club. There are 3 groups within the club: jazz, choir, and drumline. I am in the jazz and drumline groups because I am not the best of singers. Jazz is a pressure-off group of chill students who play on their free time; get together and have an awesome jam sesh! Like each group in the club we have performances on campus and in the community! So if you like to play an instrument or sing, or even want to learn how, you belong in the music club!

In every flight course, students are required to go on cross countries. For the non-flight students, a cross country is a long flight to an airport at least 50 NM straight line. For my flight course (multi private), I have to go at least 150 NM away. I am choosing to go to the John-Wayne Airport (SNA) in Santa Ana, CA! It’s really convenient since I live about 30min from SNA. I have my route all planned out and I am just waiting for this Saturday 9/17, to go; assuming the weather is good enough to fly in *fingers crossed*. I personally love cross countries because you get to fly somewhere new or somewhere where you want to go (just as long as its a Riddle-approved airport). If you are a flight student, you will be doing many of these in your years here. If you are not a flight student, take the opportunity to go as an observer to wherever the student is going! Observers can go on cross countries as long as the are a dual flight. However, as an observer (anyone, even flight students), you can go on a local flight to the practice area and see Prescott from the air! I encourage every Embry-Riddle student to go on at least one flight; and if you’re lucky, I could be your pilot!

Hand Cramps and Flame-Throwers

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Well, it’s that time of the year again… where I blog about the beginning of school!

And where I put up pictures of my volleyball team, since that is pretty much what my life revolves around right now!

(Well, that and homework. Woo hoo.)

This semester I’m taking a bunch of fun classes. I’m taking Chinese three, which is pretty tough. I love learning Chinese, but after a while of studying all of the characters start to look like each other. It can be pretty frustrating to say the least. But, it’s so worth it (after your hand stops cramping from all the character writing and goes back to its normal shape)!

I’m also taking two classes with Dr. Jones, History of Modern Europe and Studies in Global Intelligence. I like both of these classes so far. There’s a lot of reading, which is okay with me because I love books. Give me a book over a math problem anyday! I’m also taking Dr. Henner’s Government class, which has proved to be very interesting so far. Along with these classes, I’m taking Abnormal Psychology with Professor Reybach. This class is really fun, because I love learning about psychology. It just makes so much sense to me. My professor makes this class really fun as well, because our class is so small and she interacts with all of us so much during class.

And of course, volleyball is as demanding as ever. In the past ten days, we have played ten games! The first weekend of school, we went to one of my teammate’s hometown, Portland, OR, to play a tournament at Lewis & Clark University. It was so pretty there, and our team got to take a tour of the FBI building there where our teammate Sarah Galeai’s mom works. It was AWESOME. Our team also had a blast with Sarah’s family! Her family is traditionally from Somoa, and so we had an awesome barbeque complete with island music and even a flame thrower… guy! (Pardon my lack of knowledge of the terminology!)

Here we are learning to “shake our booties”! Thank you, hula guy!

Last weekend (the second weekend of the year) we went to San Diego, CA to play a tournament at Point Loma University. It was beautiful there as well.

Here we are playing Point Loma. BLOCK! 🙂

For anyone here at Riddle, our next game is on Saturday, at the Eagle Gym, at 4 pm! I want to see you ALL there!

And that is my life from two weeks ago until now! Gotta love the chaos!

“If you have health, you probably will be healthy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.”

-Elbert Hubbard