As of two weeks ago, (more or less), I have officially survived my freshman year of college.  Now I’m a sophomore!  WOO HOO!!  Since I have so much experience under my belt now, (as I roll my eyes sarcastically), I would like to throw out a few things that I have learned in this past year.  Here are ten easy tips that can help all of you upcoming students survive YOUR first year at Embry-Riddle.

Tip #1:  If you are living in the dorms, make sure that you or one of your future suitemates brings a vacuum, broom, dustpan, etc.  You WILL need them sooner or later (it’s your choice if it’s sooner, or later.  My advice?  Sooner.)  Listen to your mom about this stuff.  She’s right.  (And don’t think that if you’re a girl, your room won’t get dirty.  Girls’ dorms were typically just as bad or worse than the boys’ dorms.)  If you decide to ignore these essentials, bring Plan B: a gas mask and rubber gloves.  You’ll need them.  Trust me.

Tip #2:  DO YOUR HOMEWORK.  End of story.

Tip #3:  Chartwell’s is delicious the first week.  Don’t be fooled.  As soon as all the parents leave, you’ll be going to Fry’s to get Ramen and Easy Mac because you’ll get sick of the same thing every day.

Tip #4:  Go do something fun every once in a while.  Hike the Dell’s, go check out downtown Prescott, see a movie, go out to eat with your suitemates; do something fun to help you get adjusted better.  The more you get to know the town and your suitemates, the more comfortable you’ll be.

Tip #5:  If you’re going to burn your food, PLEASE, for the sake of everyone living in your hall, DO NOT WAIT UNTIL TWO THIRTY IN THE MORNING TO TRY TO MAKE IT!!  If you don’t know how to make Ramen or Mac and Cheese, practice now.  The rest of us, er, your hall, would really appreciate not waking up and having to go out in the snow in the wee hours of the morning due to a fire alarm set off by stupidity.

Tip #6:  Get to know the people around you.  Your neighbors down the hall, the kids in your Psychology class, your professors, everyone you possibly can.  The more people you know, the better off you’ll be in the end.  (Especially when you need help in your Psych class… you’ll always have someone to call!)

Tip #7:  Cheap toilet paper is no where as good as expensive toilet paper, but they’re much better than paper towels.  However, if you’re going to use paper towels, DO NOT FLUSH.  Bad things happen.  True story.  Don’t ask.

Tip #8:  Make sure to have a planner.  Even if you don’t write anything down, it’s fun to doodle on it when you’re bored in class!  In high school, I never ever used a planner, because my teachers always told me when the assignments were due.  Professors at ERAU expect you to be an adult and be prepared, so you’re on your own.  Having a planner makes it easy to stay on top of things and turn in assignments when they’re due.

Tip #9:  Flexi dollars disappear at the end of the semester, and don’t carry over to the next one.  Use it all!  And if you haven’t used it all and there’s a week left, splurge.  It’s finals week: you deserve it.  I didn’t know they didn’t carry over until it was finals week, so I got loads of ice cream, chips, and sandwiches just in time for my finals.  It worked!

Tip #10:  And last, but not least: this first year goes by so fast.  Some of it you’ll be miserable, some of it you’ll want to never end, but none of it will last forever.  So enjoy it while you got it!  You’ll be glad you did. 🙂

This past week has been extremely hectic, what with finals, studying, cramming like I’ve never done before, and of course… BLACKLIGHT VOLLEYBALL!  One of the fraternities on campus, Pi Kappa Phi, held their first annual Blacklight Volleyball Tournament to help raise funds for the Push America foundation, a charitable organization that was founded by a Pi Kappa Phi alumni.  Some girls on my school volleyball team and I decided to have a go at it, so we created a team called “Neon Phenomenon.”  We decorated our white shirts with puffy paint and glow-in-the-dark business and went to the activity to have a great time and meet new people.  There were probably seven or eight teams that showed up to play.  Pi Kappa Phi had transformed the Activity Center into a blacklight and glow-in-the-dark party zone!  All the lights that were on were glowing purple, and there was nothing visible save the net (decorated with glow-in-the-dark streamers and stars), white t-shirts, and the highlighting graffiti that were all over everyone’s arms and faces.

Here’s a glimpse of what it looked like!

Anna, Kelsey, and I in our killer uniforms (in which we won the costume contest!!).

You can’t tell, but we wrote “Neon Phenomenon” on the front with our “numbers” on the back.  Since all the rest of my team are engineers and meteorologists, they thought it’d be cool to make our numbers math signs.  Anna was pi, Kelsey was infinity, Sylvia was i (imaginary), Shaw was some binary number, Mahlet was a whole freaking equation that equalled seven, and I was mu.  Hahaha.  Only at Riddle….

D kept score on a fancy lit up board.

And of course, people just came to watch and dance.  Teri and Gianna came, and it was nice of them to cheer for our team! 🙂

That was a great way to start off finals week.  The day after that, Friday, I spent twelve hours in the library to get ready for Saturday.  It was an insanely long day, obviously!  But I think I did well on my finals, both on Saturday and yesterday, so I’m ready to get my last two out of the way today so I can pack up my room and clean out our dorm!  Summer’s almost here, baby!

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”

-William James

This past week, our school was turned into a huge warzone.  Zombies, with their headband bandanas, and humans armed with Nerf guns and balled up socks, with bandanas around their arms, prowled the campus.  Everywhere you looked, someone was either running after someone or being shot with a Nerf bullet.  It was SOOOO.  Much.  Fun!!  The rules: zombies try to get as many “kills” as they possibly can, so they don’t starve.  (Zombies starve after forty eight hours without a kill.)  Humans try to avoid zombies at all costs, but if they happened to be attacked, they were allowed to shoot or throw socks at the zombies, stunning them for fifteen minutes.  I felt like I should have been in an action movie, with the way everyone was strategizing and ninja-rolling and shooting!  At the end of the second day, unfortunately, my very own teammate Shaw tagged me!  She was the original zombie, spreading the “infection” everywhere she went.  It was so fun to be a zombie though!  For one, I wasn’t scared out of my socks (literally) whenever I walked around campus, and two, all the zombies strategized and coordinate to try to get the remaining humans as they came out of class and Chartwell’s.  It got INTENSE.  Overall, it was a great way to get to know people and relieve stress right before finals! 

Here are about twenty zombies waiting outside a math classroom for one human.  I’m the one on the cement to the left who is standing on the sidewalk, arms crossed, waiting to pounce on her prey.  Hehe.  Unfortunately, after an hour of waiting for this kid (since we weren’t allowed to tag him inside), he escaped as our backs were turned.  So, super-ninja-human guy, kudos to you.  Touche.

That was one of the best times that I’ve had at Riddle, and it is probably going to be a semesterly thing.  So any of you prospective students out there reading this, make sure you come prepared! 🙂

This past weekend, after the humans won the game, I went to the comedian and then dinner with my friends Teri, Will, Chris, Andrew, Gianna, Tony, and John.  We went to Bill’s Pizza on Whiskey Row, and had a blast.  We then decided to go see a movie afterwards, so we decided to go see “The Losers”.  I thought that it was a pretty good movie.  That was a good night!  The next day, my institute was having a BBQ and kickoff for summer at Watson Park.  We had water balloons, capture the flag, ultimate frisbee, and more games!  It was a BLAST!   The weather was beautiful, so afterwards, my friends Katie and Tyler and I all went and hiked some of the rocks there at Watson Lake.  The view was amazing, and we weren’t the only ones who decided a nice little hike would be fun.  The rocks were teeming with students who wanted to just get out.

Here are the Dells at Watson Lake.  Beautiful, right?  And we went at sundown.  Perfect timing.  <3

Many movies with best friends and many fun activities later (dang, I’ve done a lot since Saturday!), I’m sitting in my room trying to put off studying for my finals, which at this point, I really can’t avoid anymore.  So until next time, adieu!

“Friendship isn’t a big thing- it’s a million little things.”

-Author Unknown

This past week has been filled with friends and fun from both my church and my school.  On April 10, my Young Single Adult (YSA) ward and I traveled to Flagstaff to compete in a 9 stake volleyball tournament!  It was sooo much fun!!  We all carpooled (I drove one of the cars) down to the Institute up in Flag and had breakfast, played against other teams formed from people that go to NAU, had a dance later that night, and just had a great time meeting new people from around the state.  Since I took my own car there, I was also able to go and hang out with one of my good friends from Pinetop, Becky Beus!  She was sweet enough to let me hang out with her at her place and get ready there so I wouldn’t look like crap at the dance.  It was great catching up with her and meeting all of her roommates who also go to NAU.  Here are some random pics from the day:

Here’s me setting Andrew, who was on my team and also goes to Riddle.

The team on the left is our Prescott team; the one on the right is a team from Flagstaff.

I had so much fun with everyone in my ward and getting to hang out with Becky just made it that much better!! <3

Yesterday, a week from when I went to Flagstaff, I worked Student Preview Day with all the other students who work in Admissions.  I had a fun time working it, seeing all the prospective students coming through with their parents and siblings just like I did exactly one year ago!  And the circle of life continues…

The whole campus was teeming with high school seniors and their families, coming to see ERAU.  The weather was GORGEOUS, there were balloons everywhere, and there were even helicopters in front of the Activity Center and on the softball field! (Or baseball field, whichever you prefer.  I prefer softball personally.  🙂 )

I was lucky, and Steven Leon and I got to give away free T-shirts to all the students who came through the Lower Hangar to see all the clubs in the Club Fair.  There were so many clubs, including the sororities/fraternities, the Underwater Robotics Club, the Sweatervest Club, the Music Club, and so much more.  The choir was singing, the band was playing, and there was just a great community atmosphere.  We had a BLAST doing it.  I’ll admit, things got a little crazy, and that’s what makes it fun!  Here’s a pic of our CRAZINESS.

We took a picture with Ernie the Eagle so we could blog about it.  VOILA.

And that is basically what has happened in the past two weeks!  Fun stuff, let me tell ya!

“What you see is what you get.”
– Flip Wilson

Last night was a perfect ending to an extremely stressful day!  Yesterday I had a humongous exam in my Geography class, which I was studying and cramming for what felt like forever, and I was just super stressed about it.  So this whole week was busy, stressful, and on top of it all, extremely windy.  However, yesterday the wind FINALLY died down, and last night one of the stars of one of my very favorite shows came to Embry-Riddle to do stand-up comedy!!!!! (which OF COURSE makes everything better!)  Dave Coulier, who played Uncle Joey from the ABCFamily show Full House, came here!  When I had first come to ERAU, I had heard that his son came to this school, and I flipped out.  When I heard that Dave was actually coming, I pretty much passed out from excitement. 

Full House is an absolute favorite at my house.  Whenever I talk to my nine year old brother on the phone, he asks, “Have you seen the Full House where…” and explains pretty much the whole episode if I haven’t seen the one he’s talking about.  Actually, last year at my Homecoming when I was being nominated for Queen, they asked questions about me.  While all the other nominees said that their favorite shows were from MTV and such, I straight up said that my favorite show was Full House.  It probably got me some snickers, but I didn’t care!  (or maybe that’s what helped me win, who knows?)  So I was jazzed last night when I got to see “Uncle Joey” in person!!  He was soooo funny too.  I laughed so hard that I felt like a six pack was coming on!  Impersonations, jokes, harmonica playing… it was all there!  And now my life is complete. 🙂

And here he is!  The man!

After the show, a couple of my friends and I went to dinner at “B-Dubs” (or, for non-local folk, Buffalo Wild Wings).  It was soo good!  I had honey BBQ boneless wings while we watched MLB baseball on the huge screen next to us.  It was a blast just chillin’ and eating and all that good stuff.  So, overall, yesterday was not only beautiful and warm outside, it was filled with laughter, fun, and good food!  What could be better than that?

“Cut it out!” 🙂

-Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier)

This past weekend was the Air Force’s annual “Dining Out”, where people in the Air Force all go to a fancy schmancy place in Chino Valley and have an elegant dinner.  I am not in the Air Force, but one of my friends is and he invited me to go with him.  It was a very educational experience for me!  I dressed up in one of my best homecoming dresses (yeah, it was that fancy!) and he went in his “blues” (the Air Force’s formal attire) and we went to have a fun evening!

This is the Windmill House, located in Chino Valley, AZ.  This resort hosts weddings, anniversaries, parties of every type, and this year, AFROTC’s Dining Out!

They have a cool little bridge that leads to a little dock overlooking the lake and a little gazebo next to the dock.  It is SO pretty!  The inside is gorgeous as well!  The tables were all covered with a navy blue tablecloth, except for one; this table had a white tablecloth, reserved for POWs and MIAs.  On it was a single rose, glasses sitting upside down, and different hats, to honor those people who are fighting for our country and who are not able to reap the benefits.  On one side of the room was the Head Table, where the, well, head people sat!  (I’m really sorry I’m not using the right lingo here: I’m only guessing at the terms from what I heard that night!)

In the middle of the room, separating one side from the other, sat the table with the GROG.  I have no idea how it came to be, but in the midst of this formal dinner sat a trash can filled with all sorts of nasty stuff that different flights brought for unlucky victims to drink (the GROG).  Apparently, every flight brings some sort of (edible) thing that starts with the same letter their flight does.  (For example, Foxtrot (?) would bring french vanilla to add to the GROGgy concoction).  After the meal was finished, there was a sort of competition.  To make someone drink the GROG, a person would go up and say a poem inviting that person to drink it.  The victim has one minute to come up with a rebuttal poem, and if it’s not good enough, well, then they get to drink it!  That was extremely entertaining!  (I tasted some of the GROG though, and it was actually pretty good because everybody brought fruit punch to put in it!  So, it was basically fruit punch.  How terrible.)

Anyway, that was my experience at Dining Out, which I found to be very fascinating!  I felt honored to take part in such a cool tradition held by ERAU.

“It wasn’t the reward that mattered or the recognition you might harvest.  It was your depth of commitment, your quality of service, the product of your devotion — these were the things that counted in life.  When you gave purely, the honor came in the giving, and that was honor enough.”
-Scott O’Grady

For this spring break, I decided to go back home to Pinetop to chill and relax with my family.  Unfortunately, my siblings didn’t get their spring break until THIS week, which meant that they had to go to school and practice while I relaxed. 🙂  Even though I was sad I couldn’t hang out with them more, having all that free time was wonderful!   My mom and I rearranged our previous “study” (the room in the house full of books) into a half study- half craft room.  Mom started making headbands, clothes, and other sewing projects in our tiny laundry room, but her stash of fabric was soon on every single surface in the entire place!  So we moved all of her stuff to the study so she could be able to move!  It was so fun. 

I was also able to hang out with friends, go to lunch with some of them, have a movie night with the girls, go to my high school’s softball practice, and just catch up and see what everyone else was up to.  It was so good to see everyone!!  There were so many hugs and how-are-you?s and fun!!  On the movie night, my friends Camri and Olecya introduced me to Back to the Future, which I had never seen before then.  (I know, I know.  It’s pathetic, but true.)  I absolutely loved it!  And a crazy coincidence: when I got home that night, we found that our Netflix movies of the month were the first AND second Back to the Future’s!!  My little sister and I had a blast having a movie marathon.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have the third one, so we went to every single movie rent place in town to try to find it.  We didn’t!  (So, if anyone owns it and would like to lend it to me, I’d be much obliged!!)  Ha!

We (which after a couple of days included not only my sister and I, but my brothers as well) seriously watched those two movies in a row probably six times over the week.  New favorite movie?  Oh yeah.  Do I want a DeLorean?  Mmm hmm!

So that was basically my spring break in a nutshell…. now to get back to work!

“Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.”

-Doug Larson

(Hopefully we won’t have anymore shoes full of slush this spring!)

Last Saturday night, the Hawaiin Club at ERAU put on their Fourteenth Annual Hawai’i Club Luau.  They turned the whole Activity Center into a flowery, tropical party!  The theme of the luau was “Na Mele Aloha”, which translated from Hawaiian means, “The Songs of Aloha.”  They had awesome dances as well as fabulous food and souveniers even imported from Hawaii!  Here’s my Hawaiian adventure:

I stood in line with one of my friends for about ten minutes behind fellow students and in front of two elderly ladies who come every year for the food and the dances, from what I could tell from the broken pieces of conversation I overheard.  We paid the entry fee, got a smiley face drawn on our hands, then received a lei from the people who were welcoming guests in their traditional outfits.  There were tables EVERYWHERE, with a stage and a HUGE mural of the Hawaiin sunset behind it.  Luckily, we got front row seats!

I couldn’t get the whole stage properly, but here’s a picture of the mural behind the stage that the members of the club danced on.

Of course, immediately I had to go see what kind of stuff they imported from the islands just for this event.  Here are the tables!

They had everything from kitchen mitts and potholders to leis to jewelry to Tshirts and shorts.  It was so colorful!

Also imported was the food that they served.  It was SO delicious!  My teammate, Sarah Galeai, (who is from Somoa), is a member of the club, and she helped to put it on, make food, and dance in the dances.  She explained to me how some of the parents of the members actually flew to Prescott from Hawaii to help make the food!  I could DEFINITELY tell it was authentic, it was just so good.  Here’s what was on the menu:

I recognized most of the foods, or some words in the foods anyway, but I was able to try everything and I was thoroughly amazed!  It was SOO good!

After the food was served, the Hawaiin Club performed a series of traditional dances, each of which the announcer said were the equivalent of running two miles at a 5-minute mile pace.  I could totally see that.  It looked really graceful, how they were doing it, but I don’t think I could keep moving my hips for so long and still have the energy to do another dance!  Haha.  Here’s another pic:

Overall, it was a really cultural experience for me and I was so glad I was able to experience another way of life!  Now, if I could only convince my parents to let me go to Hawaii for spring break… if not, I’ll listen to my Lilo and Stitch soundtrack and call it good.

“Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.”

-Jawaharlal Nehru

One of the best things about living in Prescott is that compared to Pinetop, where I grew up, there are SOO many more shopping options!  Not that I go shopping all that often (I’m a college kid, remember?), but it’s still nice to have options.  For example: in Pinetop, the only place that anybody went for anything was our Supercenter Wal-Mart.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Walmart, but it’s kinda sad when it’s the hot spot for dates.  Here, there’s a mall (gasp), Target (yes!) and, my new favorite local store, Scrap-book-ish!  <3

Scrap-book-ish is a little store on Willow Creek Road that has everything you need to put together a creative journal called a scrapbook.  At home, scrapbooking was one of my favorite hobbies.  My mom, sister and I would gather around the table with pictures and colored papers and stickers and just create!  It’s one of my favorite memories that I have with my mom and sister.  When I went to college, I didn’t want to clutter up my already small room with paper and scissors and hole punches, so I left it all behind.  However, I got back into it just a few days ago because next Tuesday in my speech class we’re giving a demonstrative speech, and I figured that I would show how to make a scrapbook page!  I went to the Scrap-book-ish store hoping to find supplies, and find supplies I did!  (also, it was 75% off day, so that didn’t hurt either!)  My hobby has been resurrected once more!

Here are some pages I’ve made since then:

This is a page of Jessica Watts, Frosty and I on our first snow day of the year.

This one is of Cami Williams and I, while we were bored at a Diamondbacks game last year.  (The background on that one is that since our softball team won state, we were asked to go and stand on the field with all the other 1A, 2A, 4A and 5A winners while the D-Backs were warming up.  It was a BLAST!  And we got to be on the big TV in the corner that everyone tries to get on when you’re there!)  Good times!

This last one is of my suite and I when we were ice skating, which I wrote a blog about, so go check it out!

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”

 – Margaret Thatcher

A couple of weeks ago, ERAU held the second Activity Fair this year in the Activity Center, where people can join many different variety of groups (such as fraternities, Break Dancing Club, Hawaiian Club, etc.).  At that time, I joined the Swing Dancing Club, College Republicans, and the Sweatervest Club.  Yes, the Sweatervest Club, although I am ashamed to admit that I, in fact, do NOT own a sweatervest!!  I’m hoping to find one on sale somewhere soon… haha!  What made me interested in this odd club in the first place took place last semester, as I was walking through campus to go to class.  I noticed a bunch of people in sweatervests gathering around a bench.  One of my friends who is also the president of the club, Mitch Mannering, called out a totally random compliment to me as I passed, which totally made me more confident.  Another one of the members shouted another one to me.  I thanked him, kind of confused, and then I saw the sign one was holding that said, “Free Compliments, Courtesy of the Sweatervest Club”.  Underneath that, “In an Effort to Improve Student Life on Campus”.  I laughed at the cleverness, and so when the activity fair came around this semester, no one had to ask me to join twice!  Just on Tuesday, I was having a hard day because I didn’t feel very good about a test I had just taken.  In an effort to waste time until my next class, I went to check my mail, but ran into the Sweatervest Club having Free Compliments day!  I joined them, giving compliments to students walking by, and I definitely felt much better.

If Michael Jackson went to Riddle, he would have been giving free compliments with the rest of the club. 🙂

As for the Comedian portion of this blog (well, Comedian/Magician anyway), I just got back from the Andy Gross show that was held in the DLC (the Davis Learning Center) Auditorium.  He was really witty and hilarious the whole time.  He did everything from the “pick a card, any card” trick to the “pull-a-dove-out-of-a-hankerchief” trick.  Well, he subsequently threw the dove against the nearest wall because it “bit” him, making everyone squeal in disbelief, until we all saw that it was a fake dove!  Thank GOODNESS!  Overall, I could not stop laughing!  Embry Riddle has VERY entertaining comedians that come every month or so.  I thought that it was a good choice to bring Andy Gross.

Avada Kadevra!  Er, I mean, abra kadabra!  Here he is!  (All Harry Potter fans understand that it is actually quite difficult to remember the classic “magic words”, when the famous spell from the books is so similar!  Oops.)

Well, that pretty much sums up the highlights of this week!

“Never take life seriously.  Nobody gets out alive anyway!”