Well, it’s finally SPRING! And four weeks from today is the last day of classes! I can’t believe how quickly this year has flown by! I’m almost halfway done with college, which absolutely blows my mind. My classes this year have been awesome. I also registered for my classes for the fall. I am taking Chinese 3, Studies in Global Intelligence 1, History of Modern Europe, Introduction to the US Legal System, and Deceptions. I am so excited. The good thing about going to Riddle is that you have to take only a few general classes and the rest are completely focused on your degree, so you don’t have to have two full years of classes you couldn’t care less about, like at other community colleges or universities. Right at the beginning I was able to take classes that were pertinent to my major, which I absolutely loved, and it just keeps getting better from there!

ERAU Volleyball is getting better every day as well! This past weekend we played in a spring tournament at University of Arizona in Tucson. We left at five in the morning to play a nine o’clock game, and we played all day to keep in shape for our season in the fall. There were a lot of teams from nearby schools at the tournament, like NAU, ASU, UNM, NMSU, Yavapai, GCU, and of course, U of A. It was a blast for our team, and was a blast from the past for our assistant coach, Jill Blasczyk, who played for U of A when she was going to school there. We even got to see pictures of her playing in the hallways of the stadium. What a stud. After the tourney, we got to hang out at one of the restaurants on the U of A campus called Gentle Ben’s, where pretty much the whole school was rooting for their team in the March Madness basketball game. I think Jill was cheering louder than everyone… ha!

Here we are after the tournament in the U of A stadium. Go Eagles!

I just love the spring semester. This spring tournament was a blast, and I’m excited to be registered for the fall semester, and now I have to get ready for…. FINALS! Gotta love it!

“Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.”

-Anthony J. D’Angelo

Spring break has gone by so fast! It has been so great having this week off of school. No matter how much I love to learn, a week off of school is always appreciated. Last week was midterms and let me tell you…it was CRAZY! I’ve been spending these last weeks buried in books, studying for all my tests. Also over the last couple weeks I’ve been making some big decisions about my future at Embry-Riddle. I registered for my fall classes recently. I am going to be taking Plant Biology, Chinese 5&6, Intelligence Writing, and Business Statistics next semester. They all seem pretty interesting. I am most looking forward to Intelligence Writing because I am curious about the structures and format of Intelligence writing. Chinese should be fun too. I can’t believe after this spring semester I will have completed my minor in Mandarin in just one year! I am excited to continue learning more and more Chinese next semester. Another big decision I recently made is that next fall I am going to be a Resident Assistant! I am so excited to be an R.A. and hopefully make some students freshman year lots of fun! Who knows maybe I’ll end up being your R.A.!

So, we landed in Amsterdam yesterday at 6:30am. We lost 8 hours of our lives on that flight so the jetlag hit us hard. We decided to take a train to Brussels and kinda explore a little around the area. We get there, find our hotel and then go out to eat…kinda. Actually it was more like, I get everyone lost getting to our hotel taking a complete wrong turn so the trip was off on the wrong foot. Brussels was ok, the people were a little rude but that could just be the culture. Today we took the train to Bruges to do a similar thing, get to know the city. I was so glad that I was able to read a map and actually get us to where we needed to go. Felt kinda dumb though especially since ERAU drilled us at ready maps and scetionals during ground school. It all got figured out in the end so it’s all good.

Anyways, Bruges was amazing! SO much history, so many cool things, and so pretty and relaxing. We climbed up the Belfort, went into the Church of the Holy Blood, had some awesome seafood, and of course, a Belgian Waffle. I would talk a lot about each thing we saw but it would be a small essay so I am going to leave you with this. If you plan on going to Belgium, go to Bruges. SO much better than Brussels. Hope you enjoy the pictures below!

Instead of heading down to Tucson on an Admissions trip like I had hoped, my friends and I decided to experience a taste of spring break by heading up to Flagstaff for a daytrip. These past few weeks have been rather stressful and loaded with unnecessary amounts of busywork of which I attribute to laziness and procrastination on my part. We concluded some experiments and some other projects that needed finishing. For instance, we conducted a Social Psychology experiment during which we tested the students of ERAU when they went to eat. We put four signs, two “WOMEN ENTER HERE” and “MEN ENTER HERE” on the four doors of Chartwells to see if people would comply when they entered. For the most part, men only entered through doors marked with MEN and women entered through doors that said WOMEN on them but there were a few cases of people who accidentally or deliberately disobeyed with our experiment. To the few that entered through doors of the opposite gender we marked them as being Undetermined. It was humorous but now we have to write up a report about it and its due Friday along with a Psych test. SO instead of studying for that this weekend my Psych group, Shawn Emily, Joshua and I went to Flagstaff.

The night before on Friday we attended Casino Night in the Activity Fair where some 500 people or so (I actually don’t know but exaggerating the number will help someone make an image of people packed into the Activity Center) gathered to gamble fake money for charity and in an effort to win raffle prizes. I proved that I am the King of Blackjack despite the fact that when Bobby, Aaron and I went to a casino in San Diego I merely stood there and watched everyone lose. I won up to $5252 in fake money and bought a bunch of raffle tickets although I didn’t win anything. Whatever, its not like I could’ve used a free iPad or semester of housing or even that girl bike that some freshman won. Anyway, we stayed the night at Shawn’s house and then went to Flagstaff early the next morning. We rented our boards and boots from some cheaper place and then went up to the Snowbowl to start snowboarding. I have never gone before and was nervous for it because I fully expected to fall on my butt the entire time. Well, I can say with 100% guarantee that that happened pretty much most of the time. I caught on with snowboarding pretty quickly and learned to carve and head down the mountain pretty fast with an unorthodox method of mine. I would sit down on my butt and pretty much sled down the entire way at superspeed. It ended up hurting my wrists and butt pretty bad but it was worth it. We ran quite a few of the mountain courses and then when we reached a lodge I found that a cut on my wrist was bleeding pretty badly. It turns out that during one of my spills my wrist came in front of my to protect myself and my abnormally sharp incisor tooth cut my arm. Strange yeah but not unheard of.

After that happened I resigned to staying at the lodge eating chicken strips and keeping an eye out for snowbunnies while the other three tacked the Black Diamond trail. I fell asleep waiting for them to come back (hence there were no snowbunnies around and I was disappointed in Flagstaff) and when they did they were all dead and exhausted. I had regained some energy after my little nap and therefore was ready to call it a day. It was so much fun even though I did get frustrated after falling all the time. So that was our taste of mini-vacation and it sure was great to get away from this place for a while. But now we’re back and have PT tomorrow, just one more week left!!!

What is senior year for an engineer like?  Well, it is a combination of things.

First, seniors are faced with their capstone design courses.  This course is specific to the senior’s degree and challenges them to use all of the skills they have learned throughout their four years of college, and then some.  Many times the topics covered in the senior design courses haven’t been covered in previous courses and require a great deal of research.  The capstone design courses are designed to simulate a project that you would face in industry, giving a student a taste of each of the phases of a design from research through completing team-determined integration and test plans.

Second, seniors prepare for their graduation.  For some students, graduating from their undergraduate degree program only means moving on to start the next phase of their education in graduate school.  For other students, graduating means entering industry, putting everything that they have learned to the test, and, best of all, getting that paycheck that they’ve spent the last four years working towards.  Whichever course students take, senior year means filling out lots of applications, collecting references, fine tuning resumes, and waiting. Waiting is the hardest part.  Waiting to hear if you’ve gotten your dream job. Waiting to hear if you’ve been accepted to the graduate school of your choice.

Third, senior year means keeping very busy between classes, extracurriculars, and the occasional trip to attend a conference, career fair, or on-site interview. I bought a suit the summer before my senior year and I’ve had six occasions to wear to it so far this academic year.

As far as finishing senior year, there are mixed reactions.  Embry-Riddle isn’t one of those schools where you will spend more time partying than studying.  Students who attend Embry-Riddle are very focused on their futures and work very hard for their diplomas.  That doesn’t mean you don’t have time to make friends, though – strong friendships are built throughout the four years.  It’s not hard to make friends in an environment where everyone is very focused and shares common interests in aviation and aerospace.

Graduation is both exciting and a little sad.  On the one hand, you are continuing to pursue your dreams, you look forward to having a paycheck and free time. On the other hand, your friends are moving all over the world to continue pursuing their dreams, and although you may never lose touch with them, your lives will diverge after graduation. For me, the most overwhelming emotion is excitement about moving on to the next stage and making a difference in the world through my work.