My last blog was about our trip to Denver.  Well, I was so busy talking about Gina and Cassie’s baby, (hahaha, see last blog…), I forgot to mention one of the best parts of the whole trip!  Cassie’s family lives in Boulder, Colorado, and so on the first night, our whole team was invited to have dinner at Cassie’s family’s house!  It was so much fun going.  The suburbs where they live are beautiful, and the house is beautiful, on the outside and the inside.  We ate delicious lasagna, had salad and sushi, and ate pie.  Cassie’s older sister, Carly (sorry if I spelled that wrong) taught us a game kind of like pictionary that we played for probably forty five minutes.  Overall, it was amazing.  Thank you, Lacey family!

Our team’s next adventure was the next weekend in Houston, Texas.  Our games were being played at University of St. Thomas.  They were having all kinds of activities on campus that weekend, including family weekend (where they were serving free sno cones…yippee!!) and Dig Pink, (which we also hosted a couple days ago… I’m getting to that part!)  We lost, but it was a pretty good weekend overall.

The coolest elevator EVER!  Our hotel was bomb and even served snacks.  Muaahaahaa.

The Galleria is the biggest mall ever… the candy store was HUGE!  And there was even an ice skating rink on the bottom floor!  Exhibit A:

Our most recent competition was on Tuesday, when Embry-Riddle hosted the Dig Pink match to help raise awareness about cancer.  Teamed up with the Side Out Foundation, an organization that supports breast cancer research, Embry-Riddle and Yavapai College played a match to help.  There was a silent auction, cake, a chance to write a loved one’s name on a T-shirt and hang it up on the Activity Center’s wall, whether they are a survivor, still battling or in loving memory.  The stands were filled with pink T-shirts and ribbons, and people who came to support the cause.  It was truly amazing to see that much support all in one place. 

Our picture that was on the advertisement for the game….us short kids are in the back somewhere… trying to be serious, which was a difficult task indeed!

My Grandma Marilyn, my Aunt Carolyn, my Aunt Chickie and my friend and role model Sylvia Porter were all named on the program as fighters who battled the opponent named cancer.  Some have won the battle, some have not, and this page was dedicated to those who battled and who still are battling.

Even the teams competing wore pink T-shirts with sayings on them to show support.  It was a great experience to be a part of.  And on top of all that good stuff, it was a great game to watch!  We played hard, they played hard, and it was a great match.  We ended up going into five games, with ERAU winning the first two 25-23 and YC winning the next three.  Despite the outcome, I was proud of our performance.  We were a team.  And considering the cause, it was just a great night to compete and show our love for those who are having another kind of competition.

Tomorrow we leave for Tucson to play our last game against Pima Community College, and after Tuesday, seeing so many who have been effected by cancer, I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to play, to do what I love for just one more day.  What a beautiful thought.

“Life is full of beauty.  Notice it.  Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces.  Smell the rain, and feel the wind.  Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.”

-Ashley Smith

I’ve been considering doing this blog for a while now.  The intention of this blog entry is to describe the aerospace engineering degree and it’s effects on student’s from my own perspective.  And how else would an engineer illustrate a concept, other than through a serious of graphs?  I wouldn’t say it’s sugar coated, but when you think about it, do you really expect rocket science to be easy?

None of the graphs in this blog entry can be backed up by scientific evidence.  I created each of them in MS Paint to reflect my own limited observations.

And what does chocolate cake have to do with any of this? Well, someone asked me if I liked my major.  My initial reaction was “sometimes,” but then I really thought about it and tried to come up with an analogy that other people could understand-an analogy devoid of technical jargon. This is what I came up with:

Homework is like chocolate cake.  I love chocolate cake, especially the super sweet milk chocolate with milk chocolate icing.  Pure, simple, and exceptionally delicious chocolate cake.  Even when I’m completely full, if you put a slice of chocolate cake down in front of me, I will eat it, and I will savor each and every bite.  However, if you were to place a 5 layer, 12 inch diameter, chocolate cake in front of me and instruct me to eat it within an hour, that chocolate cake suddenly becomes daunting rather than mouthwatering. That’s how I feel about homework. More specifically engineering homework.  I actually like solving the difficult problems that my professors assign me for practice, but when a combination of assignments accumulates into a daunting task, it reaches a point where it becomes too much.  Often times engineering homework becomes too much of a good thing.

Only a true nerd could compare homework to chocolate cake.

With that, I will begin delving into my own personal analysis of the engineering curriculum, with handy-dandy graphs to illustrate my theories.

As you can see in the graph above, the difficulty of your classes increases dramatically over time.  One might ask what these mysterious Gauntlet Classes are.  Well, the typical engineering student encounters a semester of classes which many engineering students refer to as “The Gauntlet.”  These classes may include a combination of the following: Solid Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aerodynamics 1.  Some students can decrease the slope of the difficulty increase by splitting “The Gauntlet” up over semesters, but inevitably, after completing “The Gauntlet,” the level of difficulty in engineering classes remains rather constant.

Engineering classes start off relatively easy with the basics such as math, physics and humanities requirements. For me, a veteran of an intense magnet program and multiple AP classes in high school, freshman year was actually easier than what I had experienced during my Junior and Senior year of high school.  It wasn’t at all what I expected.  I wasn’t really complaining, but I was a little surprised because I had expected college to be a lot harder, and it kind of lured me into a false sense of security.

Then, because of all of my AP credits, I took “The Gauntlet” at the beginning of my sophomore year, minus Aero 1, which I am taking now.  It was as though the engineering program was laughing at me and cackling “Ha! Tricked you! You thought it was going to be easy, huh?  Well, here is the real stuff! Welcome to engineering!”  The jump in difficulty that I experienced during the first semester of my sophomore year was what I had originally expected from engineering, just about a year delayed.

“The Gauntlet” is by no means impossible, but it will likely be the most difficult semester you will ever encounter in engineering, mostly because you have to get used to the sudden difficulty and time devotion increase.  After “The Gauntlet,” classes remain difficult, but you aren’t going through that transition period any more.  You get used to it, and you adapt to accommodate the changes.

For the most part, the engineering faculty and academic advisers are well aware of the challenges and adjustments required to make it through “The Gauntlet” and they will do the best to help you succeed.

In my own personal experience from what I have seen of the engineering world outside of school, after graduation your work load and difficulty decrease significantly.  A career in engineering is by no means easy, but it is not nearly as difficult as being a student who spends about 16 weeks on in an intense load of courses and homework consisting of 4-6 different topics before switching to a new set of 4-6 topics with an entirely different set of professors who have different expectations and styles that you have to get used to all over again.  Then there is simply the shear load of homework.

Many engineering students spend the majority of their evenings and weekends doing homework. When they become full time engineers, they usually get their nights and weekends back.  For about the first month of my co-op, I had no idea what to do with all the extra time, but I quickly found activities to fill them.

Final Exams are just about the most stressful and challenging academic weeks for both students and professors.  During one week you will be required to present your understanding of all of the new subjects that you have learned about during the previous 15 weeks, in a format that pleases that particular professor the most.

You will have many performance evaluations and presentations during your engineering career to stress about but in my very limited experience, they are no where near as stressful as final exams.  As far as performance evaluations go, if you are anything like me, and simply can’t give less than your best on a day to day basis, your supervisor will notice that, and you don’t need to worry about performance evaluations.  As far as presentations go, usually you will create your own presentation and it will be on a topic that you are very comfortable with.  The presentations are done on your terms, which makes them much less stressful than final exams, where you are often guessing what you think your professor thinks is most important.

From what I have seen in the engineering world, you work on a specific set of projects in a certain direction for an extended period of time.  You have only a few supervisors to get used to and you don’t usually have to get used to a new set of leadership every 16 weeks.  It will differ from job to job, and if you are working on a high profile, priority project with quick deadlines, your work could be much more difficult than what I have generalized.

As you can see in the graph above, the amount of free time that an engineering student has as they progress in their degree decreases dramatically over time.  When comparing this graph to the first graph, Engineering Degree Difficulty vs. Time, the correlation is unmistakable.  Of course if the only thing that you do is school, and you don’t join in extracurricular activities (which isn’t as uncommon as you might think for super nerdy, socially inept engineers), you will have more free time than is represented in the graph above.

The biggest drop in enrollment in the engineering degree program that I have observed has been freshman year, when the first round of students realize, “Hey, I was confused, I don’t really want to do this. It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”  Then the rate decreases until the end of “The Gauntlet.”  If an engineer makes it though “The Gauntlet,” they are usually committed to sticking out the rest of the degree.

During orientation at many large universities, a representative from the college of engineering will tell the engineering freshman to look to their left and then their right before announcing that two out of every three students will not graduate from the engineering program.  Although this drop out is not nearly as dramatic at Riddle, many of the students who initially begin engineering do not complete it.

I believe that the drop rate is lower than the traditional rate because a student doesn’t usually come to Embry-Riddle unless they are exceptionally passionate about aerospace, and usually that passion can help a person get through the most difficult of challenges.

Why do people drop engineering?  Well, primarily for the reasons in the first two graphs.  They can see how difficult the path is before them and they decide that they want to go a different route.  Others realize that they don’t like math and physics as much as they thought when confronted with a full schedule of math and science classes.  I don’t really know all the reasons, but those are the two most common reasons I hear.

What happens to the drop outs?  Well, some of them go home.  They attend community college to find out what they really want to do, or go straight to another university if they already know what their new passion is.  Some students, who have already established themselves at Embry-Riddle and do not wish to switch universities, switch to less challenging majors such as Global Security and Intelligence Studies, or Aviation Business, or Aeronautical Science.  None of these majors are easy, but as the engineers like to say,  “they aren’t exactly rocket science,” and if they still have a passion for aerospace, though not necessarily for engineering, it allows them to pursue their passions from a different direction.

After your sophomore year, your general engineering classes are pretty much done, and you begin to get into engineering courses for your specific engineering degree, which should increase in interest and complexity. During my last space mechanics class we analyzed how the trajectories of the lunar landing missions of the late 60s and early 70s were designed.  How cool is that?  Classes only become more interesting as  you reach your senior year and you combine all of the concepts that you have learned into two courses that simulate a complete aircraft or spacecraft mission in the case of aeronautics and astronautics, respectively.

When I was at NASA, a fellow engineer reminded me that for aerospace engineers “the sky is not the limit,” a play on the phrase “the sky’s the limit.”  The kind of projects that you will work on as an engineer are pretty much epic in their level of awesomeness.  You could design a cutting edge, primarily composite commercial aircraft, or work on the spacecraft or station that will make human habitation on the moon possible.  Whatever you work on, you will realize that all of the hard work that you put in during college was well worth it.

In the everyday, strenuous monotony of engineering classes, it sometimes becomes difficult to remember what you are working for. Then every once in a while, something will happen or you’ll meet someone who will help you remember. This occurred for me during the ERAU Admissions Open House on October 17th.

The open house reminded me of several things, the first being why I’m doing all of this in the first place. “I’m really in awe of what you are doing and what my son wants to do’, said one of the fathers I spoke to on Saturday. “It almost seems like science fiction-what you work on every day.” I used to think of aerospace engineering as turning science fiction into science fact. I wanted to make a lasting technological difference to extend man’s abilities into the far reaches of space. Sounds pretty inspiring doesn’t it? It’s not something I think about everyday though.

It’s something you think about when someone asks you why you wanted to be a rocket scientist, or what you do as a rocket scientist. On an everyday basis, however, it’s hard to think, I’m solving Orbital Mechanics problems, and I can solve for exactly how long it should take a satellite to travel from Earth to Mars, and I can write a program that will generate a computer model of it. Usually my thoughts are something along the lines of how on Earth am I going to finish all of this homework? Why did I pick something so hard? Would I be happier with something simpler?

The truth of the matter is that what I am working on is amazing. The mission of the Dryden Flight Research Center is to “Fly what others only imagine,” and when I am working my co-op rotations there, I am a part of achieving that goal. How awesome is that? Plus, I get to say that I’m a rocket scientist! And of course that should never be anyone’s primary motivation for their studies, but it is definitely a huge perk.

Talking to perspective students whose excitement about aerospace engineering was fresh and unsullied was very refreshing. Speaking to students who were so interested in what I am doing was very rewarding. I was talking to several other engineering students and professors who felt similar. We all couldn’t help but feel recharged with a renewed sense of purpose.

Another thing that the Open House reminded me of was what I was like back and high school and then on the same train of thought, how much I have grown, changed, and accomplished since then. It’s kind of like when you were little and you hadn’t seen Aunt Edna in a couple years. You were able to see the gradual changes in your appearance and maturity. Aunt Edna didn’t though, and looking at you at time one, age eight and not again until time two, age ten, she saw the significant changes in your growth.

During open house I began to look at myself from a time one to time two perspective, and the results were somewhat dramatic. I know that I have said it before in other writings, but I honestly believe that I have changed more as a person in since I started college (about two and a half years ago) than I changed in the 13 years that I spent in public school.

It was a good feeling, being reminded of how far my hard work has really taken me. It reaffirmed that all of the hard work I have put in over the past several years has been worth it.

So, I did tell you guys that I would be back to let you know my grade on Economics test…It just took me a lot longer than planned since I have been so busy! I ended up getting a high B! It’s not an A, but I am still super happy I made it! 🙂   Soon we have another assignment, so hopefully that will help keep my grade up higher!

It’s really weird, I went from loving my business classes and not my Economics, to loving my economics and getting kind of tired in my business classes. I guess I’m starting to feel that it is the same thing over and over again. 🙁   But at least I have A’s in them. I still enjoy my speech class, and I have just about 100% in that class. In my computer class I have a high A too, but that class gets boring as well. 🙁  I do enjoy all my teachers though, and their teaching styles, I just get bored of some of the material because I know it already, or it gets too dry. I’m guessing a lot of people have that problem!!! :p

So, in my speech class we have a group presentation coming up and my group is doing “How to make a gingerbread house” {A haunted house- since Halloween is coming up} It is going to be so much fun!!! Oh and we are making it with graham crackers instead. I think our speech will be very creative because we are going to give the supplies to every group, so all the groups can make a house as we show them how! 🙂 Here’s some example photos of some of the different holiday gingerbread houses…

Don’t they look yummy!!! MMM…I didn’t realize how many different houses and designs one could use! It’s really cool to see all the varieties and have your choice of how ever many different candies you want to decorate you house with. Wow, i sound like Martha Stewart of something, getting all excited about designing! 😛

Well, have an awesome weekend, next blog I’ll probably be discussing how Open house went and how working is going so far. Talk to you all later!

A siren, a trolley bell, the shrill and quick double whistle of a hotel employee calling a taxi, the intrusive honking of the car horns of California drivers all over the city, the soft hum of rooftop air conditioners, the low buzz of crowded sidewalks, the blaring trumpet and soft violins of starving artists on the streets – cacophony induced by the action of one of America’s most iconic cities drifts through the single paned glass windows of my 29^th floor hotel room in San Francisco.

The view outside of my San Francisco hotel room

The number of sirens that one can hear in a short amount of time in such a large city is astonishing to a suburb dweller like me. Almost as astonishing as the fact that the hotel elevator can make it from the 1^st to the 29^th floor in less time than the elevator in AC-1 can make it from the 1^st to the 3^rd floor, and that my ears pop every time I descend from my room to the lobby.

I’ve never stayed in a downtown hotel before, and the sounds of the city are not the only new things I got to experience on my Northern California Embry-Riddle Recruiting trip. Admissions ventures out to cities all over the country to hold Admissions Information Meetings for prospective students to have a chance to meet their admissions counselors and have any of their questions answered. As a high school student, you might have attended a similar meeting in a hotel conference room near your home town.I did when I was in high school. Admissions invited me along on this trip to act as a featured student who could interface with prospective students on what college life at Riddle is really like. I jumped at the chance to explore places I’d never been before and to share my enthusiasm and passion for aerospace with prospective students.

At noon on Thursday, October 1st I started my drive to the airport with the steering wheel in one hand and a Large Starbucks Mocha in the other to fight the effects of a late night of finishing homework that would be due while I was on the trip. You can tell that I’m not a coffee connoisseur when I order a Large coffee…coffee people call them Ventis.

Whenever I travel, people always comment on my luggage.My mom says that you should be wary of people who say “never” and “always,” because they are probably grossly exaggerating their story and are not a very trustworthy source of information.In this case though, the word “always” works, and is not an exaggeration.I wonder if people reach their destinations and tell their friends, family, or coworkers about the goofy, tall girl in the airport with the hot pink and blue polka dotted suitcase with a blue ribbon and bow on it.Fellow travelers always seem interested in asking me about it; TSA agents have been known to joke that they “need to watch out for this one.”

This is my hot pink with blue polka dots suitcase that attracts so much attention when I travel. It has been to over 15 States with me – Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, just to name a few.

I arrived at SFO at six pm, caught an airport shuttle to my hotel, and walked through the doors of my hotel at seven thirty.It was rush hour.In San Francisco. I didn’t care though.I was so excited about my first trip to the city where you should “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” that I was fairly relaxed and enjoying the beautiful scenery, like the “Doughnut Shop and Bar” that I passed on the drive in.

I was shocked when I reached the hotel.We were staying in the same hotel where the Admissions Information Session would be held, and I have to say that it was the nicest hotel that I had ever stayed in during my sheltered life.My family members are typically Best Westerners or Motel 6ers.My room in this hotel was fully loaded with everything from a coffee maker to a fully stocked mini bar.I’d never stayed in a hotel with a mini bar. Of course you can’t eat or drink any of it unless you want to pay an exorbitant price (I mean no candy bar or miniature bottle of alcohol is worth my first born child or my right arm), but it was still a mini bar, which was awesome.

This is the awesome mini bar in my hotel room.

For dinner on my first night in San Francisco I went to this chic French-Country Restaurant and enjoyed a melt in your mouth meal of Beef Bourguignon.Walking back to the hotel, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw a bunch of yellow rubber ducks floating in a fancy mosaic tile fountain in front of another hotel.It seemed indicative of the eccentricity of the city.

On Friday morning, I awoke bright and early to eat breakfast at the hotel and then travel to start recruiting at a high school.The restaurant at the hotel, Grandviews, featured a 36^th floor panoramic view of the city, Alcatraz (which the Harry Potter fan in me kept wanting to call Azkaban), and the Golden Gate Bridge.

The high school that we went to was Lowell High School in San Francisco, which had a 51% Chinese population, a 99.4% college admittance rate, and a number of students who are interested in coming to Riddle.It was most impressive.

After that we met with a group of designers from a company called Pentagram who design our admissions recruitment, informational, and acceptance materials.Their studio looked exactly how you would expect an accomplished design studio in San Francisco to look.The building that housed the studio looked like it could have been a refurbished factory of some sort to an uncultured girl like me, with long frosted glass windows and a very modern, industrial interior with no shortage of concrete, clean lines, metal hand rails on concrete staircases, and frosted glass that divided the loft-like space into different offices and work areas.It was just so cool.

We then went to lunch with a few members of the studio and discussed the brochures that we had made and other related topics.After lunch I returned to my hotel to work on homework, which was probably actually lamer than it sounds, but homework doesn’t stop for weekend trips when you study engineering.
The next day I got up bright and early again, ate breakfast and headed towards a park and museum called the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.I was told that it had one of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge in the City.It was stunning.The park and museum were gorgeous and the view of the bridge was superb.

Me and the Golden Gate Bridge Part I

Me and the Golden Gate Bridge Part II

After playing tourist, we jetted back to the hotel for the main purpose of our trip: our first AIM.Apparently San Francisco’s “Love Fest” was occurring at the same time as the as our meeting, and the attendees of our meeting had to navigate around a street full of Love Fest attendees who were apparently present in varying degrees of nudity.After the AIM we were able to catch glimpses of a few participants, one in particular who was dressed in nothing but a pair of hot pink briefs that read “I’m Gay” on the back.

The AIM itself seemed to go very well. Admissions is testing out a new presentation with a free flowing form that is structured to be conversational, rather than a data dump.The format seemed to go really well and the 60+ people who showed up for the presentation appeared to be engaged and interested throughout.

Hotel sign

This is the presentation room where we held the San Francisco Admissions Information Meeting, or AIM.

In this picture, I am standing in front of the Nike Store on Union Square in San Francisco. The sign on the window reads “Actually, it is Rocket Science” which, as a burgeoning rocket scientist, I had to take a picture with it.

After the AIM we drove to Sacramento and enjoyed dinner on the river in Old Sacramento, a really cool tourist district where all of the building looked like something out of the old west, with wooden sidewalks and the like.Exhausted from several full days, I retired to my hotel room and slept for a solid 9 hours.I awoke refreshed, ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant (which was nice but not nearly as cool as Grandviews), and got ready for the next AIM.

Our Sacramento AIM was huge with approximately 70 attendees.The presentation went just as well as the San Francisco presentation, if not maybe a little better as we had a little more practice under our belts.I felt awesome whenever one of the students or parents would raise their hands and say “Actually this question is for Kerianne.”The parents and students seemed really interested to hear about why I chose Embry-Riddle, and what my life as a student there was like.

This is a picture that I took over Sacramento on my way back to school.

I feel that I was able to make a significant contribution to the presentations and I hope that I have inspired some prospective students to make Embry-Riddle their first choice.It was a great experience for me. I got to see the other side of the AIMs, having attended one myself before deciding to go to Embry-Riddle.I also got to see cities that I’d never visited before, had some great conversations with both Admissions representatives and families of prospective students. Overall, I had a lot of fun.

*Note: This is an extended version of an article I wrote that was published in the October 14th issue of Horizons Newspaper. Usually the editors get frustrated when I turn in a 1500 word article, even if I feel like I have to write that much to fully document an event or experience. 🙂 In other words I’m really long winded and I wanted to share my full experience including pictures (which didn’t appear in the paper due to space limitations) with my readers.

21st Birthday Cake - Poor College Student Style

Despite Prescott’s reputation as a retirement community, it is actually an awesome place to turn 21. This is because it hosts a street of bars known as Whiskey Row, and unlike many areas of the country, where gambling is illegal, it also hosts a couple casinos.

Whisky Row is such a self aware street that the street signs on this portion of Montezuma Avenue actually read “Whiskey Row.” The culture and history of Whiskey Row are a celebrated part of Prescott. Some of the bars on Whiskey Row date back to the 19^th century, when the street first started its legacy. There was a huge fire on Whiskey Row in the early 1900s that burned down almost the entire city block. I heard a story that a bunch of the patrons actually took the Victorian Style sold wood bar in one of the bars apart into pieces and carried it out into the center of the square to save it from the fire. When the saloon was rebuilt the bar was carried back in. During prohibition many of the bars on Whiskey Row were converted to speakeasies. Today Whiskey Row provides Prescott with some semblance of a night life that one can experience after they turn 21.

Each of the bars on Whiskey Row and in the surrounding areas in downtown Prescott, are so special and unique in their own right. There is one that has an outside balcony that overlooks the square, one that has an awesome tropical influenced back yard, one that plays country music with one of those rainbow disco lights on the ceiling, an Irish pub that you have to climb the stairs to get to, one that plays techno dance music and is always full of people, and one that is a rather relaxing hip bar with live music where it wouldn’t be unusual to spot a professor or two.

I had a few simple goals for my 21^st Birthday: to go to every bar on Whiskey Row and drink get a drink in a decent number of them, to not throw up, to not get a hangover, to remember the entire thing, to have a good story or two to tell afterwards, to gamble, and to have a great time with good friends. I was able to accomplish all of these.

Every bar on Whiskey Row offers one drink, whatever you want, for 25 cents on your 21^st birthday. As you make your way down Whiskey Row, that can accumulate into a lot of very cheap alcohol.

I had seen and heard about other people getting completely trashed on their 21^st Birthday. Because of peer pressure they drink so much that they spend the second half of their evening over a toilet, throwing up. Then the next day, the day of their birthday, they have a huge hangover and can’t remember half their night. To me, that sounds horrible. That type of experience doesn’t sound like fun at all, but neither does sitting at home on your 21^st Birthday.

So I opted for a milder form of a bar crawl with a few of my good friends. My friends and I waited the night before my Birthday until the clock edged towards Midnight, and then we set out for Whiskey Row. We parked at one end of the row and walked all the way to the other end so that we would end the night at the car. Just before the clock struck midnight, I entered my first bar ever.

Right as we walked into the first bar, the bouncer asked for our IDs and I excitedly held mine out proclaiming that it was my birthday. He smiled and let us pass after examining our IDs and wishing me a Happy Birthday. As I stepped up to the bar, I felt like was stepping foot onto forbidden ground. I slid onto a brown leather bar stool, and proclaimed again to the bar tender that it was my 21^st Birthday. He asked me what I’d like for my first 25 cent drink.

My first drink on my 21^st Birthday was a long island ice tea, partially because there is something epic about it, and partially because I quite honestly have very little knowledge of alcohol, I wasn’t really sure what to order. Did you know that there is no tea in a long island ice tea? I didn’t. I guess you learn something new every day.

Before my birthday I’d heard that hangovers were pretty much a form of dehydration from alcohol, and that if you drank at least an 8 oz glass of water between every drink while you were drinking, that you wouldn’t have a hangover the next day. I was testing this theory by drinking a lot of water between each drink.

I had seen my parents and friends order fruity drinks like margaritas and strawberry daiquiris in restaurants, but I wasn’t sure if that was the kind of drink you should order at a bar, so after ordering two long island ice teas I started asking the bartenders for their recommendations and ended up with a couple awesome drinks I’d never heard of.

My friends insisted that I end the night with an AMF, the PG version of which stands for “Adios My Friend,” and is made of several different types of alcohol. It was my fifth drink for the night in the two hour span between midnight and when the bars closed, and I knew I had my fill and I couldn’t finish the drink, which was fine because I was having a ton of fun, and I really didn’t want to overdo it.

The infamous AMF...this is me and my last drink for the night at Matt's Saloon on Whiskey Row

The night wasn’t over when the bars closed, though. From Whiskey Row we journeyed over to Bucky’s Casino, where one of my friends gave me a $20 bill to blow in the slot machines. I had a huge problem with this because I’m an extremely frugal person, and couldn’t blow an entire $20 in the machines. My friends insisted that being my 21^st birthday, I had to. I won $6 only to lose it all later.

In the first three hours of my 21^st birthday I had done a bar crawl and gambled. What else can you do on your 21^st Birthday?

Later on that day, after a little sleep, I was confident that I had spent my 21^st in the best way possible, and I didn’t have a hangover! Although, a hangover might have made a better story, huh?

Every year on my birthday without fail someone will ask me if I feel any different, and the answer is always the same– I feel the same as I did yesterday. How could someone feel that much different from one day to the next?

When I turned 21 I did actually feel different for the first time. I felt like I could finally enjoy freedoms that I’d been barred from for 21 years. I can now do just about anything but rent a car! I can walk down the alcohol aisle at the grocery store and not feel like I’m in a place where I’m not supposed to be, and someone is going to come and yell at me and tell me to leave.

I think part of the reason that this difference was so prominent was that I’d spend 6.5 months on a co-op rotation in California, where I was the youngest person in my social crowd and finished out the summer the only one who still couldn’t drink. We used to go out to a restaurant every Wednesday after work to happy hour for cheap drinks and appetizers. I would sit there with my Shirley Temple, which is the closest thing to a mixed drink that I could think of, and watch everyone else order a real drink. I really couldn’t wait until I turned 21, because I felt like I was being suppressed in a sense. As they say in California, “It was so not cool, dude.”

I didn’t feel the same way when I turned 18. I was pretty psyched that I could sign my own permission forms, and I could vote in the next election, but other than that there wasn’t anything else that I wanted to do. I had friends who went out and bought lottery tickets, cigarettes, and items from naughty stores on their 18^th, but that just seemed like a waste to me, a very straight-forward goody-goody. So my 18^th really wasn’t a big deal. My 21^st was a different story.

Since I could finally buy alcohol, and because my parents sent me a $100 gift card for my birthday, on the afternoon of my birthday I went to the grocery store and purchased $100 of alcohol. Why? Because it was epic! That and my parents told me I had to spend the money on something on that I wouldn’t normally buy. I drank a bottle of champagne with my friends on the evening of my birthday and I drank a bottle of sangria slowly over the course of about a week of dinners, but I haven’t actually drank any of the other alcohol yet, now more than a month after my birthday.

I don’t know that I would have changed anything about my 21^st birthday. I did everything that a 21 year old should do on their birthday, and it was awesomely liberating!

So my team and I just got back from our games in Denver today.  And guess what… WE WON!  BOTH GAMES!  Boo ya.  We played at Johnson & Wales University, which is a private Christian/Culinary school (who woulda thunk, right?), and we played both Johnson & Wales and Southwestern College, which is in Phoenix.  We had already played Southwestern and lost twice, so it was a big accomplishment for us to win.  We played as a team and the as hard as we could, and everyone felt that it was a game that was definitely up there in our top played games.

Here’s us when we first arrived in Denver, CO.

After our games, our team went to eat at Dave & Buster’s!  It was AMAZING.  It was my first time going there, and it reminded me of a Chucke Cheeses for big kids.  I had the teriyaki steak with mashed potatoes, which was probably the best meal I’ve eaten in weeks!  (Sorry Chartwells.)  After dinner we all took our game cards we got with our food and played games, got tickets, shot down zombies, played basketball, and took pictures.  Gina and Cassie set a trend and “made a baby”.  The photo booth takes both peoples’ pictures and “genetically” puts them together so that you could see what your baby looked like.  Here’s one of their three children (hehehehe).

It looks just like them, eh?

Even after a great weekend in Colorado, I’m happy to be back at ERAU!  Except for the whole coming-home-to-a-clogged-toilet part…maybe hotels aren’t so bad after all… 🙂

Well last time I wrote I was pretty stressed about my Economics Exam, but the morning of the exam I studied my booty off with a group of classmates and with our awesome tutor, Malin! I felt so much better prepared and as soon as I got the exam, I actually knew what I was doing. I felt so relieved!! And when  I finally finished the exam it was as if a huge boulder rolled of my shoulder!!! All this crammed knowledge in my brain finally got to be put down on paper, leaving me a lot more less stressed!!! I feel so good about  the Exam and I finally get to see my score today, I’ll write another blog to tell you the results!!

So this last weekend was great! Not only did we all get Friday off, but it was my Boy’s birthday! So, this weekend we went shopping for food for his weekend meals! And we did crazy shopping for Sunday, since we had a party for him! He loved the gifts I got him and his parents are getting him a new computer. They have to wait until it’s all done being built though, but he is excited for that as well. Oh and him and I made this dessert called “Dirt”- sounds strange for dessert but it’s made with oreos and pudding, and we put Gummy Worms in it for decoration. It came out amazing and we made a huge bowl of it, and all the guys devoured it! 🙂  We also had cake-that I made and Cookies and cream ice cream. So it was a fun a yummy birthday weekend. On Sunday we stayed up until about 2am, so that was pretty cool! (Thank goodness I didn’t have class until 4pm.)

That was wraps up my weekend, but yesterday is a whole new story! Don’t you just hate when you have those days that anything that could go wrong, DOES go wrong!!! Well, yesterday I worked all morning on my speech and when I left to drive to school, half way there I realized I grabbed my wrong bag! The bag I forgot had my eagle card, my disc that I needed to record my speech, my money I needed to pay for my disc! Unluckily, I could not make it back home in time to make it to class on time. So I talked to my teacher and he gave me a new disc, so now I owe him $4, not bad, but still I didn’t want to have to get all these discs for different speeches. lol. But thankfully, my speech went great, I got an A, but when I went to work I didn’t have my card so I couldn’t clock in. It’s not a HUGE deal, but still, it kind of sucks that it just added to everything!!! Well, that about finishes everything new that has happened. I hope you are all having a nice weekend! Take care and I’ll let you know what grade I got for my exam!!

This last weekend, my team and I went down to the Prescott Courthouse, during a local craft fair, and gave out information cards and put up posters concerning our Dig Pink match to fight breast cancer.  It’s our game at Embry Riddle on October 27 that we play against Yavapai College, and people who come can give donations for the cause or just support those who battling breast cancer.  Everyone will be wearing pink, including the Embry Riddle team and the Yavapai team, and so we needed support from locals and anyone else who would listen to us!  My little sister came with our team to help, since my family was in town.  She fit right in, handing out information to any and all people passing through the fair. 

Here are some pics of my team (compliments of Gina Conley):

I have no idea why the horse was there…. but the team couldn’t pass up posing with it!

And neither could Mahlet….

Kelsey and Ashley are trying to ignore it, with no avail.

Shaw just being Shaw! <3

Cassie and Shaw posing with our poor Laura, who tore her miniscus and had to get surgery. 🙁

After our Dig Pink Awareness activity was through, I drove my family down to Phoenix to have some fun! (minus my mom: she had left early that morning in my family’s car for a convention down there).  It was a blast hanging out with my family!!  After a day filled with shopping and eating, we went to Coolidge to stay with my grandparents.  Overall, it was one of the best weekends that I could’ve asked for! 🙂

Well…this blog post was supposed to be written exactly two weeks ago.  It doesn’t feel like I’ve been that busy but I guess every moment of downtime feels like it needs to be spent away from school-related activities.  For a couple days, I trained as a “telemarketing agent” for the admissions department asking people if they were planning on coming to our open house this weekend.  That’s where my Saturday will be spent.  I also have my first Air Force PFA (physical fitness assessment) on Friday.

If anyone is looking for a good TV show to watch, NCIS and House just started with a couple of very intense season premiere episodes.  I guess if sitting in front of a TV and just watching it isn’t your thing, you can try out Halo 3 ODST.  That’s pretty much the story of our hall for the past two weeks since it came out.  It has a feature called firefight where you just fight wave after wave of aliens.  It may not sound very fun but I think the XBOX in our lounge has logged more hours in these past few weeks than it had in its entire lifetime before then.

We had Friday off last week, which was coincidentally the day that NASA landed a probe on the far side of the moon to check for ice deposits.  Myself and about five others stayed up until 4:30 am and then drove down to the schools telescope to watch the event.  NASA predicted a several-mile-wide ice dust cloud…their prediction was wrong.  We lined up at the telescope and watched mission control reset the countdown timer several times as they recalculated the landing time, but in the end we saw nothing.  Needless to say we jumped into bed when we got back and didn’t wake up for a very long time.  My eyes opened briefly around 9:30 am, but drifted back into a slumber until 1:30 pm (my friend slept in until after 3:00 pm).  Later, a friend and I went geochaching on our bikes around Watson lake.  Geocaching is where you use GPS to find boxes that other people have hidden and sign your name in a log inside.  To make the day even better, when we got back we went to see Zombieland…it happens to be one of the BEST movies ever made.

You may be wondering why I’m writing this post at 1 in the morning on a Monday…wait, Tuesday.  I have an Air Force ROTC briefing in 8 hours that I have been preparing for and consulting friends for the past five hours.  We actually have PT in four and a half hours too.  Anyway, my briefing is on Air Force Organizational Structure, which luckily isn’t a hard topic.  I’ll probably post my results in my next blog, but right now I’m going to bed as soon as this post is live.