Carrie

Finishing Up...

The end of the semester is always kind of a strange time for me - almost everything is winding down, but there is still so much work to be done. At this point, I am sort of a holding pattern - three of my classes are completely over, while two others have one final grade to complete. One of these final grades is a take home exam and the other is a final exam, but neither of them have been fully addressed in class. Because of this, I am in limbo between knowing that they will entail lots of work and studying, but not wanting to get started before I truly know what is going to be expected...I really hate this feeling, but I love knowing that in less than a week it will all be done!

I finished up my Writing Center class last Thursday with a party put on by my committee. Overall, it was a successful semester in the Writing Center, but I think I am going to step away for a semester and focus on other activities - I enjoy coaching, but it gets challenging and I think it would be best for me to take a semester off. I will have plenty of other things to occupy my time however!

For African American Lit., we had a final project to present. My group went on Monday - it felt great to get it over with because we had to act out a skit in front of the entire class, and if you know me at all, you know that is NOT my favorite thing to do. I really enjoyed this creative outlet however, and it was a great way to wrap up the course.

My Foundations of Business class finished up today. My group had to present our semester's worth of hard work on our business to the class. We ended up being very successful, making over $100 on our P-Day t-shirts and being able to offer sizable dividends to our shareholders. It feels great to finish up with that project, as that was the cause of a fair amount of stress this semester!

I have my final dance class tonight, but we won't really finish up until tomorrow, when we are going to be dancing outside on the library lawn as part of the Fine Arts Festival. The weather looks nice and my mom was able to get the day off from work and my grandparents live close by, so they will all be coming to watch. I haven't really had a performance since my senior recital back at the end of high school, so I am glad that they will be able to come.

The two classes that I have final grades in are American Lit. and Meteorology. I will have my Meteorology exam next Tuesday at 9:00 in the morning and my American Lit. take home exam will be due on Tuesday at noon. Between studying for the exam and writing the three essays for the take home exam, it will make for a busy weekend, but after noon on Tuesday, it is SUMMER VACATION!!!

This summer is going to be amazing, but a little scary at the same time - it will be my last real summer vacation! I will be working at the Admissions office again, I have tickets to a Maroon 5/Counting Crows/Sarah Bareilles concert in August, I will be going on our annual family vacation to Maine and hopefully doing lots of other fun stuff too. I am definitely looking forward to it!

International Service Trip!

As you may remember, I went on an Extended Service trip to David, Kentucky during Spring Break this year. This trip was organized through MOVE (Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts) and was a great experience! The amazing experience that I had motivated me to look into further service opportunities, one of which was an International Extended Service trip, also through MOVE. Once you have been on a domestic trip, you are eligible to apply for one of the two international trips, one is to India and the other is to the Dominican Republic. I decided to apply for the Dominican Republic trip, and I found our this morning that I was chosen to be one of the students on the trip!

I will be traveling to the Dominican Republic over Spring Break next year, doing service and experiencing the culture. I am SO excited!! I'll write more once I find out more specifics - we are going to have a meeting before this semester ends, so I will update you as soon as I know!

In other news, we have less than two weeks of classes left for the semester! These few weeks will definitely be busy, but they will also be really fun. The weather here has been amazing for the past several days, so I hope that continues! Campus has really come alive; students are laying out on the lawns, playing Frisbee and baseball and just walking around more. It's great to see so many smiling faces outside of the dorms enjoying the end of the semester!

fun SMC events

I neglected to write about two of the big events that I attended on the SMC campus during the past few weeks. In addition to the Wyclef concert last weekend, I participated in an event called Midnight Madness (check it out at themidnightmadness.com), which was a scavenger hunt to raise money for Best Buddies International, which is a program that has a chapter at SMC. I was on a team with the majority of the girls from my Kentucky trip, and we had a great time - we got a person in a suit to do a handstand, threw a snowball at a person in a costume and many other ridiculous things - check out a few of our photos (we had to use them as evidence that we completed the tasks!!)

Our whole team in a pyramid

Team members using their tongues to make a clover, a taco, turned over completed and touching their nose!

Fitting our entire team into a single sized bed!

The other event that I attended was called Friday Knight Dry, which was an event hosted by the entire campus. The point of the event was to promote staying sober on a Friday night by offering tons of activities around campus and earning play money to use at an auction at midnight. I attended a carnival in one of the residence halls, SMC jeopardy in the Hoehl Welcome Center, regular jeopardy in my building, karaoke in Alliot, a fly fishing demo in the dining hall and then the auction at midnight. Overall it was an incredibly successful event and I ended up winning a Vera Bradley bag at the auction!

There's never a shortage of things to do at St. Mike's - this weekend my time will be mostly taken up by LEAP, but there are plenty of other events going on too - there's definitely more than just sitting around watching movies going on here!

I'm the intern...

If you read Mallory's blog, you may remember her two internships. Internships are available to all students at St. Mike's regardless of your major and I am thrilled to be doing an internship next semester!

I've known that I wanted to do an internship for over a year - I had heard very positive things about the program and getting academic credit for valuable on-the-job experience seemed like an experience too good to pass up! I applied at three different places, interviewed at two places and was offered both of those internships. I had to make the tough choice between interning at Marketing Partners (a marketing firm that works in socially responsible marketing) and Make-A-Wish Foundation of Vermont (a nationally known non-profit organization that grants wishes for ill children). After deliberating, I decided to accept the internship at Make-A-Wish for several reasons, but most importantly because I thought it would be a great fit and provide great experience for me.

I have been working on filling out the application and getting all of the necessary signatures, so I am almost officially going to be interning next semester! I couldn't be more excited - I think it will be a great experience; I'll keep you posted.

In other news about next semester, I registered for my classes yesterday. I am going to be doing the internship, taking my senior seminar in English (I chose the class topic "Endings"), Western Calligraphy, Advanced Dance and Research in Electronic Environments. I have also been asked to be the Teacher's Assistance in two Jazz I dance classes, which is going to be so much fun - I will get to work with my teacher in two of the 100-level dance classes helping the beginning dancers with the new material. It will be a lighter semester (only 14 credits) but because I am done with all of my LSRs and only have one more English class to take, I think I deserve it!

I won't fail to stay busy however! Just a few nights ago I found out that I will have the privilege of being the Support Rector on September LEAP 2008 - my good friends Nick and Julie were elected at co-rectors and they chose me to be their Support Rector and another great guy, Gary to be the KC rector. I know that this most likely doesn't make sense to you if you are not familiar with the LEAP program, but it is an honor that I am proud to be given a chance to do! I was also approached by Drew (from the Admissions Office, a fellow blogger) about coordinating a new program through Founder's Society, which I am also really excited about - more info to come once we start finalizing things!

Overall, I am excited about next semester's opportunities - I can't believe that it will be my senior year! This year is flying by and I can only imagine how fast next year will go! It's always nice to have fun new things to look forward to, but I definitely don't want to wish the rest of my junior year away. I still have April LEAP (this weekend!!), P-Day, final gatherings for various activities and final exams...It will be a busy few weeks for sure!

P.S. I know that Drew mentioned the Wyclef Jean concert in his blog, but I had to mention it in mine too - it was by far one of the best concerts that I have ever been to! The energy that Wyclef brought to the crowd for two solid hours was fantastic and the fact that he walked through the crowd while singing Sweetest Girl was amazing - it was by far one of the best events that I have had the pleasure of attending at St. Mike's!

POW and other happenings

What is POW you ask? POW stands for Pre-Orientation Weekend and is a great opportunity for incoming first-year students to take advantage of over the summer. There are three POW weekends each summer and each has a different team, giving talks and interacting with the new SMC students, answering questions, easing nerves and spending time with the students. I am writing this blog because I am going to be one of these team members on POW 3 this summer!

I was asked to give the "adjusting" talk. I thought a lot about what I wanted to say and wrote the talk last weekend. I debuted it last night to a few of my roommates and my RA, then read it to Mallory this afternoon and presented it at the POW meeting this evening. It was received well and I am really excited to share it on the weekend. I don't want to give too much of it away, but basically I am going to talk about my my experiences adjusting to college and how my initial ideas about this adjustment ended up being totally wrong. If you are going to be an incoming first-year, you should DEFINITELY go on POW - I did when I was a first-year and it was a great experience. If it works in your schedule to go on POW 3, that would be optimal...I might be biased, but because both Nick (my fellow blogger and good friend) and I are on team, you won't be disappointed. Our team is shaping up really well and I can't wait to meet all of the students!

If you read Mal's blog about LEAP you know that it is quickly approaching - I couldn't be more excited! My team still has a good amount of work to get done, but we are getting more and more excited every day. We have an extra meeting this Thursday night, so hopefully that will but us ahead of the game!

Before the POW meeting tonight I attended an Extended Service reunion dinner - all of the trips that went over Spring Break gathered together to reflect on our experiences and present a little bit about our trip to the other students who took part in Extended Service. It was great to see the girls from my trip! This weekend we are actually all participating in a huge scavenger hunt called Midnight Madness, which benefits Best Buddies, a national organization that works with adults who have developmental disabilities. I can only imagine the crazy things that we are going to have to find during the day long hunt...it will be so much fun and it will be great to work with all my friends from my trip.

That's what's new here...as always, I welcome comments and/or questions!! Enjoy the spring weather!