Rosenthal

So I'm going to make this post a quickie.

This weekend was nice, I went to bed at like 10:30 on Friday and then my Big, my roommate and I went to the mall on Saturday. Saturday we got a big ole group of people together for a pretty kick ass game of Apples to Apples in our room. There was probably 10ish people in the room and it wasn't cramped at all, because I live in the Rosenthal Apartments.

The Rosenthal Apartments are really dorms, they're a big room that you share with another person but you also have your own bathroom and a little kitchenette with a sink, cabinets, and a FULL SIZED Fridge. It's amazing. We have our sleeping area in the room and our living area in the back with a pull out couch for visitors and plenty of room for our desks and drawers and everything. But my favorite part of my room is my bed. This summer I decided I wanted a personalized dorm bed and with the help from my dad we made a canopy that sits on my bed like a top bunk would. I added curtains and voila my own little get-a-way, it's pretty wonderful. It's nice for naps because all you have to do is to draw the curtains and you cave a warm, dark little resting area, this feature also doubles for blocking out those pesky morning rays when you want to sleep in a little bit. :)

The Living Area:












The Kitchenette:












My Bed:












Anyway, on Saturday we had a real big two turkey Thanksgiving meal with a bunch of my friends, it was pretty delicous and really fun to make our own big meal for the first time.

I've got to run, as the semester winds down the professors wind up and make sure we don't get bored before finals. :)

Registration

I’m in a much better mood this week. I don’t have any CS projects due this week; that always helps. I’m getting excited about registration, and taking some interesting classes, my mom suggested that for my social science credit that I take Psychology, which was her minor in school, and I hope that’s interesting. And since I’m not sure about what I want to do with my life I figured I’d take an education course in case I head down the teacher road, which interestingly enough, many of my teachers in high school still insist that I’m going to be a teacher. I’m also planning on taking Spanish Conversation, which I’m really excited about because, although my Spanish writing may suck sometimes, I can talk up a storm. That’s what I get for speaking only Spanish in Spain the summer before my senior year right? But that’s a different story. Then I’m taking a required CS class with a professor I haven’t had yet so that’ll be a new experience.

I think I’ll take this opportunity to explain some of the GE (General Education) credits that you have to take at Transy, as a First-Year your first run-in with GE’s are University 1111 and FLA (Foundations of Liberal Arts) University 1111 is a pass/fail class that meets informally twice a week your first semester at Transy. FLA is a reading/writing course that helps to acclimate you to the Liberal Arts education, basically this is the first class where you find out that every subject at Transy is going to involve some writing intensive classes, and classes where you’ll have to give presentations and classes where you’ll have to do research projects with annotated bibliographies and processed writings. Personally, I loves FLA I and FLA II and got a lot out of the courses; you get some good pointers from professors from all subject areas, because not only English professors teach FLA, you could have a professor with their doctorate in Math teaching this class.

Anyway, you also have to take classes like Lifetime Fitness (think PE), and you have to take a Social Science class (Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology), a Natural Science (Chemistry, Biology), a math class; you have to take a series of foreign language classes, and a couple of other harder to explain required groups of classes. Regardless, through doing this, Transy really does create well rounded students, you may hate every second of your Chem I class, like I did, but when somebody is taking about it or it pops up on Jeopardy, you know what’s going on.

Anywho, I register for classes on Wednesday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday I’m going to *try* to get into General Psychology, Spanish Conversation, Observing the Learner (intro to ed class), and choir, and then on Tuesday/Thursday I’m going to take Computer Organization. I know, this schedule sounds amazingly exciting, but calm down folks, it’s just a schedule. We also sign up for our May Term classes tomorrow.

May term is a time of happiness, where you have 1 class for about a month (the majority of May) and a lot of the time teachers take trips to do different things. Some trips I know of this year include: biking through Spain and France, going to Ireland, and of course the choir is taking a tour of Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia!(^ Ljubljana, the Capitol of Slovenia) I know I’ve talked briefly about this trip before, but let me tell you some more bout it. For ten days, members of the choir and the orchestra, will tour around these beautiful countries, our stays will include a two day stay in Venice with walking tours and all. The price isn’t cheap, but that’s what summer jobs and so forth are for, right?

Stress

So I’m feeling pretty crummy and very tired, I have a test tomorrow and a project due today. My birthday was yesterday but was overshadowed by a day spent mostly in the airport.
Thursday I woke up at 4:45 AM so that I could catch a plane to Oklahoma for a scholarship conference. The timing really couldn’t have been worse. This is the busiest time in my CS classes, I just have program after program due and I also missed a test on Friday. Boo. Then yesterday I left my laptop charger an airport where we had a layover. So it’s off to the lab computer I must go to try to finish the project that I had worked on and now lies on my (dead) computer. So I’ve been working on that all day and still haven’t finished. I just can’t wrap my head around what’s going wrong with it, so I’m taking a break.

We pick classes sometime very soon and I don’t really know what I’m going to take. To tell you the truth I’m really just looking forward to winter break and the extended amounts of sleep I will get. On top of being sleepy, my allergies are going a little haywire and I’ve been getting these ridiculous headaches behind my eyes, it’s def very far from enjoyable. I imagine that all of these symptoms are stemming from stress and I need to slow down, but it’s pretty much impossible.

I better get back to work… but a word of warning before I go: at any college you decide to attend, stay on top of things, it’s the best way to avoid the stress.
Hasta Luego!

Raf Week

So, Halloween time at Transy is basically amazing. Because of our lack of football team, we don’t have a homecoming per say, but we do have Raf Week.

Ok, so way long ago there was this guy, Rafinesque, who was a biology professor at Transy and was way into finding all these new species of plants and so forth like so into it that he would not show up to teach his classes for weeks at a time and when the President of the time decided to tell Raf what was up, Raf got all upset and left the school. As legend goes, when he left, he placed a curse on the school; shortly after that the president died of the yellow fever and the main building burned down… and so bad thing continued to happen until the administration decided to try to right the wrongs and had Raf’s remains moved into Old Morrison. But, rumor is that every seven years bad things happen at Transy, and some people believe while others don’t that the remains that were brought here weren’t actually even Raf’s and some say that bad things will always happen at Transy and there’s nothing we can do to appease Raf’s spirit. But we do get a sweet week a stuff happening on campus to try!

There’s a week long celebration of Creepy Raf type things from ghosts tours of campus to a bonfire and a haunted house, and a drawing for students to spend the night in Raf's tomb, all leading up to Halloween, and most of the time, Parent’s Weekend.

On top of everything going on at Transy, this year I decided to go out into the community for some Halloween fun and joined the community reenactment of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The jist of it is that a bunch of people (that’s us) dress up like zombies and come to life to dance down the street to the Tune of Thriller, led by our very own Michael Jackson impersonator. I know people love to watch it, but I can’t imagine it’s even close to being in it. Regardless it’s a ton of fun and a bunch of Transy people always turn out to watch it and then maybe to go to the Kentucky Theater for a little Rocky Horror Picture show at midnight. Regardless, the time leading up to Halloween and Halloween itself is always an amazing experience at Transy and in Lexington in general.

Here's my roommate and my grand-big and I in our zombie garb:

Parent's weekend was also this weekend and my parents came down for a visit. It was real nice to spend the day with them, we had lunch in the Caf, and then we went to a desert Open house type thing in the Chapter room, then we went shopping at Hamburg and they got me some birthday presents. After shopping we went for a drive in the country and I took them to my boyfriend's house, which is way out in the woods. My mom loved it because the trees were really pretty.

Here's me and my momma:

But I think that the trees all over are really beautiful, especially on campus. We came back to campus and my dad and my boyfriend took naps while my mom hemmed my choir dress and I took a shower and got ready for the concert. After that we walked downtown and had dinner at Sawyer's, which was delicous as usual. Then we went to the concerrt which was good and everything, and then my parents peaced out. And I went to bed. :)

Here are some of our pretty trees on campus:

Today I went to the play, which was The Crucible and it was very good. I may be a little biased because one of the leads was my new, wonderful big. Anyway, it was a fun, interesting weekend. And I'll talk to yall lata!

Peace!

Money is Kinda Lame Sauce

As we all know the economy’s been pretty lame and that’s been affecting several major industries, including the housing industry. Well, as I’ve shared before, my dad is a Real Estate Agent, and that means over the time I’ve been at Transy his income has greatly decreased. In the last month the company he was working, where he was also the Manager of the office, closed and he was out of a job. And as we all know, that sucks, a lot. So, my family decided that we had to make an appeal to the finical aid office to see if there was any more money available for me and I set off to get a job.

I applied and interviewed at a couple different places and ended up working at The Gap. Now, don’t get me wrong, but retail is so very wrong for me. The monotony of folding the same sweater 8 times within a half an hour is enough to drive me completely up the wall, so I continued my job search. The next interview I got was at a Tennis Center, where, Carlos, a friend of mine works. As soon as I had snagged an interview, I called and quit my job at the Gap, just in time to receive my first and last pay check. Well I interviewed at the Tennis Center and was basically hired on the spot. Now, I’ve only worked twice and it’s pretty boring, BUT I can do my homework while I work which is always a bonus.

Anyway, while all my job hunting was going on my dad was busy communicating with Dave Cecil, the Director of the Finical Aid Department, and they worked some stuff out. I went to meet with Dave Wednesday to sign the agreement for my revised finical plan and found out that I was now eligible for work study. Which is great, but it also meant that I wouldn’t be able to work weekdays at the Tennis Center, so Thursday I had to go in (to my first real day of work) and tell my Manager that my availability had been cut in half, thankfully, he was very understanding about the whole situation and even let me know that if I was too overwhelmed with working at both places that we would understand if I needed to quit there, but I hope I don’t have to because I’m trying to get as much moneys as I can getst to go on the Choir Tour in May Term (To ITALY!) and to study abroad… at a date to be decided at a later time.

But anyway, I have a conference with our pledge director for the sororiety and I got a package at the back desk! (It’s always exciting to get mail and the bigger, the better)

Hasta luego!

Fall Break

Whew. It’s been a long, busy stretch and a lot has happened. I’ve had a ton of reading, a few tests, a couple of programs, and fall break. Fall break was defiantly the highlight in there though.

Let’s just start off by saying, I love Transy; I love my friends at Transy; I love living in Lexington, but I love my family just as much or more than all of those other things and I love to just be at home with them, so that’s where I went for my break. Now, I know that a lot of our perspective students are from Kentucky, but I’m sure there are some of you out there who aren’t and I’m in that same boat. Personally, I love being this distance from home. I’m close enough that, if I want, I can just go home for a weekend and not spend half of that time driving, but I’m far enough away that I can learn to rely on myself and not run home every time something goes wrong or I don’t feel well or even if I need to do laundry. I feel that I have grown up immensely in the year or so I’ve lived in Lexington. Not to mention, my parents can’t just drop by anytime and tell me I need to make my bed either.

Anyway, I went home for break and for the first time in my life, I voted for the next president of the United States of America!!! Let me tell you, if there’s anything good about turning 18, it’s not being able to play the lottery or buy tobacco; it’s getting the chance to give your input on how the country should be lead. I know voting early’s not quite as climactic as going to the polls on Election Day, but it’s all the same as and the sticker they gave me at the Clerk’s Office says, “I Vote, I Count.”

It’s really interesting to see the effects on the Transy campus from the election as well. Last year, before the primary, Bill Clinton was scheduled to come to campaign for Hillary, but we soon found out that was canceled and instead both of them came to talk in our own little Beck Center. It was pretty intense, and there were rumors that Bill was supposed to come back to support Obama this time, but I haven’t heard anything else about that. Regardless of your political affiliation though, there’s defiantly groups for everyone. We’ve got the Campus Republicans, the Campus Democrats, Transy Students for Obama, and we’ve even got a group of Ron Paul supporters running around somewhere.

Well, I think that’s all for now. Until next time, goodnight and good luck.