It's a beautiful day!

Yes indeed, it almost looks like spring is actually here folks! Put away the parka and the ear muffs and you should probably pull out the rain boots, but not today. Today is BEAUTIFUL!

Last week was Spring Break, I, unfortunately, didn't go anywhere exciting but home. Indianapolis was pretty gloomy the whole week but a couple of days were decently warm and I stayed busy helping my dad out at his office and helping my high school with their musical. I was much more interested in helping my high school because they're doing the same musical I did my sophomore year, Cinderella! I was a step-sister and my older sister was Cinderella, it was a great time.

That's me in the middle, Calliope

Anyway, we're all back on campus now trying to get out minds back into the swing of things, I'm sure you know exactly how that feels, and we're all enjoying this beautiful weather. I know I mentioned earlier some of my favorite nice weather hang out in Back Circle, but I thought I might give you all some more of my favorites around campus because:

1. The steps of MFA (Mitchell Fine Arts Building)
   This is the perfect late afternoon study spot the steps are shaded by the best trees but if you venture out into the sun the stone steps provide a perfect amount of coolness on a warm afternoon.
   
   
2. Haupt Plaza
   Right in the middle of the academic side of campus, Haupt Plaza is equipped with benches and the view of everyone walking to class. It's perfect for people watching or a long lunch with something greasy from the Raf (The Rafskeller) or sitting after class with a group of friends.
   
   
3. The Lawn outside of BSC (Brown Science Center) and Hazelrigg
   This is my favorite spot for classes outside, probably because my Calculus I and II professor, Dr. Stufflebeam, treated us to class here a few times complete with white board and everything needed for a good lecture, well maybe the attention wasn't quite all there. :)

Now, all I really want to do is go lay out in the sun, but alas I'm at work for another hour. I have rehearsal for "Kimberly Akimbo" tonight; we only have six more rehersals before opening night! If any of you live in Lexington and want to come see a Transy Theatre Production, our performances are next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday March 26-28 at 7 pm in Little Theater.

Until next time!

Scholarships!

This week and last week have been busy with prospective students on campus, to be exact the finalists for the William T. Young Scholarships are here for their interviews. It's kind of exciting to think back senior year when I had to chose a school, and for me at least a lot of that choosing depended on the aid and scholarships I got from the schools I applied to and Transy did a really good job making sure that they weren't beat out by anyone else. Now, I unfortunately didn't apply to Transy until after the deadline for the Willie T scholarship had already passed but I did apply in time to qualify for the rest of the scholarships. The Willie T scholarship is a full tuition and fees scholarship but there are also plenty of other academic scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $7,000 a year.

I just thought that would be something useful for you all to check out!

Later Gators!

I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it

So today SOL (student orientation leader) applications were due, and I, um, didn't get mine done :-/... It's all good, because I got an interview for the RA position, well it was actually two separate interviews, one with two of the Head RA's (HA's) for next year and one with the other HA and Bob Brown, the director of Residence Life. I thought they went well but there are 18 girls interviewing for 6-8 positions, so we'll have to see and hopefully in a couple of weeks you'll find out that I'll be an RA next year. (Knock on wood!) I still need to finish my AA application and just in case I don't get anything, I'm also going to apply for some study abroad scholarships for next year. But anyway, I know you all, as prospective students have miles and miles of applications ahead of you so start early and work hard on them, don't let those deadlines fly by!

Speaking of being a prospective student, I've been asked to share with you the Top Five Things that I liked about Transy as a prospective student... so here it goes!

1. Transy is a small university, about 1200 students, but it's not out in the middle of nowhere! Lexington is a great city and Transy is close enough to stuff downtown or a short drive away from all sorts of great stuff, AND if you like football and big school sports you can always be a UK fan, I mean most people here are. (I stand by my back up school Purdue for the big sports stuff. Sshh, don't tell anybody! )
2. Athletics at Transy are good, but they aren't so intense that they take over your entire life. You know, I was going to swim and I was excited because I would have been able to do that and still have time and energy to devote to my studies.
3. The campus is really pretty. I had looked at a few schools in Indiana where the campus had no trees! It was really important to me to be somewhere that makes me feel good when I'm walking around in the different seasons, and Transy has that. There are green places and trees and flowers and all sorts of growing things.
   
4. The professors are excited about the stuff they teach and the class sizes are small. When I visited, I sat in an upper-level physics class where the professor sat at a table with the eight students in the class, if someone didn't understand something, the professor could sit down with the student and see what was wrong.
5. Everyone seemed really excited about me being there. From the other students in the classes I sat in on to everyone on the swim team, to the people around campus, they all made me feel really welcomed and even better, wanted.

So, for all of you folks out there, I suggest you come for a visit to really check Transy out, I'm not lying when I say, I came to Transy because I fell in love with it during my visit and I know you could too, so don't be scared away because of something you see online or hear from a friend, try in out for yourself and schedule an overnight and if you do, shoot me and email I'd love to meet up and talk, I mean you already know me!

I'll talk to you guys later! Go out and have some fun!

'Tis the season of applications!

Yes dear readers, it's true all the applications for campus positions are out and about, and I'm all over it. From Campus Center Manager to RA (Resident Adviser) to AA (Admissions Assistant) to SOL (Student Orientation Leader) to all of the scholarship applications it seems I spend more time writing about myself then writing for my classes. Let me stop and say, I love Transy, and I'm always looking for ways to try and give back a little to the community, so I've gotten applications for RA, AA, and SOL and I would be thrilled to be able to do any of them. So far, the only one that's been turned in is my RA application and last night was the "RA Carousel" which is kind of like a big group interview. When we got there we were assigned a group, so like a carousel, we went around with the group to six different rooms and did different activities, like draw characteristics for the perfect RA or talk about our views on different campus policies or build an RA team from a list of applicants. It was actually pretty fun but it ran long and I was late to practice for Kimberly Akimbo.

Speaking of that, we started blocking this week and it feels good to be back on stage. I did so much theater in high school that it was kind of weird not to be on stage, or acting, and I was afraid that when I got to college I wouldn't be able to do any at all since I wasn't going to be a Drama major, but thankfully there's folks of all sorts in all of the drama and musical groups on campus regardless of my unrelated major. And if I would have followed through I could have done swimming as well. (I'm only reminded of this because I'm writing at work in the Campus Center and the swim coach just walked by.) That was def something I was impressed with when I visited Transy, was that people could be involved in so much. I know athletes that are in as many theater productions as possible and AA's that are also active in Greek Life or Student government.

The moral of today's story? Transy rocks (as usual) but also the people that go to here rock out all over campus while keeping their grades up and their heads on straight. :)

I'll catch you cats on the flip-side. Later.

PS. My picture was taken the other morning for "looking really cold" it got onto the Herald Leader Website at least.

Let it Snow!

The weather outside is frightful but my dorm room is so delightful, and since there's to class to go to, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

That's right kids, yesterday was the 3rd time in history classes at Transy had ever been canceled and today was the fourth! Being from "the north" (according to my friends at lunch today since Indy's north of the Mason-Dixon Line) I'm not to terrible impressed with the snow, but the ice is crazy! The trees in the Rosenthal Complex are so heavy with snow that the pathway is blocked and most of the highest branches are touching the ground. Serveral of the big trees around campus have lost big limbs and last night it seemed the whole of the Transylvania Campus had been turned into a ice-rink, that is with the excpetion of Fourth St. which becomes a river with any kind of precipitation. It's very pretty to look at but I don't envy the members of the physical plant trying to keep campus running. The electricty's out in the boys' dorms - Clay and Davis, and the new fancy Thompson Hall and from what I hear there's a large crowd gathering in Forrer's Back Lobby on their laptops staying warm in the heat.

Also, I've started my work study working the William T. Young Campus Center it's nothing too exciting but it's a job and it pays and I need the money for my trip in May so, work I shall. This week is also "Cabaret" a review show the Choir puts on and I've started rehearsal for Kimberly Akimbo. Since the campus has been shut down today and yesterday it's not quite as crazy busy as I was fearing it may, but Monday night was. I had rehearsal for Cabaret from 7-9, auditions for "School House Rock Live" from 8-10, Kimberly Akimbo rehearsal from 8:30-10 and a campus center scheduling meeting from 9-9:30. Yeah, I didn't get to stay at anything for as much time as I was supposed to but, sometimes that's how I gotta roll. C'est le vie. :)

Until next time!

Mmm, give me some spring please...

So, I'm not all that happy with my body at the moment. Starting Saturday afternoon I started having these really sharp pains in my lower abdomen, and when I say really sharp I mean: "OW OW OW OW OWEEEEEEEE, KILL ME NOW!" pain. It continued like this for a couple of hours then it got better, then late that night the pains came back, then again the next morning and continued on and on throughout the morning and into the afternoon, so my boyfriend and I try to go to a urgent care, but they were CLOSED! Needless to say, sitting in my boyfriend's tiny car in the cold, I wasn't very happy. So we decided, after some parental counseling, to go to the hospital. After we got there, the doctors did a bunch of tests and we were there for 5 hours to find that they weren't sure what was wrong and sent me home with some nausea meds. :( I continued to be sick until Wednesday, I finally got my ability to hold down food and today I made it out of bed for some normal activities. So it's better, but the moral of this in my here admissions blog is that my Transy friends were there for me. Whether they were texting me to see what I was doing and found out I was sitting in the hospital or stopping by once they heard that I was under the weather, or offering soup or advice, my Transy friends were there for me.

Proof! Legit Hospital Bracelet.
(Blurred so yall can't steal mah identities)

Also, as I was sitting in class this afternoon, a little loopy from my nausea medicine I gazed out the window and scratched at my seasonally dry skin and dreamt of my warm spring and early fall days, my favorite days at Transy. On warm, sun-drenched days students stream out of their dorms or the library to soak in the rays of light to help them in their photosynthesis and get some energy in a healthier way than an energy drink from the eighty or a cup of (illegal) coffee. On these days you can find students sprawled on any of the lawns on the academic side of campus under the shade giving trees, but my favorite spot on these days is Back Circle, the circle behind Forrer formed by the drive past Thomson, Davis and Clay Halls. Back circle is a refuge for the over studied, for the volleyball lover, for the people watchers, for the sun-bather, the barbecue-ing fraternity or the cornhole-ing student group.

I could, and have, spent the majority of days laying on a blanket, doing (or at least pretending to) do my homework. I've spent warm nights on the benches laughing with my friends, and I made the majority of my friendships in our dear back circle. Last year, shortly after returning from Winter Break, it was unusually warm and pretty rainy and a pick up game of mud football broke out, that game of mud football is among one of my most fond memories of Transy. Unless you were unaware, it''s not all about the things you learn in lectures or labs, but the things you experience in the time you spend at college, that makes the trip worth while. I'd like to say, so far, my trip has taken many unexpected, yet enjoyed detours; I wouldn't have it any other way.

Post-Mud Football in Forrer
With my Girls, Veronica and Meg.

Backstreet's Back Alright!

Hello Blogging World! Long time no see!

I know that I didn't give you all a wrap up of last semester, but everything ended up pretty well; we'll just say, no C's for me! Break was nice but it's hard to be far away from all of my friends here. I spent the first week at home by myself most days because my sisters were still at school and my parents were working. The second week was the week of Christmas so I got to spend more time with my sisters at least, my parents still had to work a lot of the week. Christmas itself was nice and relaxing, it's always nice to see people open the gifts you got them, there wasn't anything big for any of us but we all got Guitar Hero World Tour to share, but being together as a family is always the best part. The next week my boyfriend, Townsend, came up to Indianapolis to spend New Years with me; it was nice to have a little bit of Transy in Indy with me.

My Family on Christmas Eve

Over break, my parents and I decided that I would leave the car I was using, a Volkswagen Beetle, at home so my mom could use it to drive to and from work because it's a lot more fuel efficient than her mini-van. I figured that I didn't really need a car when all of my friends, and boyfriend, have them so I don't idly drive around wasting gas and I usually have a ride everywhere I need to go.

But we're back now, and we've been back for two weeks so it's been enough time for me to get back into the swing of classes. I'm really enjoying most of my classes, even Psychology which I'm taking for a GE credit, and my Education class which is an interesting insight into the whole education process. Spanish conversation is easy but a really good review of vocabulary and so forth and Computer Organization is different from any of the other CS classes I've taken so far.

Then on Wednesday I decided to audition for the Theatre Guild's student directed production of "Kimberly Akimbo" and I somehow landed the title role of Kimberly, a 16 year-old girl from a dysfunctional family who ages 4.5 faster than the normal person. So I'm really a 60 year old 16 year old. Kind of weird, and really scary to think about but exciting at the same time.

So, this semester is thumbs up so far, except the past few days its been FREEZING! Absolutely freezing cold, we checked the temperature Thursday morning and it was at ZERO! Thankfully campus is small enough that even the farthest classes really aren't too far and we don't have to spend 20 mins walking around outside trying to get to a class.

That's all I have for now, but I'll talk to you all later. <3