I now awaken from my deep slumber. Not really. I haven’t actually gotten a chance to write until today. With the sheer craziness of everyone because it’s nearing Christmas and myself working part time, you don’t exactly have a lot of time to spare.
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Today I just finished the field experience that I had needed to do for my 102 class. It had been looming over my head for who knows how long, but now it’s like a weight has lifted off me since I’m finally done worrying about it, and the rest of my break is pretty much open. I went and observed this past week at Scranton K-8 school downtown. It’s right at the edge of Treemont and Cleveland. I shadowed Ms. McComb over the week, and it was definitely a learning experience that I had. Being someone who went to high school in suburbia, it was a huge culture change to be going to a school downtown. The students were definitely more rowdy than I was expecting, and to be honest, the fact that there was a metal detector at the entrance was a little unnerving. But nothing drastic ever happened, and Scranton proved to be a very well run school. I spent each day at the back of the room, taking notes about the lessons and the classroom management. It’s not as if the students were delinquents, but in each class there would be three or four students who seemed to have little regard toward school and would act up and talk and talk throughout the entire class. They all had to wear uniforms, which I thought was a good idea since some of the students were economically less well-to-do, and the clothes masked everyone’s wealth. On the last day, there was a choir concert, and overall the whole experience was very educational to me. I learned what it might be like to teach outside of what I grew up with, and some of the more troublesome children I might encounter. Scranton was a very nice facility, and the positive experience I drew from it roots me more firmly in the direction of becoming an educator. For the rest of break I’ll be trying to earn money here and there, but I’m definitely missing my friends from BW. Hopefully we’ll all meet up sometime soon, but until then I’m having a fine time just relaxing at home.

Well world the day has finally come!
It’s Winter break and I could not be happier.
Although I’m not home yet. My volleyball team here has a tournament on Sunday so we as a team are sleeping at the “volleyball house” this weekend. Imagine around 10 guys sleeping in one house,… yeah not much sleep happens. Finals were not awful, I actually think I did alright on them. I’m just nervous about getting our final grades. Well I must go now for we have volleyball practice!
Wish me luck tomorrow, I’ll be sure to write about how we did!
Til next time
Jehu

Well, my first semester as a BW student is finally over, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Actually, over all it went pretty great. I had my German and Harmony exams first on Monday, and I was glad to get the two toughest out of the way first. German was eight thirty to ten thirty and Harmony was from one thirty to three thirty. Both took the entire exam time, though for Harmony it was more because of the large amount on the test to do rather than the difficulty of the material on it. The German was more difficult mostly because I haven’t gotten the full grasp of the language yet. Tuesday was great, because it was a free day, leaving me with time to relax andpractice before my Jury on Wednesday. My Jury was pretty much the sum of all the work I’ve done so far for the violin, and though I was nervous to do it, my results were very good. I’m sure I’ll do even better next time since I won’t be nearly as anxious as this time.

Hope you all have a Fantastic break.

Peace
Lauren.

Just as immediately as it came, finals have passed by with relative quickness. I won’t say my finals were easy, but I won’t say they were incredibly tough either. I got a 90-something on my online psych quiz, and I’m definitely pleased with that. For creative writing all we did was revise an old short story and write a 500 word story as well (I couldn’t ask for a final I would enjoy doing more). I think that after revising the one story I have a really good piece of writing on my hands that I’m really proud of, and I can’t wait to get feedback about it. My education test was a piece of cake, and if I don’t get some kind of A on it I’ll be upset. Physics wasn’t too bad nor was my lengthy American Literature test. And now I’m completely done with everything test-wise and I’m ready to unwind during break. I’ll be staying at BW and hanging out with a bunch of friends throughout the night, and then I’ll be seeing everyone off tomorrow. My field experience for education will be taken care of over break, but for now I get to relax for at least a while before I try to find a source of income over the next month. It hasn’t sunk in that there are some people that I won’t see for a while, but for the time being I can say that I’ll definitely miss some people, especially one friend who won’t be returning until fall ‘09. Until then, I say let the good times roll in.

Well, it’s all over! I’m really looking forward to going home. I fly out tomorrow morning, bright and early at 9:30. And I may or may not actually make it back to Vermont. See, there’s this winter storm moving up the East Coast, and it’s due to hit Philadelphia right as I’m getting there to change flights. So, I’ve stocked up on granola bars and bubble gum. I may put a blanket in my carry-on bag…just in case. If all goes well, though, I’ll make it through Philly and be in Vermont by lunchtime tomorrow.

It’s amazing how deserted it is on campus today. I was walking around taking care of some last minute stuff, and there was practically nobody around except for people packing up their cars to go home. I think almost everyone was finishing up their finals and leaving today. I got lucky, and finished all of my finals yesterday, so I had today to get everything ready to go.

And now, it’s back to packing for me. I’ll probably blog again over break, but in case it’s not before January, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy winter-holiday-of-your-choice, and a Happy New Year!

(Oh, and my knee is much better. As long as I can avoid stairs, I’m fine.)

Yay, it’s Thursday and it’s the last day of finals for me. I have only one final left, it is in Business, and I’m feeling good. I had 4 other finals earlier this week. Child Development Psych, Sociology: Social Problems, Film: Culture, and CRJ: Juvenile Delinquency.

Christmas is only in 14 more days, I’m SOOO EXCITED!!!!!!
I really enjoy the Holidays, minus the snow and horrid weather that comes with it. I’m still fighting this cold/flu and it hasn’t been fun. Lucky for me, there is modern medicine and it makes it much more bearable.

It has been a stressful week, but I’m almost done.

I really have to get back to studying, my last final and I better not slack off. Wish me luck.
So Off to studying I go, Happy Holidays Everyone!

-David

So, as you’ve probably read already, last night was the Holiday Gala. It’s one of my favorite dances of the year (and not just because of the presence of a chocolate fountain, I swear), so I was really looking forward to it. Well, things didn’t go as well as planned for me.

I borrowed some shoes from a friend for the occasion, and was having a lot of trouble walking in them because they were just a little too big for my feet. So, when my RA came up and asked me to swing dance with him, I kicked them off real fast. (Because I know that won’t make sense to most - if not all - of you, my RA is the former president of the swing dancing society on campus, which I used to go to until school ate my life.) We started dancing, and we might have been showing off a little bit…doing all the flashy moves that are all basically me spinning around a lot and him keeping me from careening into people. Everything was going really well until he decided that to finish up we needed to do the Armbreaker. The Armbreaker is this really cool swing move where the guy spins the girl, switches hands, spins her some more, until she ends up in a dip, then spins her out again. It’s really fun, but dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. And again, everything was going really well, until I went into the dip. At that point, my right knee decided to hate me, and collapsed. I went down like a rock, and couldn’t get back up. I dunno what I’ve done to myself, but it hurts.

So, the moral of this story is to be careful when dancing. Things can go wrong.

In other news, it’s finals week! That means five more days (not counting today) until I go home!

Hellloooo everybody. Did anyone miss me? Anyways I’m battling this lovely could/flu/sinus thing that I have and the snow outside isn’t helping it. I’m drinking orange juice so much that it will probably replace my blood as the fluid.

Anyways, an update to the interesting things that happening around campus.

Friday Night-
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
Put it this way, these guys are the guys that can save the world if there is ever is a technological meltdown.
Anyways, AMC had a Lan computer games. Free food and drinks was provided and it was a great night of fun enjoyed by those who joined in the fun.

Saturday Night -
Holiday Gala.
Everyone remembers their homecoming? Ok, now with that picture, throw in arts and crafts consisting of Christmas cards and random decorations, two caricature artists, and Christmas items everywhere? Well, you have Holiday Gala. Everyone dressed up, had great food, and participated had a great time. I went with my girlfriend and we had a great time. My thanks to the Student Government for sponsoring the event. Woot woot…..

Back to the studying for my finals and working on papers. Yay… 4 more days of pain… ugghhh
-David Tran

Today was the last day of classes for the fall semester of 2008. And i couldn’t have been more ready for this semester to end (classwise at least). I cannot wait for these exams to be over and to not have to worry bout school for a month. My last day was very eventful. I had a test in Organic chemistry and in physics, plus a take home test to turn in physics also. But the big event of the day is the ghost of kohler hall.

If you can to peruse the book Haunter Ohio IV, you will find a write up about the ghost of kohler hall, the residence hall I reside in currently. Anyway, the short version is that there is a little girl ghost who comes around sometimes and says “Mommy.” I have not seen nor heard this ghost. But two friends last night, independently of each other heard a strange sound last night that they assumed was a squeaky door. Then, a little later in the night, heard all the pipes in the hall way crack loudly and heard clicking sounds coming from their rooms. I believe it was merely the cold making the water in the pipes crackle and the same with the clicking sound, but who knows. For people for believe in the paranormal, kohler may not be the hall for you. But like the title of my blog says, now with classes done, i feel neither ghosts nor classes are in existence. Well, at least for the remainder of the year.