Goodbye, Sophomore Year

Well, finals are over and I’m going home for the summer in just two days… it all happened so fast! I am more than ready for a well-deserved break, even though that break is not going to be much of a break at all. I’m keeping very busy this summer with summer classes and work and best of all, a trip to Boston (a little like a paid internship) to teach about trade policy and social justice issues for two weeks in July.

So my sophomore year is officially over and I’m half done with college, and its time for my last blog. I’ve really enjoyed being a UIS blogger and would like to thank you all for reading. And most of all, I’d like to emphasize that UIS really is a great place to be. Not many universities allow you to be so directly involved. UIS is small enough that it’s easy to be involved and develop your skills as a student leader and influence your school, as well as build good relationships with faculty, staff and administrators and make great friends to help you through the next four years.

When I look back on this year, I'll always have great memories of all the hours spent studying (ok, maybe not so great), a Springfest victory, late-night runs to Wal-Mart and Steak and Shake, learning how to coexist with my roommates, experiencing the joy of College Station, Texas (gig 'em, Aggies), dancing all night at Homecoming, all the fun I had with my friends, bringing Fair Trade to UIS and most of all, the amazing students that make UIS a great place to live and learn.

Have a great summer everyone :)

SPRINGFEST CHAMPS

This year’s Springfest champs… Fitz’s 11!

This was my first year participating in Springfest and I was thrilled that our team won first place. Overall, it was one of the best experiences at UIS I’ve had so far. For those of you who don’t know, Springfest is UIS’ oldest tradition. Students form teams and they compete against each other in various activities for points, and the team with the most points at the end of the week wins.

I have to say, going into the week, we were definitely the underdogs – I don’t think anyone expected us to win. But we really performed well in all the competitions, which included Improv, Trivia, Flag and Chant, Scavenger Hunt (probably the only time I have and ever will again run across campus holding a frozen pizza in one hand and a cricket bat in the other), a skit and Sports Day. We had some serious close competition from the other teams, but by the end of the week, we narrowly won first place by seven points.

So, thanks to the team for making Springfest an awesome experience and helping us become champions! I think our team had a lot of heart and each person contributed something special. Tom and Rynders both kicked grand slams in kickball and helped us win the game and Nicole came up with an awesome design for our team’s flag. Quick and D Pratt were absolutely hysterical at Improv Night. Bubba was a great anchor and really helped us win the Tug-of-War. Luker did a great job coming up with our chant and Steve and Bohlmann kicked serious ass at football and kickball. Jeff was the best rapping Abraham Lincoln ever, Fitz was an incredible leader throughout the week (even toughing it out through tonsillitis to compete at Sports Day!) and… well, I totally saved our team’s butts at Trivia Night with my knowledge of Greek mythology.

In other news, my sophomore year is coming to a close and there’s only a couple weeks before finals… I’m looking forward to summer, but I’m going to miss everyone.

Concerts and Relays!

So me and six of my friends went to another concert when we came back from Spring Break – Acceptance, hellogoodbye, Panic! At The Disco and The Academy Is… were totally awesome. It was at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis (tiny tiny club!) and it rocked our faces off. Well, minus being the oldest people there and surrounded by idiot high school kids. Here’s some pics:

Relay for Life was also this weekend, which is an overnight event in which students circle a track from 6 pm to 6 am while raising money for the American Cancer Society. I was on Pat's Pirates (the pirates of the CANCERbbean, haha) and we kicked some serious ass. We raised $2000 and also won Most Decorated Campsite and the scavenger hunt. I raised $500 (thanks to the donations and incredible support of my friends and family) and even won my first beauty pageant! That's right, I was crowned MR. RELAY! In the Relay pageant, constestants had to dress up and compete as the opposite sex so me (dressed in my boyfriend's clothes) and my teammate Jeff (dressed in a sexy little black dress with full makeup) entered and were crowned Mr. and Mrs. Relay. By the end of the night, our Relay had raised $15,000 overall and we all had an awesome time. Thanks to my teammates and everyone who participated for making it such an incredible experience!

Spring Break, Y'all

Two back to back conferences… what a month!

ICPA was pretty cool. We had some really interesting workshops on different topics and I really absorbed a lot of good information, even if it threw me for a loop a little when every professional journalist I asked told me I didn’t need grad school. The workshop on foreign corresponding rocked, as did the keynote address from Greg Kott, the rock and roll critic from the Chicago Tribune, who was awesome.

I think I would have enjoyed ICPA a lot more if the circumstances were better. I found out on the road to Chicago that morning that my grandfather passed away, but I didn’t want to inconvenience the Journal staff, so I went anyway. I liked the conference, but I wish I hadn’t gone… it was really hard to be professional in that situation. On top of it, my mom was having heart problems and went into the hospital, and I felt awful that I couldn’t go home and be with her. All and all, it was a rough weekend :(

COSGA was MUCH better. I went with five members of the SGA and after a 17 hour car ride (and way too many games of “spot the cow” with Cromer) we had a fabulous time in Texas. I thought I wouldn’t like it down South, but it was so much fun. Texas A&M has a beautiful campus, everyone is ridiculously friendly and the weather was beautiful. The conference itself was really informative and I think it gave our SGA a lot of great ideas to implement at UIS. Plus, add in phrases such as “howdy”, “y’all” and “GIG’ EM!”, finding out there was a UIC delegate named JESSE Christ (I’m not even kidding) and our interesting drive through Oklahoma (double wides and junk sales), and it turned out to be a very interesting weekend.


































































Good news for our men’s basketball team… they won the NAIA Conference over McKendree and are going to Nationals! GO PRAIRIE STARS! It was a really close game and considering McKendree kicked our butts last time, beating them for the conference win was really cool. We’re all very proud of the basketball team.

MIDTERMS are over – I think I did really well! – and Spring Break is coming to a close. I can’t believe my sophomore year is almost over, and I’m so not ready to head back to school…

HAPPY V-DAY!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

The past few weeks have been super busy, so I apologize if I haven’t been blogging very much lately! Second semester has been going pretty well, minus a LOT of reading to do for my Political Science classes and being perpetually broke from spending hundreds of dollars on schoolbooks, paying for my own groceries (ouch) and doing it all with my minimum wage on-campus job. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss my summer waitressing job. But don't worry, my friend Matt and I have found a solution to my economic situation:

lovexidealist: crap, im poor

GrumpyOldMan86: hhmmm... I could adopt you like a little ethiopian kid and send you a dollar a day and we could write letters to each other

lovexidealist: that would be awesome if we could do that

GrumpyOldMan86: you also would have to send me a bunch of cute pictures of you looking either really sad, or really happy and drawing in a coloring book you got with my money. I think that’s how those things work

lovexidealist: I’m going to start doing that

lovexidealist: send sad puppy face pictures to all my friends and relatives and see who sends checks

lovexidealist: but screw the coloring books, id probably be eating Chinese takeout and buying shoes online

So what have I been up to? Pretty much just class, studying, hanging out with friends and working. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:



























I really, really hate this stupid blog because it never lets me upload more than three pictures. Ugh, Well, you get the idea.

In more exciting news, I’m going to be a very busy girl in the next few weeks. This weekend, I will be headed to Chicago with the Journal staff for ICPA, a conference for college journalists. The weekend after that, I will be driving down to Texas (15 hour drive!) with SGA to COSGA, a student government conference at Texas A&M. And for Spring Break, I will be going to Pass Christian, MS to do Hurricane Katrina relief work with a few other lovely ladies from UIS. So lots of pics and posts will be coming soon!

And the best news of all? About two weeks ago, I turned in an application to be part of United Students for Fair Trade’s youth delegation to Uganda/Tanzania this summer AND I GOT IN! They only selected eighteen students to go, so I feel really honored to have been chosen. The trip is for the entire month of July and we will be working with local co-ops on the issues of microeconomics and community planning. I think its an incredible opportunity for me, but understandably, my parents are a little less enthusiastic due to the obvious safety issues. Hopefully they’ll let me go… seriously, the opportunity of a lifetime :)

Bubba-NATOR

Well, its Friday night and we're having a movie marathon, so I'm going to pass the laptop around to my guest bloggers Justin:

Justin who is she talking about? She is crazy my name is Bubba Sams. So what up readers? I have been bugging Shmolio to update her blog forever and now I am blogging for her. The semester has started and I am having a great time. I am a part of Blue Crew. Blue Crew is the cheering squad for any athletic team at UIS. We have an actual reason to cheer for the boy's basketball team this year because they are now ranked 21st in the NAIA. On Thursday a buddy of mine got in trouble for falling "asleep" in the laundry room. Then some parties got busted because of it. If you need more info email me. So I would like to take this time to thank everyone who has supported me in the this blogging. Thank you Shmo for letting blog, thank you RRRRAAAA for being my RA. Thank you Tom for putting up with me as a roommate, and thank you LRH for not reading these blogs. Thank you Julian for me hating you. So peace and hair grease Blog readers.

Update!

Yeah, it’s been a month since I’ve updated. BAD BLOGGER! I’m sorry but between catching up on all the work I missed while I was out, finals week and not having a laptop for the last three weeks of the semester (thank you, Tech Support), it’s been hard to find a way to write anything. And if I go to a party and people come up to me yelling at me about how I haven’t updated in a month (even my fellow bloggers Barb and Julian!), it must be pretty bad. So here’s what I’ve been up to in the past month…

The Hunger Banquet was November 15th and it was a great experience. I had a lot of fun emceeing the event and Twosouth did a great job putting it all together. For those of you who have never been to one, a Hunger Banquet divides the room into economic classes the way the world is divided: 60% are in poverty, 25% are just above the poverty line, and 15% represent the wealthy upper class of the world. Believe it or not, most Americans are in that 15% minority. The Hunger Banquet tries to teach that poverty exists not because there isn’t enough food, but because of unfair and biased trade legislation that ensures that the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. I hope it was a good and educational experience for everyone that attended.

And I’m 20 now! The birthday was fabulous. My friends threw me a very nice mini surprise party complete with cake and balloons and then we went out for the night – unfortunately not to the midnight showing of Harry Potter, but it was a very fun and very… well, interesting night. The boys got me a pretty unusual birthday present, and to be honest, I think they enjoyed it more than I did! Even better, I not only got to hang out with my friends on my birthday, but my family too. They were in Springfield for the weekend and it was so good to see them. I definitely freaked out about turning 20 but I’m trying not to be anymore. It’s a step closer to graduating and getting a real job and I’m not sure if I’m ready to leave all this behind.



I spent tons of time with my friends from home and my family over Thanksgiving break and even better, things with the guy I liked (who has been a close friend for a while) worked out over break and we're dating now… :)Unfortunately, then it was back to school for the busiest three weeks of the semester. Papers, projects and tons of work overall. The low point of the week was having two papers due in one day – argh! The best advice I can offer about finals is not to procrastinate too much, take breaks and have fun, take advantage of all the free food (trust me, its everywhere) and remember that you always do better than you thought you did, so don’t panic.

But after my last final on Wednesday night, I had two much needed days of rest to spend catching up on sleep and hanging out with my friends before we all left for break that weekend. (I promise pictures are coming soon!) And break so far has been AWESOME. I really appreciate the time spent with my family and old friends because I don’t get to come home very often, but I’m more than ready to head back to school and see my favorite UIS kids again… see you all soon!