So this week has been quite an eventful one the country hasn't it? I heard on the news that 49 out of the 50 United States received some amount of snow in one way or another this week. Hawaii was the only one who didn't. I read somewhere that DC had, what, 39 inches of snow? My uncle who lives in the middle of Penn. said they got 27 inches on one day! And one cousin who goes to school in Maryland near DC said they ended up getting a snow week instead of a snow day! They had Friday the 5th off for the first wave and then just proceeded to get one day after another the next week until his school just shut down for the rest of the week! A pre-spring break break. Geez.... :)

Let's see, we had school last Friday but classes on Saturday were cancelled which, unfortunately, didn't benefit me at all but it was nice for those students who do dread Saturday classes. Then Monday we all crossed our fingers for snow and get a snow day and fortunately enough we did! Then Wednesday we weren't sure what would happen but we did get a delay until Noon so I got to miss four classes over that period and one practicum opportunity. Once we did get out onto the roads, they really weren't that bad and I was happy that we got a small break nonetheless.

Of course that meant bright and early on Thursday morning I had to get back into the swing of things and actually make an effort to try to get back to normal. Hard to do when you sat around doing nothing for almost 48 hours straight. I can only imagine how my cousin feels on his snow week. I also heard that we are supposed to get another 2-4 inches on Sunday night into Monday morning so maybe another snow day...? :) Wouldn't that just screw everything up. Most places are closed on Monday already for Presidents' Day but the Mount will be open for classes and whatnot so if we do get a snow day that'll benefit us but no one else really. lol :)

I started my practicum last Monday, before all the snow, and I had a great first experience there but then they had no school on Wednesday and they have no school for the holiday on Monday so I'm missing another two opportunities to go so I'm not sure at this rate if I'll get in my 50 hours or not. I'm sure I can find other times and dates to go but Mondays and Wednesdays just work best. But we'll see... It's just hard to have a routine down, get something introduced, then have weather interrupt everything everywhere, and then trying to get back into it. I really don't like. If the federal government can get a snow day, shouldn't the whole country get off as well? Thank you Ellen for that comment. :) Love that show! lol

But we have our Mid Semester break on this coming Friday and that'll be nice to have a scheduled break, not that we really need it considering the break we just had in the middle of the week. We'll see how it goes though. :) I really want to go visit a friend at UD either that weekend or the next when she has her mid break but I'm not sure when it'll work out, if it does at all. But I hope so. :)

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, or as Sam calls it "Singles Awareness Day." lol That's just when we need to put all the singles together and then they won't be single anymore! lol The guy I've been seeing has something planned that day for us but he won't tell me what it is so I'm in for a surprise. I'm not really into surprises so I'm not sure how I'll react. lol But to you all, Happy Valentine's Day in advance. :) Hope its a fun pink and white day! <3

What’s up my MSJ people? I know you all are probably really stressed right now studying for finals in all, but just remember that we will be out of school shortly and won’t have class for a month. My last blog, I gave what I thought to be key advice to problems that future college students might encounter once they embark on their four year journey. But now I have a dilemma of my own. Since enrolling at the College of Mount St. Joseph, I have struggled to find a barber with the expertise to cut hair well. Before attending college I would go to the barbershop roughly every three weeks to get a haircut. With the lack of transportation to barbershops in Cincinnati, I find myself going months without a haircut. Now I was fortunate to find a guy who played on the football team that could cut hair pretty well but tracking him down is like trying to find ‘Waldo’. Perplexed as to what I should do, I asked my fellow African-American teammates on the basketball team what they do for haircuts and they told me that they go home for haircuts. Seeing how my home is five hours away, this was not a viable option for me.  We have been in school for three and a half months and I have had only two haircuts in this span of time.  Now I could be optimistic and say that my inability to find a consistent barber has saved me money, which is important being a college student, however; there, have been several occasions where I really could have used a haircut. For example, when I was taking a headshot for my passport a month ago or when we took our team picture for basketball. I wouldn’t be surprised if my identity was questioned on my passport due to my mini-afro that I had and still have. So if anyone has a solution to this problem I am facing, please let me know asap what to do. For it will be greatly appreciated.

What’s up my MSJ people? It’s Saturday morning and I wanted to write this blog to give the students of the Mount some key advice. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Greg Kaman (the head of the Dining hall) has really been killing my roommate and I with the ridiculous times that the dining hall is open.  Most college students don’t go to sleep until at least twelve o’clock or later because they are either studying or feigning on the various social networks such as facebook and twitter. For my roommate and I it’s been a little of both. Regardless of your reason for being up, there is no reason that students shouldn’t have access to food at night. At the beginning of the school year, the only solution my roommate and I had to this problem was to buy the infamous La Rosas pizza. This didn’t last long, for the copious amounts of money we spent on La Rosas pizza, wings, and calzones put a huge hole in our wallets. Before spending so much money on La Rosas, I could “stand on my money and head butt Yao Ming”- Lil Wayne, but now I’m just a regular poor college student. My roommate and I have been doing some serious thinking and spent long nights venting about how pissed we were with the predicament we were in, until recently we came up with an alternative solution that is starting to earn us beaucoup money. For those simple minds out there (no offense) beaucoup mean “an excess”. So what we started to do was bring plastic bags and old Gatorade bottles into the dining hall. We fill the bottles with Gatorade or the drink of choice and we put chicken sandwiches in the plastic bags. Now this plan isn’t earning us money directly, but indirectly for it is saving us a lot of money that we no longer have to spend on food. Some may see this as stealing, but my roommate and I don’t in any way shape or form see it this way because whether I eat the chicken sandwich in the dining hall or in my room doesn’t matter because I’m still going to eat it. Same goes for the Gatorade. Moreover our parents are paying a lot of money for meal plans; therefore we have the right to that food.  That is all.

Wednesday, November 11^th the day I had been anxiously awaiting for the longest, the day I dreamed about daily, the day I could prove all the doubters wrong. What day am I talking about? The day The College of Mount St. Joseph Men’s basketball team had its first scrimmage against Wittenberg. In case you don’t know by now, I love basketball with a passion. The same way smokers love to smoke, I love to play basketball. With this being said, stating that I was pumped as we warmed up for this scrimmage would be an understatement. The Mount’s Men’s basketball team had a disappointing year last year but we have high expectations for this year. We have all the pieces and we’re more than just a team, we’re a family. I played Junior Varsity in our first scrimmage as the entire freshman class did, but this did not in any way knock my excitement.

Being from Chicago, it’s almost expected that you eat, sleep, and breathe basketball is that makes any sense, hence the many Chicago born players in the NBA. Anyways back to our first scrimmage, as we warmed up the music was blasting loud on the intercom, and I was in the zone, for it was go time. All the hard work over the summer was about to be displayed.  We won the game 63-61 in a game that came down to the wire. I had 9 pts and 5 assists, but the most important thing is that we won and that I had fun. At the conclusion of the JV game our JV team went to the front gym of the Harrington Center to get a little varsity action and the fact that there were a good amount of fans got my adrenaline pumping and I knew it was ShowTime. So I was bringing the ball up the court; I signaled for a high pick and roll at the top of the key, I drove hard right, pulled back with a dazzling D.Wade crossover that got the crowd excited, then I proceeded in shooting a three-pointer in my defenders face that hit nothing but the bottom of the net. It was then that both Wittenberg and the crowd knew that this was no longer a game… it was business.      

Starting this Wednesday is College Week Live. It is a virtual college fair set up online. There will a ton of schools, organizations, companies, and anything else associated with going to college. You can talk to reps from schools, current students, financial aid advisors, banks, scholarship organizations, and other personnel about anything you may need or want to know about a college or school or program.

The College of Mount St. Joseph will be hosting a booth at this fair and will be manned by yours truly along with a couple of other bloggers and students along with some faculty and staff of the Mount. Come and ask us questions, peruse the information of our college, check out the pictures and grounds of the buildings, and other things.

This whole experience is meant to put you at ease about college and helping you choose the right school for you. You get the opportunity to "visit" schools that you may not otherwise be able to visit, such as those across the country that would not be worth the cost to check out for one day in person. At least you can visit that school online in this virtual college fair and be able to find out almost anything that you would want to know.

It starts on Wednesday, November 4th and ends Saturday, November 7th. This is the web address for the college fair: http://www.collegeweeklive.com/. It is highly recommended that you check us out on the web and ask us questions using the Click Here: Live Chat button on our booth (College of Mount St. Joseph). The Mount offers "Get Acquainted Days" every few Saturdays or so and that can be helpful to be able to visit the campus itself but if none of those dates work into your schedule, at least this week gives you a chance to know us a bit better when you have a bit of free time. Here's the link on the main site of the Mount for ways to visit us: http://www.msj.edu/view/visit.aspx.

I hope we see you- or talk to you actually- at the College Week Live event this Wednesday through Saturday. It should be a fun time to learn more about the Mount and our community. Enjoy!! :)

Hey everyone! I’m back with another blog! Well as everyoneat The Mount already knows its ADVISING SEASON! And to me that means a lot ofthings. It means making up for lost credit hours since at the very beginning ofthe year I had to drop a course because I had WAY too much homework on Tuesdayson Thursday, and of course selling my soul to the art department.

So today I met with my advisor, and I was under theimpression that I was going to take a few art classes, my math, and then bedone with it Sounds simple? Well I get there and my advisor was not thinking ofthe same easy dream schedule I had in mind. In fact she preferred a much moredifficult, accelerated course schedule. We decided that math could wait, andI’m okay with that, because I am so bad at math. So we made my schedule andfilled it up pretty tight, 6 classes that meet 2-3 times a week. I felt reallygood about it, and then I found out it was only 14 credit hours. I was taking alot of 1 credit classes to put me on the fast track to getting into the artdepartment, and since I dropped a class last semester I’m already behind oncredits, So we added one more studio class to bring me up to 17 credit hour.

So I’m taking 2 Studio classes, One that I’ll have twice aweek, and then one that I have Tuesday nights, and since I wont have much classtime to work, I’m pretty much on my own. I’m also taking an Art seminar, Introto Education, The philosophy of Art, Written Word, and The Psychology ofchildren and adolescences. I’m not looking forward to next semester, not goingto lie. Its going to be hard, but hopefully it will all pay off in the end!

What’s going on MSJ? I know I’ve been M.I.A for awhile but I’m back with another intriguing blog. So two weekends ago for our mid-semester break weekend, my roommate, my friend from my high school nicknamed JK, that also attends the Mount, and myself ventured on a long yet very exciting and fun trip to the University of Illinois in the college town of Urbana-Champaign infamously known as Chambana. Our trip started with one of my roommate’s lacrosse teammate’s mother driving us to his house in Indianapolis to pick up his car. His residence was so enormous and the set up was so attractive that I wanted to stay at his house. After meeting his family and touring the house we again were off, only this time in my roommate’s teammate’s car. JK’s sister, that attends IU (Indiana University) met us half way to Bloomington, IN and took us to IU for the night. At IU my roommate and I stop by one of our good friends, E. Reid, dorm to visit her. While visiting E. Reid, watching Grey’s Anatomy in the common area, one of her attractive female friends entered the room and began to watch Grey’s Anatomy with us. I then proceeded in texting E. Reid with a request to be introduced to her attractive female friend. LOL. What can I say I love girls. After a short visit , my roommate and I continued our journey by walking roughly 3 miles in the pouring rain to meet our friend JK and his sister at another building to go back to the dorms. After this 3 mile walk in the rain, I appreciated attending a small college so much more. After a long day of travel, we eventually ended at JK’s sister’s apartment where I thought I would finally be able to get a goodnight’s sleep but little did I know that the night had a lot left in store. TO BE CONTINUED…..

The friends that I have met here at the Mount are some of the greatest I've ever had in my life.  I used to say that I didn't want to leave my high school because I'd never be able to make friends that meant as much to me as the ones that I'd been in school with for 13 years... boy was I wrong!

In just a little over a year, great friends like Chris and Samantha have managed to worm their way closer to my heart than most of my friends from high school ever did.

Freshman year was full of bumps and bruises for me and Chris was there for me through it all.  He's now dating a good friend of mine from my high school (she's actually good friends with my boyfriend; they're both still in high school) and we've got this whole lovesquare thing going on.  It's the kind of thing that should NEVER work, but it does.  My relationship with Chris is also the kind of thing that shouldn't work either, but it does.  Chris and I are actually exes... but we're closer now because of it... it's weird, but it's true!  He's so much more than a friend to me, he's my brother and I love him to death!!

My relationship with Sam happened through a series of fortunate events... sheer coincidence.  We got placed at the same school this summer through the Sisters of Charity Summer Employment Inititive.  We had both seen each other around campus but we didn't really know one another at all.  We showed up at St. Joseph School the first day of the summer complete strangers and left after two months best friends!  Over the summer we had learned that we shared many of the same interests and that we were actually signed up for an Honors class together this semester.  As part of this class we traveled to New York with our professors in August and that only deepened our friendship.  Sam actually lives in the suite that I had last year, ironic right!?

I have no doubt in my mind that these friendships will be ties that last through my life.  We may move away, we may not see each other for a long time, but it would be hard for any of us to forget each other.

So today I saw my roommate for the first time in ages, and she was moving out. It’s kind of sad in a way because the one person who was forced to be my friend is moving on up, and out of my small double in 4 SouthEast and into a very large center suite. I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty jealous. I would kill for a private shower.

But on the bright side I finally cleaned my room! This may not seem like a big deal, but trust me it is. Ha! Ha! I can finally walk to mybed without worrying about slicing my foot open on something, Being an artmajor and having exacto blades everywhere, that is a legit worry.

Speaking of art, I have a lot of art homework to do,everyone thinks being an art major is so easy, but I have to warn you, its not! We may not have to write papers like everyone else, but we have art projects that take in excess of 25 hours to do, which is much longer than I’ve ever spent on a paper. Tonight I have to draw a room. A ROOM. A BOX. I’m so sick of drawing boxes its not even funny. All the other art classes are drawing horses and faces and landscapes, but no not us, we are still drawing boxes! BUT WAIT! We’re shading them now! So that makes it all okay. Next semester I’m not scheduling classes before 9am. I REFUSE. I value my sleep way too much. I nap all the time now that I’m in college. And the more I sleep the more I eat. Hello freshman 15 :D

Thirteen night of Halloween is on tonight! YAY BEETLEJUICE!I’m pretty excited about it. I love Halloween! It sucks I cant go to the Halloweendance! They ran out of spaces! I was so rattled! But its okay I’m going to have my own dance party, and by dance party I mean, sit in my dorm and watch Law and Order. And I’m okay with that. My fish died. I need to buy more. What a way to end my blog on a happy note. haha