Ben, ‘11

November 3, 2008

I have finally made up my mind. You may recall that, for the longest time, my major next at the top of my blog was “Probably Business”. Well, that has now changed. It has been a very busy week academically and I can now report that I have officially declared my major. It all began Monday when I received news that I was accepted into the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, one of our three schools within the University of Richmond. It is also the only school that students need to apply to in order to major or minor in it. So, that was very exciting for me. Because of that, I have officially declared that I intend to double major in “Leadership Studies” and “Business Administration” with an additional minor in “Law and the Liberal Arts”. I know that the major on my blog says Leadership Studies, but the rest simply would not fit.

More good news came a while ago when I was accepted to be a Speech Center Consultant for next year. It is a job that will entail me listening to the speeches and presentations of students who visit our Speech Center and giving them feedback. I’m hoping that I will enjoy it. It does seem up my alley. However, it does require that I take an additional Rhetoric class in the spring. Because of all of this news, I created a class schedule for the spring that works best for me. I registered for Spring Semester classes on Friday and am now all set. I will take Group Dynamics, Critical Thinking, and Research Methods in Leadership as well as Business Statistics and Managerial Accounting for Business and the Theory and Pedagogy class for Rhetoric. In all, it is six classes for five units (our version of the credit system). Unfortunately, they all meet for 75 minute time blocks, so I’m hoping that a lot of those back-to-back won’t make me lose concentration and become bored.

If you read last week’s blog, you know that I am in the midst of a crazy period of academics. I am now through most of the chaos, but most of my free time this week was still spent doing work. I pulled my second “all-nighter” of the year. Technically, I went to sleep at 7:00 AM, but I still call it an all-nighter. I was frantically trying to write a speech that I wanted to have done by the next day and, since fatigue hadn’t set in, I just kept on going until the sun was up and so were a lot of other people. Other major projects due this past week included a Prediction Paper for Campaigns in which I had to predict whom Wisconsin would vote for as President. I wrote that it would be Obama. I also had a relatively easy midterm for Software Tools. Needless to say, I am really looking forwards to a nice break next weekend.

The final thing that I shall add while droning on and on about academics is that I am officially done with my service for Justice and Civil Society. Thirty hours are in the books and I am so excited to have my Tuesday mornings back. I didn’t mind working with the ESL program at a local middle school, but I’ve had about as much of eighth graders as I can handle.

One might think that with all of these other things going on that I might not have time for fun. Well, that would be wrong. Last Saturday, I went to the Homecoming football game. We destroyed Georgetown by over forty points. The weather was miserable, but I stuck it out until the end of the third quarter.

Homecoming Football Game

After the game, there was an InterVarsity event. A group of my friends and I went to Goodwill to find the craziest outfits we could find as well as Halloween costumes, since Halloween is always a major event on-campus. After finding fun outfits, we all went out to eat at Friendlys. I had never been to a Friendlys before, which appalled all of my friends from the South, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Later in the week, we put all of our outfits to good use as InterVarsity hosted a Halloween Dance party. I served as deejay and enjoyed the opportunity of a nice break on a Wednesday evening.

Two of my friends as flowers

InterVarsity’s Halloween Dance Party

Getting into the Cupid Shuffle

The last thing on the list for Wednesday was a Modlin Center event. LA Theater Works is a group that performs radio theater on stage. It is quite interesting to watch and I loved their event last year. They have a whole table for sound effects and almost all of the actors have participated in prominent TV shows in the past. However, my mistake was that I chose to go to the midnight performance of “War of the Worlds”. I am sure it was well done, but I’m afraid that the long week prevented me from staying awake through all of it. I guess I should learn to avoid midnight performances from now on.

Continuing my busy week, I attended a movie on-campus called I.O.U.S.A. It is a move put out through the Concord Coalition and discusses the serious issues that our country faces because of the budget deficit. It was quite intriguing and my Campaigns professor as well as a representative of the Concord Coalition presented it.

Movie trailer for I.O.U.S.A. 

Saturday, there was Relay for Life. The annual event to raise funds for cancer was held on-campus this year and they could not have picked a better day. It was sunny and the fall colors were amazing. I was team captain for InterVarsity and we put together a solid team. Out of all 33 teams, we were the only one to have someone on the course for all twelve hours. It was a lot of fun to simply walk around the lake with friends and have fun. I brought back a giant, purple bubble wand from last year’s Relay for Life. As our team walked, we spread joy and bubbles wherever we went. I had the late night shift and walked alone for a lot of it. However, my suitmate saw me walking and decided to join me. To add some fun to our monotonous walking, we decided to fence around the lake with foam noodles. We got so many strange looks, but it was well worth it.

Relay for Life!!!

Some of the InterVarsity Relay for Life team

Fencing around the lake

Last but not least, our spirit group hosted an event on Saturday night called Spider Mayhem. They introduced this year’s basketball teams, gave away pizza to everyone, as well as had dunk contests, 3-point contests, and so much more. It culminated in a student getting a chance to win free tuition for a year if he could make a half-court shot. Unfortunately, he couldn’t.

This basketball player jumped over the girl, then dunked the ball

As the title of my post mentions, this week had a lot of decisions with classes, acceptance offers, and other things. I did make one final decision and that was to quit Council for Christian Unity. I am hoping that someone else from my Methodist group will be able to represent us, but I simply don’t have the time or the interest anymore. I will still help out with small events they might have, but that will be about it.

Thank you for sharing this chaotic week with me and I’m hoping you’ll check out next week’s blog. It should be very exciting. I’ll leave you with that.

Quote of the Day: “Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.” - Elizabeth Lawrence
Thought to Ponder: When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny?
Shout Outs: All of my relatives
YouTube Video of the Week: