Ben, ‘11

January 18, 2009

Welcome back everyone. I’m glad to be back myself after unforeseen challenges getting back to campus. I arrived to the airport last Sunday to discover that the flight that I had booked through Expedia no longer existed. My original flight had been switched, so I was rebooked without being told which resulted in me having no way to get back to campus on-time. So, Expedia offered me complimentary flights the next day. I began my day of travel by waking up at 4:30 AM for a 7:00 AM flight. After a flight to Atlanta, delays there resulting in a three hour layover, and a flight to Richmond, I finally arrived to campus on Monday evening, missing one class in the process. What a hassle. However, I’m here now and settled in. Classes have been going on for a full week, so I’ll give you a quick rundown of my six new classes and what else I’ve been up to thus far.

I am taking three Leadership Studies courses, two Business courses, and a Rhetoric course this semester. In Leadership, I have Group Dynamics, Critical Thinking, and Research Methods. I also am taking Managerial Accounting and Business Statistics in addition to Rhetoric Theory and Pedagogy. A lot of these classes should be interesting, but will require a lot of work. The Leadership and Business classes will fulfill my major requirements, but the Rhetoric class is solely for training new Speech Consultants, such as myself, for working in the Speech Center. A drastic change from last semester is that I have a lot more group projects and also many more daily quizzes and assignments as opposed to last semester’s individual papers.

My favorite class right now is Business Statistics. It makes sense to me and I love the teacher. He didn’t like any of the textbooks on the market, so he wrote his own 180 page textbook for fun and gave it to us as a .pdf file to print off. My second favorite moment was reading my Managerial Accounting textbook. The book highlights businesses and certain practices that they do and I stumbled upon one for Anderson Windows from Bayport, Minnesota. They are huge in my area and are located just a few minutes from my hometown. It appears that it is a small world after all. It was a fun little surprise for me.

The business profile of Anderson Windows

I quickly fell behind in my homework this week. This is mainly a result of me trying to organize my life and classes in an attempt to make life easier later in the semester. So, I compiled my master calendar with every assignment for the rest of the semester. I have calculated a total of 2,454 pages of reading for this semester. That’s about200 pages per week. However, I am now caught back up and ready for another week of classes.

My master calendar

Besides classes, I also attempted to attend a lot of fun events this week. Two of these were through the Modlin Center, UR’s center for performing arts. They brought in MOMIX, a modern dance troupe, to campus as well as acclaimed writer Garrison Keillor. MOMIX was very strange, but cool. It used a lot of strange lighting, props, and dance to put together a very entertaining show. Check out some clips from the show here. Garrison Keillor, of Lake Woebegone Days and NPR fame, also came to Richmond. It was a good show and the best thing of all was that tickets for students were free.

MOMIX

Garrison Keillor

I also attended a men’s basketball game on Saturday night. We fell apart in the last few minutes and lost, but it was still a good game to watch. There was also another fun highlight. Students get points for simply attending sports games and these points can earn some pretty cool prizes. They also make you eligible for drawings and other competitions during the game. Anyways, my name was drawn as one of the five finalists for a $200 gift certificate to our bookstore. So, I went down onto the basketball court during a break in the game. I didn’t end up winning, but it was still fun to have a chance to win.

Honoring our National Champion football team during halftime

Our basketball team in action

After the game, I went to an Apartment Dance Party that I helped to organize through InterVarsity. It was fun to reconnect with everyone else and simply get a chance to hang out on the weekend. I also got together with a bunch of friends from InterVarsity earlier in the week to finally get in some volleyball. So, I played volleyball for two hours on Wednesday instead of doing homework. That seemed to be the theme of the week for me.

Dance-off at the Apartment Dance Party

Having fun at the dance party

The final thing to mention is the weather. It has been absolutely frigid here this past week. Part of the lake is frozen over and everyone is complaining about the cold. However, I can’t complain too much because I learned that my hometown is experiencing wind chills of -40 degrees. Now that’s cold.

Quote of the Week: “A lot of people ask what to call me. Mrs or Dr. I prefer Mrs because it’s much harder today to remain married than to get a PhD.” -Mrs. Hobgood
Thought to Ponder: Why do people say “heads up” when you should duck?
YouTube Video of the Week:

Dolphin Stampede