Greetings to all prospective students from 25,000 feet. I am currently flying back from a whirlwind visit to Atlanta, Georgia. Every year, my scholar group goes to a major city and hangs out together for an entire weekend. Thus far, I’ve been to Chicago, New York, and now Atlanta. The University covers any and all expenses, which is amazing since they give us the royal treatment. We are flown round-trip from Richmond, stay in four-star hotels, are given tickets to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and also an Atlanta Hawks basketball game, and have an amazing opportunity to hang out with friends. Seventeen of us went this year and I was the only Junior, since the rest of them are currently abroad, but that meant that I got to know the new freshmen really well. While in Atlanta, I visited the CNN headquarters, the Coca-Cola Museum, and also attend the Second City Comedy Club, which was really funny. Others visited the Georgia Aquarium and Underground Atlanta. They dine us at amazing restaurants such as McCormick and Schmicks as well as Table 1280. Simply put, they give me an opportunity to have experiences that I couldn’t have anywhere else.  It truly is incredible. I would estimate that, in total, they spend $1,000 on each student.

So, I bet you’re now wondering how you can have these experiences. Well, I’ll tell you. All you have to do is get your application in to the University of Richmond by December 15th. That’s all. Nothing more. You’re automatically considered for merit-based scholarships with that. If you make it to the next round, you’ll write an additional essay and perhaps even move on to the on-campus interview round in March. Each year, UR gives roughly fifty full-ride scholarships, that means about one in every thirteen students comes here for free. I don’t think any other school can even come close to that. So, make sure to apply in time. There are several types of scholarships, but here is what mine (Oldham) gives me: full tuition, room, and board, a $3000 stipend for study abroad or research, priority course registration, priority housing, free tickets to our Modlin Center, and, of course, this annual trip. Pretty cool, huh? Here’s a photo recap of this year’s trip to the ATL.

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performing “From Russia With Love”
A group of us celebrating a birthday at a karaoke diner

Finding a Christmas wonderland in Atlanta

The Georgia Aquarium

CNN Headquarters in Atlanta

The Coca-Cola tour with Chamberlain

Atlanta Hawks game

Exploring Atlanta with my new friends

Quote of the Week: “A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.” -Anonymous
YouTube Video of the Week:

A recent viral hit 

I have had to finally face the fact that I have to grow up. Not that I think I’m horrendously immature right now, but I can’t keep running around, pretending that I will never graduate and thinking that I don’t need to look for a job. As hard as it may be for me to believe, I am on the second half of my college career with the end rapidly approaching. With that in mind and my resume in hand, I began searching for an internship for the coming summer. You may ask, “But Ben, isn’t summer seven months away still?” and the answer would be yes. However, it’s a long process and I’m doing my best to look at all of my options. Ideally, I would return home to Wisconsin for the summer. I’ve been away doing mathematics research here at UR and also studying abroad for my past two summers and haven’t seen my family or friends very much. However, an opportunity came up for me to interview for a summer sales internship with Altria (parent company of Phillip Morris). I went to the first interview and it went so well that I was invited to a second round of interviews. That happened today and that also went incredibly well. So, now I need to wait and see if they invite me back for the next stage. Even though this internship would require me to stay in Richmond, it is a good opportunity and I need to at least look into it.

Also keeping me busy for this week were a test, a presentation, a symposium lecture, and numerous other things. One fun thing was the creation of a video for the University of Richmond’s Speech Center. There is an annual Speech Center Administrators Conference and my boss asked me to create a video telling why the conference should be held at UR in 2011. Since I’ve done these types of projects numerous times, I obliged. It was a fair amount of work, but I think that it turned out well. I’m quite proud of the fact that I was asked to create a video proposal for a nationwide conference. It was even cooler when I was asked to attend the conference in Chicago this weekend to introduce the video. However, I had prior plans, which are also pretty cool. You’ll see what I’m talking about when you come back next week. For your entertainment, I’ve posted my video below:

The Speech Center Conference video proposal I made

So, I’m clearly not sitting around playing kickball at recess and eating PB&J for lunch everyday. Instead, I’m having daily meetings, job interviews, lectures, and numerous group projects. Peter Pan has flown me back from Neverland and dropped me in the middle of reality. I’ve come to face that fact and view myself as much more of an adult than I would like, but I’m slowly starting to realize that that’s not really a bad thing… right?

Quote of the Week: “I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temorarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.” -Mitch Hedberg
YouTube Video of the Week:

Street Art

This past week has been ridiculously busy. All of the papers, exams, presentations, and such have combined for a perfect storm. It is a far cry from those simple worksheets that you had to bring home and complete in ten minutes from back in elementary school. Needless to say, I was more than ready to feel like a kid again. So, I was very glad that Halloween has arrived. I was always a clown for Halloween as a kid. Middle school and high school saw the celebration of Halloween become almost nonexistent for me. However, in college. Halloween is probably the biggest holiday of the year… at least that we celebrate together. Remember this for when you go to college. Halloween is HUGE!!! Everyone comes up with the craziest and funnest costumes and the entire campus celebrates…. for three consecutive nights.

I hadn’t put much thought into my costume, but two of my friends convinced me to join them as contestants on “Legends of the Hidden Temple”, which in case you don’t recall, is a fantastic game show from when I was a kid. We ordered the costume online and it arrived in time. For Halloween night, I threw a dance party for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. It was a pretty great event. I saw Calvin and Hobbes, Jack Sparrow, a Ghostbuster, and so many more. We also decided to do a service project for our campus and hand out free pancakes all night to the partygoers passing by our apartment dance party. We handed out over two hundred pancakes and it was a great success, despite the horrible rain. So, Halloween was a fun break, but now I am back to work with group projects galore and many other meetings and lectures to attend.

Making pancakes on Halloween

My suite on Halloween (Chris, Alex, myself, and Billy) 

Quote of the Week: “It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.” -James Thurber
YouTube Video of the Week:

A clip from “Legends of the Hidden Temple”

So, this week has been super busy for me. It was meetings after meetings after meetings upon classes after classes after classes. However, organizations that I’m involved with took up just as much time. So, I don’t have too much to convey to you from this past week except that academics kept me quite busy. As Events Coordinator for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, I just realized I am working on four events occurring within a ten-day span. That’s a lot of planning and work. There was a tailgate, Medallion Hunt, Housekeeper’s Appreciation Brunch, and a Halloween party. So, I haven’t had much free time. In fact, it is now Sunday evening and I have yet to touch my homework since Thursday, which is incredibly rare for me. So, what have I been doing since Thursday?

I put together a tailgate for one of my groups and decided to expand it to several other groups on-campus. We partnered together and had a great time. But, it required days of planning, prepping, cooking, and cleaning before the event was over. The weather was not pleasant almost all weekend, but it held off for our tailgate. Our head chef, whose dad is a tailgating enthusiast and has his own website for tailgating, did a great job. She (yes, I said she), manned those grills like none other while my friend and I (yes, both of us are guys) stood by clueless with the grills. How’s that for breaking stereotypes? Oh yeah, the football team won in the pouring rain later that day to remain undefeated and #1 in the Football Championship Series.

The three planners of the tailgate

Also this weekend was a sorority social that I was invited to. The theme was “Throwdown for Your Hometown”. So, I represented the great state of Wisconsin. I found some overalls, a Wisconsin t-shirt, and cut out some cheese slices. My parents actually shipped a cheesehead from home, but it didn’t arrive in time. It was held at a downtown club called “Element” that we reserved and I think everyone had a great time. I know I did.

Representing our respective hometowns

Quote of the Week: “Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” -Don Marquis
YouTube Video of the Week:

Ouch

At first I didn’t think anything of it. It started as one simple incident that didn’t seem too sinister. But I now look back at it and realize that that one event was the Battle of Fort Sumter for the Civil War, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for World War I. I began as an innocent bystander, but I have now been forced to enter into the thick of it. For, you see, my suite is at war. Don’t get me wrong, we are great friends and get along quite well, but we are in the midst of a Prank War.

There are four of us who live in the suite, two in each room, and we are connected by a bathroom. One day several weeks ago, an orange traffic cone magically appeared in the middle of my room. My roommate and I laughed about it for a few minutes, realizing that it was our one suitemate who did it, but then another traffic cone appeared in our room the next day. Another strange incident, but nothing too sinister. However, it then escalated quickly. The next day, a friend’s bicycle appeared in the middle of our room. At this point, my roommate and I knew we had to have a laugh ourselves. So, we kindly returned the two traffic cones to our suitemate’s room by hiding them in his bed. Little did we know that this was viewed as retaliation.

So, he responded by hiding the cones in our fridge and our dresser drawers. Several days later, he covered every square inch of our room in newspapers. We responded by taping “Caution Tape” all around his room, which provoked him to stuff our refrigerator with packing peanuts. I had stayed out of it for the most part thus far, but I now had to get involved. So, while he was gone for this weekend, we stuck hundreds of Post-It notes all over his entire room. Now, we must wait to see what his response will be. Below shows the progression of our pranks.

The original cones and the bike.

Newspapers covering the room

Packing peanuts in the fridge

Payback

Quote of the Day: “A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.” -Anonymous
YouTube Video of the Week:

In case you wanted to be educated