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Billy Winters
Class Year: Freshman
Major: Marketing
Hometown: El Granada, CA
High School: Junipero Serra High School
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Happy [belated] Thanksgiving everyone! I hope your Thanksgiving breaks were enjoyable. Mine definitely was: I went down to Texas to visit all my family there. It was a very relaxing retreat from all the stresses of school. Anyway, the semester is already nearing a close. Next Friday is the last day of classes, so everything is in full swing. I have an accounting test on Thursday and a marketing project due next week!
It is amazing how quickly the semester has flown by. Freshman class registration for next semester is this week and my friends from home are already planning things for over break. Personally, I'm kind of nervous because such a large percentage of our grades lie in these last few weeks. Most of my classes have about half the final grade still outstanding. Hopefully everything will go well...but I'll let you guys know. Anyway, I have to go meet my group for our marketing project, I'll come back soon and write about some more of the stuff that's going on around here!
Right now I'm writing from the WDOM studio during my Radio show. It runs every thursday from 10-12 so if you're on campus or in the Providence area, you can tune in for some great country music. The studio just had some major updates in technology, including a new soundboard, a new transmitter and on-air calling. It really is fun to be a part of the WDOM staff, it's a great way to get involved at PC.
For my other clubs, I'm hoping to make a trip to New Hampshire to do some campaigning with the Young Republicans club. The last trip we planned didn't work out because unfortunately the kid organizing it was rushed to the hospital the night before, however he's much better now and hopefully we'll make our trip in one of the next few saturdays. On top of those, I'm hoping to be drafted as a free agent in the intramural hockey league. I was planning on making my own team, but everyone backed out. It was kind of a shame, but I'm just glad I get to play! Anyway I gotta run do the show...but don't worry I'll be posting again very soon!
So as a marketing major, I'm taking the marketing management class this semester, and as the semester I've noticed that it's shifted my whole world view. It might be the knowledge I've gained, or it might be because I know that this is what I plan to make my career in, but I just see myself understanding the one mysterious conept of marketing. I had this epiphany in history class this morning when the professor, Dr. McCarthy was discussing Washington's inaugural address. He was explaining how Washington's address had to be changed to suit the people that were going to be present at the address: mostly aristocratic Virginians. All of a sudden, I found that my mind connected what to his "target market" must be and how he must have changed it. I was so intrigued by this connection that I completely spaced out and started to think about marketing and Washington's inagural address. I really think that its remarkable to see education in action that way.
Speaking of Marketing, next tuesday I have a meeting with my advisor to discuss classes for next semester. They're having a pizza party with all the advisors there and I'm hoping it will be a productive use of time. I've been thinking about what I'd like to take and I decided on a marketing class, consumer behavior, and a psychology class, both of which are required for my major. Then I'm staying in the same civ, and my final class is in Roman History. I'm really excited about all my classes this time and I'm sure it's going to be an interesting semester!
I thought some students might want to hear about my experience so far with the honors program: a topic that's very appropriate because I have a six page civ paper due tomorrow. When I received my acceptance packet to the honors program, over ten months ago now, I was absolutely overjoyed. As the summer approached, I was a little nervous because I had no idea how hard it would be, and as a very fun-loving person, working all the time wouldn't really wouldn't suit my interests. As a first semester freshman, you will typically only have honors civ, though I have a few classmates that elected to take a second honors class. The class itself really isn't bad: there's alot more reading and they grade a bit tougher...but its definetly managable. Instead of having civ in the huge lecture hall, we have it in an ordinary classroom. It meets 4 days a week, one of which is a two hour seminar.
The class has three teachers (a history professor, a literature professor, and a friar), and on lecture day one will lecture while the other two occupy the time by either reading or listening intently. On seminar day, we break up into 3 groups of about 15 and have a writing workshop to help us with our paper and receive some very individal instruction. Every 3 weeks, we rotate seminar professors and they each have their own style of instruction in the same assignments. The personal attention is probably the greatest thing about the honors program. The seminars are incredibly small and its a really intimite setting, so be warned, if you haven't done your reading, the professor will know.
I'm so excited for the weekend...This has been an intense week. I had 2 tests on the same day and now its the weekend. College has been pretty tough, you really need to stay focused to keep up. Tonight is midnight madness, a giant basketball rally: everyone's talking about it, but I'm not really sure what its all about; I'll let you know after I go!
As I mentioned in my last entry, last weekend we had a long weekend. Everyone either went home, or went somewhere else, so I went to Fordham to meet alot of our friends from high school:
In high school I went to all guys school and unfortunately only 2 of us in our whole graduating class went east. These are my friends from our sister school in California. 2 of us go to Providence and 2 of us go to Fordham: it was alot of fun seeing them again! Getting there was easy: we took the regional amtrak line, which was quick and convenient. We got from Providence to Penn Station in New York in about 3 hours and then we navigated the sweltering subway system to Forham in the Bronx. This was my first time to New York City, and it was alot of fun. We had some great food, went to central park, times square and downtown! All in all, it was a great weekend and I'm so glad I finally got to see New York City: if you haven't been, it really is like nothing else you'll ever see!
Well, I'm about to go to Ray, the dining hall, for lunch so I'll have to wrap this entry up for now. Ray has alot of options for food, there are specials for every meal and things such as sandwiches and pizza that you can have at any meal. I'm not gonna lie, it gets old pretty fast, but from what I hear, all college food is this way. When I'm getting sick of Ray, I can go to Slavin, which has amazing grilled steak and chesse sandwiches!
On a closing note I'd like to say Go Cowboys! I am a huge cowboys fan and this weekend's game is huge. While everyone here will be rooting for the Pats, I'm gonna be the lone Cowboys fan...
Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't written in awhile...It's been really hectic around here! Everyone's been having tons of exams over these two weeks. I took my U.S. history exam on Wednesday and it wasn't as bad as I'd expected: It consisted of 19 multiple choice questions and an essay. The teacher, Dr. McCarthy, has a pretty cool grading system set up. Each of the 19 questions is worth 1% of your final grade and the essay is worth 6%, bringing the total to 25%. I studied really hard and I'm confident I did almost perfectly on the multiple choice, but the essay is still up in the air. At the moment, I'm worried about my marketing and accounting tests that are back to back next wednesday night. There's currently a schedule conflict with the two tests but I'm working on getting it resolved.
Right now, everyone's going home for Columbus Day long weekend so its gonna be dead on campus. Since I live in California, so I don't really have anywhere to go! There's a handful of kids staying on my floor, and a number of my friends from around campus are staying too so we should still have a fun weekend. Some of my friends from California are at Fordham right now so tomorrow we're taking a trip to New York City to visit them! I'm really excited: There are only 2 east coast states I haven't been to yet and surprisingly, New York is one of them!
So as of today it's been a whole month of school and I'm really stoked: I've had so much fun and been so awed by this whole new environment. It's really flown by and I don't know what to say: I was worried for the first week or two that I wouldn't really fit in, coming from such a different enviornment, but by now I've made so many friends and met so many people! Our floor, surprisingly, has the least number of write-ups in McDermott, which means one of two things, either we're really well behaved, or we're just good at not getting caught.
I've been DJing my country show every Thursday morning which has been quite an experience. People will call in and come visit my studio, and everyone loves my show because it's the only country show on the station. I was just named DJ of the month at the station, something I was really shocked and honored by. The radio show is definitely my favorite extracurricular activity I'm involved in and I'd definitely recommend that incoming freshman apply for a show!
Another thing I've really learned to look forward to are the sports games. Because of the location, everyone is really into their teams. When the Pats or Giants play, everyone's watching, and same with the red sox and yankees. If the red sox play the yankees next round, things are gonna be absolutely nuts around here! I've hidden the fact that I absolutely hate the yankees so far, but if they both advance, I won't be able to hide it anymore. I'm still waiting for the Providence Basketball and Hockey games: you'll find me at every single home game this year!
I'm so happy that today is friday...and I'm so excited to go out tonight. Seriously theres no better feeling than the knowledge that friday night is merely hours away! But first I have to cram in some last minute studying before I can go out. On Monday, I have my first major paper due for Honors Civ. It's a 6 page paper on Herodotus' "Histories." So far I have a few pages written...
So the other cool thing around here is that the leaves started changing and falling. I've never seen the leaves change, everywhere I've ever lived they've stayed Green all year round, so its quite a spectacular sight. I really wish some of my friends from back home could see this because if you haven't seen it before it really is cool. For those of you who live in New England, I'm probably making a big deal out of nothing because its still in its earlier stages of change: From here, its only going to get more amazing!
I guess I'm really lucky because I had no classes today. I intentionally worked this into my schedule -- to have a day off on purpose, and its really nice: I can sleep in, relax, and most importantly, catch up on homework. In college, the homework is a lot different than in high school: there is less busy work and assignments and a lot more reading. This requires a lot more focus because you're really doing the homework for your own learning and benefit, rather than for the grade on the assignment. It's really easy to fall behind, and its crucial that you don't. These first few weeks have mainly been spent adapting to the whole college enviornment. I manage my time so that I get everything done during the week, and have the weekend to have fun:
The guy on the far right that's half in the picture is my roomate Adam: he's from New Jersey, and although he's a bit neater than the rest of us, we get along great! We always end up hanging out in our spare time with each other's friends! Speaking of which, this week is roommate agreement week: by Friday we have to go through a 7 page packet with our R.A. and set down rules for living together. I'm not too worried because I know that in McDermott 410, we get along great!
Hey everybody, It's amazing that 3 weeks of class have gone by already! My free time has been fun and my classes have been getting interesting, but college comes with a lot of work...no matter where you go or what you study! We have a big history test next week, so I've been doing my best to make sure I'm prepared for it. I've always loved history, and now I have a great professor, he teaches us a lot and is incredibly interesting. I love my teachers and classes but I find the subject matter in my accounting class rather uninteresting. Even though I'm a business major and I love marketing and selling, anything that involves math or science kind of makes me turn my head. I've been learning about some great stuff in marketing; some of the principles are fascinating, especially since we apply them to major companies that everyone knows. It's a lot like learning a foreign language- business is really starting to make sense!
We had an involvement fair last week, and it led me to become active in a couple clubs. I joined the radio station, I now have a country show on Thursday mornings. My first show was this past Thursday. Surprisingly, I got lots of visitors and callers, it was great! Honestly, I'm amazed at how many closet country fans are hiding around campus...people I didn't even know came up to me and thanked me for finally playing some country! I mean I worked at a country station over the summer...at a country station in San Francisco:
but so far, I like being the DJ at the PC station a lot better! I also joined the college republicans and attended my first meeting Wednesday night. I'm already planning on going to New Hampshire with John Conradi, one of the candidates for freshman class president, to meet Senator McCain and help him campaign. I'm really excited for that little adventure, the campaign staff is providing us with transportation and lodging, so I really hope it all works out! My 3rd big extracurricular project is forming my own intramural hockey team. I'm an avid hockey player, but I'm not Canadian and I didn't play juniors, so my chances of making varsity are pretty slim. Because of this, I'm building an intramural team, so I have until November 16th to make the best team I can and hopefully we'll win the coveted intramural champion t-shirts!
The one thing at Providence that I've loved the most so far has been all the people. I've made alot of great friends and we're only 3 weeks into school. I'm living in McDermott, which is the all boys, mostly freshman dorm located right on the quad. I've found that they really manage to put a certain type of person in each dorm, and therefore where you live usually says a lot about you as person. I'm confident in saying that my floor, the fourth floor, is easily the best in McDermott. We all get along great and we often congregate in the halls for hours when we should be doing our homework and play soccer or just hang out. The other night they hosted an 80's dance party and we went as a floor before hitting the town, it was a lot of fun:
My roomates are great too, their names are Eric, who is from Quincy, Mass, and Adam, who is from North Jersey. It's funny because Adam is quite a bit more studious, neater and quieter than the other 2 of us. I'm not really sure what he put on his survey to get stuck with us, but nevertheless, we all get along great as friends! Somehow whenever my friends and I go out, we always end up running into Adam's Jersey friends and hanging out with them too!
I know you guys are just dying to hear about my classes too ;-). Well, they've been going great: I'm a marketing major, although I am now seriously planning on either minoring, double-majoring, or even changing my major to history, because I love history so much. I'm enrolled in four classes this semester: Honors Civ, Marketing, Accounting and U.S. History to 1815. I love all my classes except accounting, which I'll learn to deal with. I've heard people talk trash about Civ since getting here, but it's a fascinating class, we're currently studying the ancient Greeks, something I've always been fascinated by. Also being in New England makes U.S. history hella interesting because everything we're learning about right now happened right around here. Marketing is, surprisingly, a fascinating class as well, and I can really see myself continuing with it as a major, which is good because accounting is incredibly dry and boring. Anyway, all in all, I'm loving it here so far and I'll be back with some crazy stories about my freshman year: I have a lot of them so far, but some of them I just can't post on the website! Anyway, I have a big accounting quiz tomorrow so I should get to work...
Hey everyone! My name is Billy Winters and I’m going to be the second freshman blogger this year…I’ve come all the way from a little town called Half Moon Bay, California, a little beach town between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, to go to PC.
Everyone asks me why I came all the way to PC, and I really don’t have a good answer, I just loved it here! I guess what really did it for me was all the people I met on my day visit. It’s a small, intimate campus and I just love everyone I’ve met here. I mean if you visit somewhere and just get that feeling there’s no reason not to go! I made a choice and am very happy with it, I certainly wouldn’t even consider going back and changing my decision if I were able to.
The whole East Coast environment certainly takes some getting used to…I spent most of my life in Dallas, Texas (which I still consider my home) and California. Since many of the students at PC are from the East Coast, they are all absolutely stunned when I tell them that I’ve never seen snow…
I’ve been having a blast at PC so far, the people are great! I’m living in McDermott, right on the quad. I'll be writing 2-3 times per week and hopefully will be able to answer any questions you guys have. I’d like to close by reminding everyone that today is September 11, so don’t forget to take a minute and remember all those who lost their lives on this day. Do something kind for your neighbor because we’re all in this together…God Bless America!
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