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Main
| October 2007 »
So now that everyone has pretty much found their niche, I really wish I hadn't had to work during the involvement fair last week.
That's one of the really great/really bad parts about going to school right near your hometown: you get to keep your job (and mine is the best job I could ask for). While it's nice to have some extra cash hanging around, though, you can't ask your boss for every event off (and there's lots of events). Actually, to be fair, if my boss could pay me for never even coming in, she would. The powers that be, however, seem to have something against that...
Can't imagine what...
So, as a part of that whole "time management" thing, you have to learn to pick and choose your battles.
Anyway! The long-awaited post about roommates and food!
I'll start with food because it seems like it's always on my mind these days. Why? It's way too easy to get. I know food really isn't free, because you've paid for your meal plan, but it feels like it is free because all you have to do is swipe your ID card to get it.
When I was home, if the cupboards were empty, that was it. There was nothing to snack on and nothing you could do about it.
Yet here, if the snack drawer (a bad temptation!) is empty, just walk over to Raymond Hall for endless choices, or to Slavin if you need something on the go.
People joke about the "Freshmen Fifteen" (the extra pounds that people pack on when they first get to college), but I can see how easy it is to over-do it. Pizza, pasta, and fries are an option every day (again, to be fair, so is salad), and there's always chips, candy, pudding, ice cream, pretzels, and lots of other junk food for sale in the convenience store in the bottom of Davis Hall, which is also home to Jazzman's Cafe.
There are a million delivery places around campus that are not only delicious, but willing to give students discounts, too.
Sometimes I love that such a variety of food is always accessible, but other times I resent it. As a girl plucked from a "no carb" household (I kid you not when I say this is the first time in a year or two that I've seen regular, unhealthy white bread), it can all be a little over-whelming.
Of course, the other battle of eating is finding someone to eat with.
It's a known fact that freshmen move in groups at all hours (and girls will never, ever, for as long as mankind exists, go to the bathroom alone), and it’s a rare sight to see people eating alone in Raymond. Perhaps this is just my perspective, but it also seems to be generally more acceptable to eat alone (while reading, studying, talking on a cell, or what have you) in Slavin than Ray Hall.
Actually, I was talking to a friend of mine at another school, and I said something along the lines of, “O, today, at one of the cafeterias…�
And he was like, “Wait! One of? You guys have more than one!?�
I don’t think I’d really realized until right then just how convenient the two options are.
Now, roommates!
I completely lucked out.
Scratch that.
The Office of Residence Life paired my roommate and me up perfectly!
I have yet to meet anyone here in McVinney (or from anywhere else, for that matter) who has a problem with their roommate(s).
Also, PC requires that students who live in the dorms have “roommate agreements�, which occur when you are your roommate(s) sit down with the floor RA and go over common issues that occur. You all decide who can and can’t touch/use which thing, what objects are meant to be shared (and to what extent), and you address any pet peeves you might have about your living situation and/or the people you’re living with.
My neighbors, who get along fabulously, joke around that they weren’t having any problems until after their roommate agreements. It’s clear that they’re joking, though, because they only argue when they vacuum.
Yeah. That’s the kind of people you meet when you go to college.
(I’m only teasing them; I wrote that because I’m sitting in their room right now watching them vacuum each other’s feet in an attempt to each domineer the rug-cleaning, and I know they'll read this when I post it.)
Living on campus is great because it gets you so much more involved! For all the studying that goes on, there has to be some fun, free time, and roommates and neighbors are, of course, the first people you usually look to for socializing.
You’d have to force me to commute and miss all this!
For example, I can’t wait to head out to the Slavin lawn today for some henna tattoos!
The final bit of scoop is that I am heading out this weekend for a field training exercise with ROTC. I’ll be up at Forth Devens (Massachusetts) from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. Quite frankly, I’m mostly nervous, but I am a little bit excited, too. There’s so much to learn, which is daunting, but it’ll also be nice to be more on top of the game.
Next time I post, I’ll let you know how my weekend in the woods was!
Later, all!
How quickly time flies! Honestly, I don't know where it goes!
In high school, you start early in the morning, and just keeping moving around and around in circles like a big herd, all the while counting down to the magical moment of dismisal--which is, of course, always hours away.
In college, you have a few classes interspersed throughout the day--the majority of which are about an hour (unless you're unfortunate enough to have some kind of lab. Then you're looking at three to four hours). Once class is out, though, that's it. You have all that time to yourself to do whatever you want! The day slips right by when it's broken up in chunks like that, instead of the long haul you get in high school.
With time going by so quickly, I've feel like I've been here for months, not weeks. It's great that I feel so comfortable already, but at the same time, I'm scrambling to fit everything into a measly twenty-four hours each day--and my days start early.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, I have an hour of physical training (PT) with ROTC. It starts at 6:30 (so be there by 6:25, at the latest), and we do different exercises each session. If it's a good day, we'll work mostly on the muscles that go into push-ups and sit-ups. On the days I dread, however, we may run a course of about three miles. I have no qualms in admitting that I am one of the slowest runners in the entire battalion, but everyone there has something they have to work on. Some people can't do all the push-ups they need to pass the test, others have a hard time with sit-ups. That's why we work out every other morning, though.
I'm not going to say I enjoy doing PT, because that would be a huge lie, but I like what PT does for me. Yeah, sometimes it stinks, like when, the night before, people invite you to watch a late movie or something and you have to pass them up so you can get up in the morning. I can't tell you how great it feels, though, when you cut two minutes off your run time, or do thirty more sit-ups than you did last time. When PT is all over with for the morning, you walk away feeling so good about yourself and the shape you're getting into.
Speaking of getting into shape, the new Concannon Fitness Center is a huge success. I can't walk by there (and I live right across from it) without seeing people working out. Students love going; I've never seen people so excited about exercising!
I've actually heard people say that they're favorite show is going to be on tv that night, so they need to go work out.
Sounds weird, right?
Not when thirty-six of the forty-two pieces of "cardiovascular equipment" each have their own tv!
I have yet to check it out, but it's on the list of things I eventually need to get around to (things I'll be able to complete when they extend days to thirty hours).
Well, anyway, I know I said I'd discuss what it's like having a roommate and everything here, but look at how much space I've already taken up! To think that I sat down and thought, "Let me just type a few sentences on the blog so that, later, I'll already be started..."
Heh heh...
Hey!
Wow! I can’t believe that the time has already come to post on the PC Admissions Blog here! It seems like I have all these things I’ve been trying to keep track of to tell you, and I must have a dozen post-its tacked on up my desk here (and I never used post-its before college), so please excuse the length of this post.
Now, where to begin?
Well, Orientation was great. My Orientation Leaders were excellent, and the few days really helped to soothe some of the worries I had (for example, I had no idea how the whole scheduling thing worked, but when I left Orientation, I was completely confident about how daily life here would be).
Then it came time to move in. Since I am in PC’s Army ROTC, I was one of the lucky ones who was able to move in early (the other early arrivals were either athletes or people in the Urban Action program--which I heard from friends was a blast!) I arrived on Wednesday, 29 August 2007. Thursday and Friday were ROTC’s Welcoming Days (which were really great because, when I started classes, I was able to recognize a lot of faces). I had Saturday to myself, to settle in a little bit more, and the rest of the freshmen moved in Sunday, 2 September 2007.
I’m going to be honest. I don’t know how people like my roommate, who came from Chicago, moved all of their things in one trip! I am completely guilty of driving back and forth to my house for last minute items :)
That Monday was Labor Day, the day of the trip to Newport (while the upperclassmen moved in), and we couldn’t have asked for better weather! It was absolutely beautiful by the bay, and the Irish Festival was also in town, so Newport had even more to offer that weekend!
Classes started Tuesday, and my very first college class was at 8:30 AM; it was Politics 101 with Dr. Cammarano, who jumped right into getting to know everyone. All of my classes, like Politics, are small and personable—exactly what I’d hoped they’d be.
My largest class, of course, is the Development of Western Civilization, and I don’t even feel overwhelmed by that! Had I felt that the class was too large, I still have seminar every Friday. There, the class is broken down into smaller groups so that we can discuss more deeply whatever material we’re on that week.
My other classes are Military Science and Spanish 104. I’d had some worries that I might literally be lost in translation in Spanish, but the language placement exams have served me well—the class is perfect for my level! It’s spoken completely in Spanish, and I’m not exaggerating when I say I feel like I’ve gotten more Spanish out of these few weeks than out of the last few years of high school Spanish class. The “complete immersion� thing makes such a difference!
All right. I need to start looking at my essay assignment for Civ class, so I’m going to stop here, for now. In the next entry, I’ll definitely be discussing the roommate and food scene, so you can look forward to that by Monday, at the latest!
My name is Elizabeth McNamara, (but just call me Liz) and I'm going to be one of the freshman bloggers this year! I'm very excited to start blogging about my freshman experience here at Providence College, so I'll tell you a little bit about myself.
I made the very long and extremely tiring drive to PC all the way from my hometown of North Providence, RI (which is, at most, two minutes away) a little more than a week ago. Since it's so close, I've always known about PC, but had never, ironically, considered it as an option for me because I'd only wanted to look at schools out of state. Yet thankfully, my parents forced me to tour PC, and I fell completely in love with the campus; I was floored by how friendly, pleasant, and well rounded the students and staff here are.
After that, there was only one option for me, and I even applied early (something I highly recommend!) My decision was secured right after Christmas (while all of my friends were still scrambling to get their materials in on time!)
At my high school, North Providence HS, I was extremely active: I was captain of my school's mock trial team, a member of the National Honor Society, a varsity member of the girls' lacrosse team, a cast member of the drama department, a math club member, a math tutor, and much more. I also wrote columns for my town newspaper, The North Providence Breeze, volunteered, worked at my town library (and still do), and was a Cadet Second Lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol (which, for lack of a better way to describe it, is like a military-oriented group of Boy and Girl Scouts).
Here at PC, I am a member of the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and I'm also majoring in political science.
In my next blog posts, I'll be able to get into more detail about my dorm, roommates, activities around campus and Providence, classes, teachers, and college life in general. There's so much to say!
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