Gina - Obligatory Introduction Entry!
I am Gina Frances Trisha Longo (of no relation to my dear fellow blogger Tricia), known on the Saint Peter's campus as a cannonball of energy, a lightening bolt of wit, a whirlwind of action. I'm also known to be very liberal with metaphors, surprisingly enough.
I originally hail from Mantua, NJ (a Clearview Regional High School grad, thanks), which is in South Jersey, off of the turnpike's Exit 2. I'm a junior here at SPC and a psychology major. It sometimes worries my friends and family that someone like me might one day be responsible for the mental and emotional health of other human beings, although I can't imagine why.
I'm really intense into my psychology courses and research right now though, especially given our upcoming finals. I'm running a cognitive psychology experiment for Dr. Hamilton's psychology lab currently, and I'm also doing research on sexual double standards for my own honors thesis experiment. This thesis project is a requirement seniors need in order to graduate SPC with honors, but it's also great prep for what I might be doing in graduate school, so I'll get through the work without complaining too much.
As for extracurriculars, I'm the Arts and Entertainment editor for SPC's student newspaper, the Pauw Wow. I also have a news column every issue called the Senate Smackdown, which reports happenings in the student government, and I draw some editorial cartoons too. I'm also the Vice President for the class of 2008, the President of Psychology club, a student ambassador for the Pavo Society, and a work study at the President's Office. For those of you who will be attending freshman orientation this summer, you'll see me there as an O-Team leader. I'm also a complete masochist, and constantly surprised that I ever have any free time.
If SPC were ever to put my mug on the side of the bus, the caption beside it would say "Gina wants to be a New York Times bestselling novelist, lounging on the beach of a Caribbean island with her pina colada, and occasionally playing tennis with her neighbor Antonio Banderas. SPC will help her get there." A slightly more realistic fantasy involves me with my Ph.D in social psychology, working as a professor and actively conducting experiments for a major university and then being able to publish and publicly present my results. I would be more than happy to work in labs doing research, but I also feel very strongly about communicating findings in psychology to as many people as possible, whether they will be my students or my peers in the field.
Being able to sell my novels and stories would be nice too, though. It probably seems strange that I'm not an English major, or at least an English minor, but I believe that a person can't be a good writer, either of fiction or non-fiction, if they only learn about reading and writing. This is probably why Jesuit education appealed to me so much - there is so many things in the world that a person may not know about, and by being educated as a whole person, I can incorporate a larger range of experience into my writings.
Anyways, I constantly put my hands into way too many pots (metaphorically, again) and I am always roaming for new adventure either on the SPC campus or off of it, so I hope to update this blog often with a rundown of all of the fun, interesting activities I get caught up in. I'll have a better update about my current life later this week, such as preparations for the Junior Senior Formal and of course, finals. For now, I'll leave you with a picture from the Hellogoodbye concert I saw with my partner-in-crime Audra this past week (and the band was SO good too).
Seriously, one of the best parts about being in NYC? All of the bands you love will have to come through here at some point or another.