So, next week is the last week of classes before spring break. There is a lot going on during this week, but the most important and sometimes the scariest part of the week is midterms. There are various different types of midterms that I have gotten at McDaniel over the last 6 semesters. Essays, multiple choice, and take home midterms. Now, there is no surprise that the take home midterms are definitely my favorite, but otherwise I actually prefer essays to multiple choice. That is primarily because with multiple choice I spend far too much time second guessing myself.

This year, I have several midterms. My Global Environmental Politics midterm is on Tuesday and according to our professor it will have a variety of multiple choice, identification, short answers, and essays. My Foreign Policy midterm is a take home exam and it is due on Wednesday. We have two essay questions to answer in 3-4 typed pages each. I do have one mid-term that is slightly worrisome to me. I have never taken any art history classes before this semester, but I am currently in Religion and Art in Egypt. The essays do not worry me at all, but I am not sure how to study for the identifying pictures and talking about that particular piece. I emailed the professor asking for a bit of direction, so I am hoping to hear back from her soon.

Overall, I am not too worried about my midterms. I am going to study a good bit over the next couple days and I plan to do well. A lot of my friends have a similar workload to me with midterms, so a few of us are having a study party tomorrow night as we begin the major part of our midterm preparation. Tonight, however, I am de-stressing and not worrying about homework for a while so that I can start midterms week fresh and well rested. I am playing guild wars, catching up with some friends from home, and just generally taking the night to breathe.

So, things have returned to normal since the stomach bug that went around last week died down over the weekend. Almost everyone was well enough to be back in classes today and everything is moving forward quickly. Midterms are approaching this week and next before Spring Break occurs next weekend. As a result, everything had to resume quickly so stuff can stay on schedule. Personally, I am just glad that everyone is feeling better and the stomach bug has died down.

I did recently start my new job, which has been a lot of fun. I like the night shifts because they do not interfere with my other jobs and my classes. It is just a cashier job, but its a paycheck. I want to ask my manager soon if I am allowed to bring work to do during slow spots when there is nothing to do because not a lot of people shop at Rite Aid at 2 in the morning. The cashier work is easy, and I also put out sales tags and things like that but it is only particularly busy on Friday and Saturday.

I have a lot of studying to do this week as my first midterm is on Thursday for my global environmental politics class. However, I am not too worried about it since my midterm for this professor last year was not challenging as long as you studied. I also have 2 other midterms next week, but I will study for those during the weekend most likely. I am looking forward to being past midterms, but they are a usual part of life and as long as I study I am sure I will be fine. Then it will be Spring Break and time to catch up on sleep, work, and lots of extra hours at Rite Aid for a better paycheck.

=)

So, one of the worst things about winter is the bugs run rampant and everyone gets sick at some point. These week, a nasty stomach virus went around the campus and a lot of students got sick. However, I was actually really impressed with how the school handled the virus and how quick they were to respond to make sure that every student could get treated and get healthy as quickly as they could.

One of the first steps the school took was to tell students the symptoms and to warn everyone that the virus seemed to be highly contagious so that students could take extra precautions against getting sick. They also posted posters and signs all over campus with a list of the symptoms and how to handle the virus if they should get sick. It was a smart move and helped the first students to get sick know what their stomachs would be able to handle. The virus was nasty but many students got through the worst of the symptoms after the first 24 hours and then just had to wait for the rest to subside. Even so, the Wellness Center warned faculty to expect a lot of absences and waived the need of a wellness center note so that students who did not feel up to walking all the way to the wellness center could stay warm in bed.

Another step the school took was to add soap to some of the buildings that were normally expected to provide their own and also paper towels. It is just to help cut down on germs even more and a lot of students were glad to see this step taken. The school also created a sick tray option in glar so that students who might still be sick or contagious could get food delivered to them if they needed to in order to reduce exposure to healthy students and allow the sick student to rest more. It showed a lot of dedication on the part of the Wellness Center, Res Life, and Campus Safety. The Wellness Center also stayed open much later than normal so that students could be treated there if they needed to see a doctor quickly or just wanted to make sure they weren’t too dehydrated. The RAs and Area Coordinators reached out to all of the students who got sick in order to see how they were recovering and to check if there was anything the school could do in order to help them feel better sooner. I was one of the students who fell ill and I was sleeping when my Area Coordinator called me, so I never answered the phone, so I got an email as well. It was really nice how many people just checked in to make sure everyone was recovering and knew that they had resources that were willing to help.

Students also were a big help during the worst of the virus. A lot of friends spent time fetching food for their friends, getting them medicine from the local pharmacy, even just sitting with them in the Wellness Center. It was a nasty virus but it showed me just how much potential this community has to support one another that when this bug did go around everyone banded together and helped the students get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

My biggest task today was finalizing the piece that I have to read for the induction into LIT, the Literature Honor’s Society here at McDaniel College. I wrote a poem for it that is called Nightwish that I really like. The idea actually started from the name I gave a club in the Vampire the Masquerade campaign I am doing with a bunch of my friends. However, I think the poem turned out nicely. Honor societies are a prevalent factor of life at McDaniel and they have societies for all kinds of majors and minors. Literature is only a minor for me, but I love it and I really cannot wait for the first few meetings of LIT.

Night Wish

A whisper in the shadows, eaten by the dark,

A soft sigh in the moonlight, taken by a breeze,

A deep breathe while sleeping, heard by no one at all,

A wish in the night;

A dream in the early hours of the morning,

Forgotten as time goes on;

A fleeting thought as they try to fall asleep,

Lost in hours of slumber;

A laugh in the silence, only heard by her lover,

A gasp of fear, only heard by a friend,

A splash from a tear drop, silent in the room,

A wish in the night?

What is a wish in the night?

Is it a dream forgotten in the lights of day?

Is it a nightmare, pushed out of your mind?

Is it the passing ideas that we so often forget?

A sleepy glance, as he drifts off at night,

A smile on her face, as she wakes with the light,

A look of confusion, as they look around with fright,

What could they have wished in the night?

A wish in the night is the plot of a dream,

A wish in the night is a brief instance of memory,

A wish in the night is the fear of a nightmare,

A wish in the night is the end of a story;

A final breathe, ending a life,

A silent sorrow, lost to the world,

A new cry, beginning anew,

A happy tear, starting again;

What is a wish in the night?

Is it a happy dream or a tearful sorrow?

Is it a thought in the wind?

A memory brought on by the rain?

Night wish is the sounds lost around us,

Night wish is the looks that we miss,

Night wish is the time speeding by us,

Night wish is the way to remember all that we miss.

That is the poem, Nightwish, that I wrote.

I also had a major paper due for Boukhars today and I was quite proud of myself for writing 10 pages in 2 days because before that I had been sick and just not really up to working on the paper. I feel like I wrote it well, however, so I was glad to turn it in and proud of myself for being able to get it done in time even though I missed half of my classes last week thanks to broncitis. I am also glad to see that while I have a lot of make-up work I am not too far behind in any of my classes. I really enjoy writing so the poem and the paper were not too much work at all. I am actually looking forward to doing a few more short pieces in the near future, mostly for fun but also just to have something to submit to Contrast, the lit mag here on campus.

So remember that internship interview a while back, well I finally got follow up on it and it went really well. I got to hear more about the actual job that it entails and it sounds like a lot of fun. I will be working with emergency services in order to design a system in case of a prolonged power outage in Carroll County and various other simulation based systems as well. I haven’t gotten the internship for sure as of yet, but I was told to expect to be contacted about orientation early next week, so I’ll know soon if nothing else. I hope I get the internship, but if it doesn’t work out then it just means I’ll have a little more free time for the remainder of the semester.

I also did formally get the job I applied for at Rite Aid, which is great. It is a night shift job which won’t be good for my sleep schedule but it is about 28 hours a week and it pays more than my previous pharmacy job which is also nice. I am getting the extra job in order to hopefully start paying back some of my college loans early as well as in order to save up money for a trip to Jordan and for post college. I am not too worried about the money, but the extra cash will be nice for savings and for making my trip to Jordan more feasible. The summer program I want to do is a lot of money – about $10,000 in all and I have more than half of that saved up already but it is still a lot of saving to do. If it doesn’t work out though, I already have a backup plan. I applied for several summer internships – my favorite is a research program in Texas which my choice of research topics.

This week was really busy with the final Rite Aid interview, the followup for the internship, and more. Still, it was a good week and yesterday I took the day to just relax before doing homework, etc today. I still have a paper and a few short readings to finish tomorrow, but the day to rest was definitely needed and well enjoyed. It is always nice when the semester is busy to get a day to just relax, catch up on your favorite tv shows, play guild wars (or whatever your game of choice is), and just breathe.

So, yesterday was the last day of the HNMUN conference. The last committee session was a lot of fun although none of the four draft resolutions could get enough votes to pass. We passed a lot of amendments on each, but it wasn’t enough. However, I was pleased that the resolution that I worked on almost had the majority required whereas all of the others only had about 20 votes. Ours was 58 for to 59 against, it was very sad but I was still proud that mine almost passed when no other did. At the end of the session, one of our directors sang Heal the World and a lot of people joined him by the end and it was very touching. It was really sad saying goodbye to a lot of the new friends I met there and we are working on getting a Facebook group together so that everyone can stay in touch more easily.

I did not stay for the entire closing ceremony, but several of my friends got awards, which made me happy. We ended up leaving early to get to the airport because the weather looked nasty and we were worried the roads would be bad. We got there almost five hours early and there was then a two hour delay on my flight, so we ended up with like a seven hour wait. However, it wasn’t too bad because it gave me a chance to do homework and also to say goodbye to a few more HNMUN people who I ran into at the airport waiting on their own flights. I have already spent time facebook messaging with some of them, so I definitely think there are a few people I will stay in touch with pretty well.

The flight was a bit turbulent for my taste, but it was short (less than an hour) and I ended up dozing most of the flight. It was 11:30 by the time we got back to campus last night and I was really tired, so I got an early night so that I could start today fresh. The anime club tshirts are in, which was nice and I already delivered a few of them to club members who I spent the morning with. They turned out really nicely and I really like the shirt. It is black with a green design the my friend Breyonna made. Over the next few days, I am gonna distribute the rest because many of the staff members for the con will be wearing them and they take up too much space in my room right now.

Tonight, I have work at the language lab and then another interview at Rite Aid, I hope it goes well since this is the third stage of the interview process and I would really like to get this job. I also have a lot of homework to do in order to get caught up from my five days in Boston, but it was definitely worth it.

=)

So, I haven’t been on campus since early Wednesday morning because at 9:40am we departed for the airport on our way to Boston. HNMUN is a Model United Nations conference hosted by Harvard and held at the Park Place Hotel. We are staying in the hotel that the conference is held in and we arrived by mid afternoon on Wednesday and had the rest of the evening to ourselves. Phil and I took the train out to a local mall to pick up a few things we forgot, but we also just explored the city a little and had a really good time.

We also had a lot of free time on Thursday morning, so Phil and I went to the beach at the end of the train line. We had a little trouble finding it, but once we did it was definitely worth it. There were huge shells that were bigger than my hands – hundreds of them, as well as lots of beautiful spiral shells and smaller shells scattered around. It was one of the prettiest sites I have ever seen, especially in combination with the beach being completely clear of snow but there being huge piles of it just off to the side of the beach from the 26″ that Boston received earlier in the week.

(beach pics)

After the beach we had opening ceremonies and the first day of committee. At the opening ceremonies, Maria, PJ, and myself were able to secure a balcony for Colombia, which is the country we are representing. That is actually a really big deal because there are only 10 balconies total and with all the UN countries competing to get to one first, its actually really difficult to get one. Basically, you have to make a run for it and then guard the territory closely to retain it =). The opening ceremony was great, lots of cheering for our individual countries, flags waving, and more. The first committee session was a little slow because of technicalities but overall it went well.

(opening ceremonies)

Friday and today we had 2 committee sessions per day. I am in the Third World Assembly on Aging and our topic was the social and economic issues associated with aging populations. There has been a lot of talk about age demographics and how to make the elderly more self-sufficient, but I definitely think some people had really good ideas. I formed a coalition with Mexico and a few other countries and we later merged with the coalition headed by France to form a draft resolution. Today we completed the draft resolution. Four drafts were accepted, including ours, and discussed as well as amendments suggested. Our draft has a lot of support, which I am definitely excited about. We only had a few small complaints about our definition of the elderly, which was an easy amendment and a few things people would like to see added in order to support our draft. We made those amendments at the end of the session, so we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

(one of the committee rooms)

For dinner tonight our entire team (Colombia) went out to Fire and Ice, a Mongolian restaurant about a block from the hotel. We had a lot of fun talking about our experiences in the different committees, countries we worked with, people we met, and just enjoyed each others company. It was a blast. I have really enjoyed the HNMUN experience and I got a lot more involved this year than I had in the past. I definitely had a lot more fun as a result and that definitely taught me that I need be a little more open to new experiences sometimes.

Tomorrow morning will be voting and the closing ceremonies. I can’t wait to tell you all about them on Monday.

=)

Today, I want to talk about some of my favorite aspects of life here at McDaniel College. Not terribly much has happened since I posted on Saturday, I worked on homework, watched movies with friends, and played cards a few times. So, since nothing terribly fascinating has occured, I figured it would be a nice chance to tell you all why I love studying here at McDaniel College.

I know it sounds cliche, but I really believe McDaniel was a great fit for me in a school. I am a junior here and I still love it just as much as I did as a freshman. I was nervous when I first came here because it wasn’t my first pick school, but I have never regretted coming here instead. I originally came here for financial reasons and because one particular professor stood out in my mind in the political science department. In the end though, I really admire and trust all of my professors in both of my majors and every other teacher I have had here as well. I came to this school planning to major in Political Science, take my general education classes, and graduate. But, thanks to the language requirement I found a second major that I absolutely love and will influence me for the rest of my life. I have learned so much here about the Middle Eastern culture and I have developed a deep respect for the people in Egypt, Libya, and many other countries as well.

I also love McDaniel for some basic facts about it. I love my small classes because every student gets noticed and the professors will go out of their way to help you if you show a willingness to learn. I also really respect the Affinity Program, which is housing with people of like interests. I like in the Arabic House right now and that has enhanced my studies in my major greatly. Next year, I am applying to live in Affinity Housing with the Anime Club. We have a lot of cool service ideas and it would be much easier to coordinate if we were living together. Affinity Housing is selective, so we may not get it, but I hope we do.

I also like how willing to staff is to help people find internship and work outside of the campus. Professors are always suggesting internships and programs, but we also have an office devoted to helping students find internships and volunteer opportunities as well. This office has been extremely helpful to me in running a tutoring program and to just figuring out where I will go when my college career ends in 2014. The entire community is extremely supportive of the students and there is a lot of ability to grow. In the end, I know McDaniel was the right school for me and that I would not have done as well anywhere else.

Okay, so I have had a really fun week but it has involved far too much planning. One of my biggest projects right now are planning for NipponCon, the anime club’s convention that is occuring on March 30th. I am really looking forward to it but coordinating the schedules for all of the different panels and events, making staff badges, designing the con book, and much more are definitely making it a time consuming task. When you add the time spent advertising to the plan, myself and the other members of the planning committee certainly have our hands full. Today specifically, I was designing the staff badges so that members of the staff who are cosplaying can be easily identified without it taking away from their cosplay too much. Plus, I need badges for all of the guests so that campus safety knows who they are. We also picked a con logo this week, which was designed by Phil and Kathryn in club – they did a really nice job on it.

I also spent a lot of time today reviewing information on Colombia for Harvard National Model United Nations. I will tell you more about this next Saturday, I am sure, since by that point I will be in the middle of it all, but I am really looking forward to it. Still, getting a week’s worth of homework done ahead of time is time consuming but I definitely do not want to fall behind with the con quickly approaching, papers coming up, and lots more to do. Nevertheless, I enjoy the planning and I enjoy the different aspects of running a convention a lot. Maybe I am just weird, but it is really rewarding to see how everything comes together and to work to make the event a big success.

Tonight, I am gonna be watching movies and playing cards with Adrian and some of my other friends, because while working is fun it is definitely important to unwind as well. I don’t know what we are gonna watch yet, but it should be a lot of fun and we haven’t had time to chill much this semester between getting settled and just getting back into the swing of things. I personally am hoping for a horror movie because they are my favorite genre and Dan is amusing to watch because he gets scared easily, but I am pretty much up for whatever everyone else wants to watch.

So, I am currently in a conversational Arabic class as part of my major. I am working on a brief dialogue with a partner tonight and it was a lot of fun working on it although it is challenging to switch between the formal language and the spoken language at times. I am enjoying working on the slight modifications to pronunciations and also the variety of new words that just make the language as a whole easier. I need to re-write the dialogue yet tonight, but I am not too worried about the presentation in class tomorrow because my partner and I both seem to have at least a general understanding of the new principles and really just need to work on making the words flow.

I was supposed to have an interview tomorrow for an internship, but they have to reschedule. I am actually partially glad because I did not get a lot of sleep last night and the interview was very early in the morning, however, I am nervous for the interview and would have liked to get past the interview stage and closer to a decision. Nevertheless, I am excited for the chance to get this internship and I will definitely be looking forward to a decision once we are able to schedule the interview.

My week is going to be very busy because I am trying to get ahead in my homework because I have Model UN next week starting on Wednesday. I cannot wait for the conference, I had a lot of fun last year and I know I will this year as well. Plus, I will get to meet people from various countries and also from around the country. But in the meantime, I am trying to get 2 weeks of homework done in a week so that I will not have much to worry about during Model UN in regards to McDaniel homework. The work load really is not too bad, but I certainly have a lot of reading to do in the next few days.

Nevertheless, this should be a great week and I am looking forward to seeing what comes up to break up the long readings and all the fun I can have. Oh! The Anime Club also picked an official logo and based on shirts on its color scheme. I’ll post a picture of the shirts once they have been made, but here is the club logo which I designed based on the Kanji symbol of Japan.