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 Jalapeño pizza One day my friend and I had planned to go to Glar late that evening because he was coming back from being at home. He got a little delayed because of the snow, and Glar was closed by the time he arrived. After that, we tried to go to the Pub, but it had closed because of the weather, so we were really hungry. We both had food in our rooms, but I was not in the mood to eat oatmeal.
Then my friend mentioned Vocelli’s, but I thought for sure that they would be closed. I called and the girl working explained that they were going to be open that evening! It was the best thing ever! I was so happy to have food! Pizza is always a great choice, and this one had jalapeños on it. The night was saved by Vocelli’s pizza!
Hello, my name is Ema and I have been drowned by legislation.
This weekend is Maryland Student Legislature’s Spring Leadership Training Institute and Interim Assembly conference, which will be held at McDaniel College. At this event last year, I declared my candidacy for Attorney General. This past week, I have been wondering what exactly I was thinking and why I thought it was a great idea.
As AG, my biggest responsibility is legislation, which is the meat of everything we do at MSL. Our end goal is to debate meaningful and quality legislation that inspires thoughtful debate. For this to be achieved, we have to have quality bills.
I’m a grammar nut and I have a relatively good eye for formatting. Generally, upon first looking at a bill, I can catch a lot of formatting errors, though I try and give each piece at least two read throughs to catch everything. Additionally, I have to go to the Maryland State Code and find the section of code being amended to make sure that the bill actually makes sense–there have been acts submitted that change imaginary pieces of the state code!
I was worried about this event because we didn’t have very much legislation submitted. Our next conference is Annual Session in Annapolis, so a lot of people save their best bills for that conference–understandably, since debating in the actual state house is quite an experience. To fill gaps, however, I wrote three pieces of legislation the night before we sent them to print. I’m really hoping that I didn’t make any huge errors in grammar or formatting!
The majority of my work is over now, thankfully. I get to sit back and enjoy the conference. As Parliamentarian, I’m not actually allowed to debate–the drawback of my job–however, I know that others will formulate great arguments for and against these bills. I’m excited!
 What a polished bill looks like from the outside.
 Every year, the Maryland Collegiate Honors Council (MCHC) hosts a conference that brings honors students throughout Maryland together for one weekend. I attended this conference the past two years to listen to the presentations, and this year, I finally decided to present my own paper that I wrote in Budapest.
This year, the conference is located at Salisbury University and we were scheduled to present this weekend, March 6-7. I practiced and rehearsed this entire week, and the night before the conference, I was extremely sad to receive an email stating that the conference was postponed until a later date. I already had packed my conference gear and outfits and was excited to see everyone present.
I do hope that the conference will be rescheduled for a convenient time; this was the first time I have been extremely disappointed in a snow day. Hopefully, I can blog about the conference at a later date, but for now, I will list some of my favorite presentations at the MCHC Conferences over the past two years.
2013- Slam Poetry Presentation
2014- The Representation of Self on Facebook (my best friend and roommate, Shannon presented this, and it is my all-time favorite conference presentation)
2013- The Difficulties and Challenges of Study Abroad in Liberal Arts Colleges
2014- Combining Honors Courses with Bible Study
 College students are no strangers to how useful Skype is. Loads of people use it to keep in touch with family members back home and friends at other universities.
Today in my Writing for Nonprofits class, we used Skype to learn more about the nonprofit sector and how to run a successful nonprofit. With Skype magic, we were able to have Collin Palkovitz of PureCharity.com join us right in our computer lab classroom.
Pure Charity is a crowdfunding site designed specifically help nonprofit organizations and individuals who need funding for charitable causes. Nonprofit organizations can register with Pure Charity to get tools they need to raise funds more effectively online. Pure Charity itself is a nonprofit, so the money it generates for itself goes straight back to their operational costs.
Collin talked a lot about Pure Charity’s business model and how nonprofits increasingly need to adopt business practices traditionally associated with for-profit businesses.
 Collin Palkovitz He also talked about how he got into his line of work and what it’s like to work for a nonprofit start-up. Pure Charity is still relatively new (having been founded in 2010), but Collin discussed how when Pure Charity was in the early stages of coming together, their small team of employees would often work more than 100 hours a week because they were so passionate about what they were doing. (As you’re probably aware, a standard work week is only 40 hours — these guys were working more than twice that!) Collin emphasized that working this much is not sustainable; the greatest piece of advice I took away from our conversation with him is that when starting a great project or working toward whatever you’re working on, you need to pace yourself–otherwise, sustainability won’t happen.
It was absolutely refreshing to hear someone say that pacing yourself is key. Even though I don’t come close to working 100 hours a week at McDaniel, with all of my classes, jobs, clubs, and my internship, the amount of things I have to accomplish is never ending. If I work too hard all at once, I burn out, and am not able to accomplish much at all.
So as I work through these final ten-and-a-half weeks of my college career, Collin’s advice will stick with me. In order for me to wrap things up as successfully as possible (and have fun along the way), I will need to pace myself.
One of my favorite things about being in college is that I am able to choose classes that I really do enjoy. For example, I began taking French classes my first semester of college in order to fulfill the three-semester language requirement at McDaniel. I fell in love with the language because of my first French professor and the fun atmosphere of the class.
Each semester, I take at least one French course and even studied abroad in Dijon to fulfill a French major requirement. This semester, I am taking a French literature course. I was a bit nervous at first because it is an upper-level French class, but I knew that I needed to take this class in order to improve my proficiency in the language.
It is a very difficult class for me. I am always hesitant to speak and I am constantly nervous about making mistakes in my written assignments. However, it is an interesting course subject and I enjoy learning new words and definitions. Our assignment for the weekend was to watch the film, “Le Retour de Martin Guerre,” which translates to, “The Return of Martin Guerre.” This was the one homework assignment for the weekend and when I watched the movie, I was happily surprised that I could understand a majority of the dialogue.
Watching the movie and understanding the film made me think about how far I have progressed in French. If someone would have told me at the start of my freshman year that I would major in French, study abroad in France, and watch a film completely in French, I definitely would not have believed them. Whether you know exactly what you want to do in college, or are unsure of a major, you will find your home in a department at McDaniel.
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