March 2011 has been a crazy, weird month.

But, it's Comm Week!

I had my mock interview yesterday, it went great! I worried for no reason! Of course she asked what I believed my weakness was, I hate that question!

I went to the call center where we had supervisor interviews since the GA, Laura Disantis, and I will be leaving and Amanda Sirak, another supervisor, is there for only the fall semester.

I went to my internship and to Green and White Society, where we presented big fake checks, like publishers clearing house, to the two winners. They were so excited, it's nice to know that you influenced someone's education so much and changed their lives.

I worked on my campaigns class proposals also with two members of my group and got them done.

Today, Lambda Pi Eta had a bake sale in spirit of Comm Week! It went really well, we sold all of our cookies! My Spanish

Tomorrow I have two more interviews for the supervisor positions, my internship and my campaigns night class.

Friday is the Comm Week Gala, so exciting! I'm going to go to bed since I have an 8 a.m. tomorrow morning! Good night!

On Thursday I went to take pictures and get a tour of the Storm Harbor Equestrian Center. They have so many great parts to their facility. I really wish I would have known more about it before I was a senior so I could have volunteered. They have a state-of-the-art ramp lift that actually raises wheelchairs to a platform. The wall behind the platform is actually a door that opens into the arena. The horse can pull up right to the platform, which is the exact height of the horses, and volunteers, who are trained, can lift the rider onto the horse.

The Storm Harbor Equestrian Center is named after Dr. Carolyn Rizza's horse named Storm Harbor. They are accredited by NARHA, North American Riding for the Handicapped Association. The facility has one classroom in which two equine classes are held. There are two windows in the classroom, so when riders are on the horses, their parents can watch through the classroom.

Next, I was taken to the Tack Room. They have many different european and western saddles that have all been donated, except the picture of the black saddle in my pictures below. A rider's family had a saddle custom made for him because he has quadriplegia. The Storm Harbor Equestrian Center is equipped with many different types of reins. They have rainbow reins, which incorporate yellow, red, blue and green colors. It's used for riders so they understand whether they should lengthen or shorten the reins. They also have handle reins, which are the big blue reins in the picture beside the saddles picture. When riders have poor motor skills, it helps for them to better grip the reins, control the horse and be more independent when riding the horses.

I then got to see all the horses. They have 12 horses, all of which have been donated. They said that it actually is very easy for them to get horses donated. Right now, they have a waiting list of donors who want to help by providing horses. They have four separate fields that stretch back to the edge of the trees. Lastly, they showed me the indoor arena where riders and the Equestrian Team ride and practice.

After leaving the SHEC, I took pictures of the Fairfield Inn Marriott being built in Slippery Rock. I also took pictures of the new Butler Health System building and the new entrance into campus, which is off of Route 108.

I went to my Campaigns class and got a rude awakening. I have to write four pitch letters, two campaign proposals, write my senior assessment and attend my mock interview all within the next three to four weeks.

I guess I should get to work!

This month has been the most ridiculous month of my life. Also, the first week back from sprinig break has never been so intense!

Wednesday: I had Spanish II, which I am actually really getting the hang of. I took up to Spanish III in high school, but never really did that well in it. At noon I went to meet with Professor Strahler to discuss my digital portfolio, which you are looking at! He gave me some suggestions on the organization of the material within my pages.

I had a meeting with my campaigns group at 1 p.m. in the library to discuss our presentation to Conneaut Lake Park's Board of Trustees on Thursday. We realized we didn't have a lot of information that we were supposed to have for our campaign, such as: timelines for our three events, timeline for The Beach Club overall and focus group summary. Another girl in our group forgot she had the proposal that Dr. Quinn made corrections on, so we needed to make those changes as well. We needed to put the campaign on the letterhead and add the research graphs to the proposal. Finally, we had to have 20 copies of our proposal for each member of the Board of Trustees. All of this had to be done before 4 p.m. Thursday, which is when we had to leave Slippery Rock for Conneaut Lake. How stressful!

I went to work at the call center and we got 1,200 Senior Class Gift packets together. I then worked on typing everything up for the Conneaut Lake Park campaign. After supervising the day and night shift, I went to the library at 9 p.m. to meet with my group to put everything together and make sure we had all parts of the proposal we needed. We ended up using a lot of that time and didn't leave the library until 11 p.m. We decided to have our campaign printed at printing services since our proposal was 30 pages long and we all would chip in to pay for it. Our group leader, Kayla Mulligan, was going to get that done at 8 a.m. the next morning.

Thursday: I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to get everything ready for my long day I was about to have. I had my Senior Seminar course from 8 - 9:15 a.m., work at Old Navy at 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. and we had to leave for the Conneaut Lake Park presentation by 4:15 p.m. A long day to start out with. While I was in my Senior Seminar class, I get a text message from Kayla saying that printing services can't get our copies done that day. So everyone needed to find some way to print four copies each and bring them to our presentations. So, I'm freaking out and going crazy because I only have 20 minutes to figure out how I'm going to print out our proposal for free before I have to leave for work at Old Navy. So I drive up to Old Main and go to the Call Center to print out the proposal.

Usually, I am really calm and collected when a stressful situation arises, but I definitely wasn't when it came to this situation. I was trying to print out the proposal and two blue lines on our letterhead wouldn't print out. So by the time I fixed that problem and had it printing out, I had 25 minutes before I had to be at work at Old Navy. So I had Kayla stop by and pick it up for me before she left for Conneaut Lake Park. Problem solved!

So I went to work at Old Navy from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. I changed into different clothes at the end of my shift for the Conneaut Lake Park presentations. Lauren Hrvatin and Josh Smith picked me up from the outlets to journey together to Conneaut Lake.

We got there a couple minutes after 5 p.m. and watched all of the presentations, except the last one. Since our project is on the Beach Club, we thought it would be only appropriate to eat and have a drink at the Beach Club. But it was closed! That is why they can't make any money! Their website says they are opened Thursday-Sunday nights. Our group was really disappointed so we ended up just going into the restaurant area of Hotel Conneaut, where we gave our presentations. We all had a really fun time! It helped to bond our group by all of us hanging out outside of a school related setting.

I ended up not arriving back at my apartment until 10 p.m. I hadn't checked my e-mail all day because I didn't have time and had 17 e-mails.

Friday: I went to work in the morning and to class. I went to my internship and Dr. Quinn came for her site visit. At 6:15 p.m. I went to Miller Auditorium to work the Galway to Broadway event for Green and White Society.

I have been doing homework the entire weekend. The only things I need to do still are my adding details to my internship journals and Quia for my Spanish course. Hopefully I can at least get Quia done before I have to work the night session tonight. Oh, and I had to read three chapters for my Organization Communication course, but there is absolutely no way that I will even fashion the idea of getting that done.

If anyone read throught that, I congratulate you. It was basically a long entry of me complaining about my busy week.

Necesito la tarea de espanol, adios!

Surprisingly, I finished all of my homework that I had over spring break.

Today, I had one interview for Green and White Society. We are in the middle of our recruitment process, which is pretty rigorous for being a student organization.

During Phase I, students have to fill out an application and attach a response to two questions we ask, it cannot be longer than one page. Then the Recruitment Committee scores them and depending on how many applicants we have, we usually make a cut there. Phase II is student interviews, which is where we are now. We also make some cuts here as well. Our final phase, Phase III, is called a social critique. We invite all the students who have made it to the last round and divide them into groups. We have them interact with current GW ambassadors and then do team building exercises. This helps us get to know what type of leader and person they are through activities. We also have them go through scenarios, which are my specialty and favorite part of Phase III. As ambassadors, interacting with alumni who may be upset with the university is always something we have to be aware of. So that is one of our scenarios. Current ambassadors act out scenes and the students have to act as ambassadors. It's also a great way to see how they interact under pressure and how well they think on their toes.

After that, I went to the eye doctor, which is always a treat. I went to a place in Grove City, because it was going to be a hassel to go home. The guy did a glaucoma test, but instead of being a puff of air, he put drops in that numbed my eyes, more drops to dilate my eyes and then put this orange dye in my eyes. It felt so weird, and since I forgot my glasses and couldn't have my contacts in, I couldn't see anything. So then he had me put new contacts in which felt weird, but only because my eyes were numb and dilated. He said I could drive home, but I definitely shouldn't have driven. The sun was way too bright for my dilated pupils and I didn't bring any sunglasses.

I was almost late for my Lambda Pi Eta meeting, but fortunately I wasn't. We talked about Comm Week and promoting it to students are undecided. We set a date to decorate the Comm floor and when we wanted our bake sale to be during Comm week. Organizations were asked to set up little games for people to play the Thursday during Comm Week, so we think we are going to have darts with balloons and give out small prizes. I'm not sure what they could even be yet.

Now I'm getting ready to go to Organizational Communication. It's always an interesting class.

Tomorrow I have to work at Old Navy all day, but afterward I get to go to dinner with my friend, Katie!

Hopefully the weather starts looking up!

I'm one of the Fundraising Committee Co-Chairs for SRU's Green and White Society. Monday before spring break we picked the winners. The first prize winner of $5,000 towards one year of tuition is Brett Schindler, a sophomore. The second prize winner of $600 towards one year costs of books is Brandon Erskine, also a sophomore. I called both of them today, and they weren't home so their mothers answered. They both were so excited.

It's really nice to know that you made someone so happy and really helped them out with their college career. We are inviting them both to our meeting on Tuesday, March 28 to take pictures and kind of make a big deal out of it. We are going to give them a leaflet of information on what they need to do to get their money. They need to be registered as a full time student in order to receive their winnings, but registration isn't until the beginning of April. I'm also going to make big checks made out of poster board, like the ones that Publisher Clearing House give away.

I got a lot of homework done today, but I will have a little more. Hopefully I can get a lot of the reading I still have to do done tonight. I work tomorrow at Old Navy and am thinking about getting my hair cut on Saturday, ahh!

Last night I came back to Slippery Rock. I worked today at the Call Center and gave a potential employee a tour of the campus. He's a 2009 graduate and grew up in Slippery Rock, so I'm sure he already knew everything I was telling him. I have another tour tomorrow, but he isn't a SRU grad, so he won't know much I'm sure. I came home and have been working on finishing up my digital portfolio.

Tomorrow and Thursday I work at the Call Center and on Friday and Saturday I work at Old Navy. It's almost Wednesday and I still have so much homework to do. I need to read for Organization Communication and start the paper for our second assignment, fix and continue working on the Beach Club Campaign, finish my digital portfolio, e-mail my mock interviewer, e-mail people for my internship and hopefully I can start my self-assessment. Wow, that's quite a lengthy list. I also need to contact the Tuition Raffle winners and make them big checks with leaflets telling them what to do to get their money.

Today I sent out the check to save a seat for West Chester University. In a couple days, I'll officially be a student. It's weird to think about and I'm a little nervous!

First and foremost, happy birthday to my cousin Lisa! She's 20 and a fantastic young lady!

Today I had Spanish, although almost nobody was there. People always skip the Friday before spring break. I went to my internship and took a lot of pictures! I went to the Communication Department and took some pictures of the labs, the Equipment Check-Out Room and an Interactive Multimedia II class for the social media networks. The instructor for Interactive Multimedia II is Doug Strahler, an '05 SRU graduate and temporary instructor at SRU. I got a lot of pictures of him helping students.

I went back to the office and helped Laura Disantis, the graduate assistant for the Annual Fund Office, with a senior mailing that needed to be sent out. I came home and updated the rockalumnicafe.com website and scheduled the electronic newsletter to be sent. I then uploaded the pictures I took today, picked my favorites and resized them.

This week I'm going to work on my Conneaut Lake Park proposal, my digital portfolio, my self assessment and work at the Call Center.

Today my group was supposed to go to The Beach Club at Conneaut Lake Park, but at the last mintue everyone bailed. So I went to the CSIL, which I'm going to be featuring on SRU's social media sites, and talked to Brad Kovaleski, the director of the Center of Student Involvement and Leadership (CSIL). We talked about getting pictures and what information should be put on the networks. I then went to the Communication Department and took some pictures of students using InDesign, a program used to design publications. I took some pictures of faculty talking in the hallway, which they were doing anyway.

I then went to the Equestrian Center and took pictures of the campus, there is a great view! I then drove up to the Gail Rose Stadium Lodge, there is also a great view of the new residential halls and the new union. The only down side was that it was really muddy and I definitely wasn't wearing the proper footware. I did get some good pictures though!

After that, I went to work at the Call Center for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, I have Senior Seminar at 8 a.m. and PR Campaigns at 5 p.m. It's definitely going to be a long day. Friday is the last day of class before spring break! I'll still have Spanish and my internship to go to before a week of freedom! It'll be nice to relax for a couple days!

Happy March 2!