football game!

As I promised, here's an entry on one of the biggest spectacle on Grounds -- football games. I'll skip the actual game itself since it was pretty much a foregone conclusion and talk about everything else associated with it.

Firstly, tailgating. Starting around morning really, tables with food and drink and speakers will appear all over Grounds. Most lawn rooms will have a table outside, all the parking lots are filled with alumni who have a table behind their car. Most of the Greek houses on Rugby Road have a huge to do, so there's lots of people eating, drinking and talking everywhere. Even at 11 am when we had a 3:30 pm kickoff. The thing with parking lots on game days is... don't use them. A) You'd have to buy a permit and B) you'd be squeezing by 10 thousand other drivers but really C) traffic is less than a snail's crawl, so you'll most likely be beating your wheel in frustration instead of getting excited for the game. Some savvy students living near Scott Stadium will rent out parking spaces for the day, easily picking up $200 for an afternoon of almost no work.

I was really surprised at how packed the stadium was. I got there at 20 minutes before kickoff and wow, it was completely and utterly packed. There wasn't a seat to be found, even when I climbed up to the uppermost levels. I don't recall the first game of the year ever being so packed, but it was such an amazing sight seeing everyone turned out, ready to support our school.

This brings me to the age old tradition of 'guys in ties and girls in pearls' -- one that dates back to Jefferson's time when they would dress up nicely for any big event. Seeing as it was the first game of the year I decided to go with the tradition and put on a sundress and a pearl necklace. There is however a more modern tradition being pushed by our current football coach, the 'sea of orange', basically encouraging everyone to dress up in all orange. The stadium was flooded with orange, this might eventually become the sole UVa tradition, who knows?

I'd like to put in a shout out to our marching band as I think they are pretty awesome. Definitely great performances, and they put in so many hours in practice. My big in my sorority is actually a member of the color guard, and another sister is part of the french horn section, props to them!

Another great favorite of mine is our pre game video. UVa's mascot is the Cavalier, whom we affectionately call the CavMan. Prior to each kickoff we have a video of Cavman defeating the opposing team's mascot. It was nice to beat the Trojan on screen if not on the field. =)

Sorry if I sound rather incoherent, I'm writing this with half of my mind on work. You pretty much get loaded with work in the Comm school, and being my delightfully overachiever self, of course I'm trying to get everything for next week done over the weekend. Alright, so that was a slight exaggeration, but I'm looking at the 300 pages of reading and my eight hour shift at work tomorrow and feeling slightly sick. O_O

scavenger hunt

So speaking of the club event yesterday, it was my peer mentoring organization's first scavenger hunt of the year. We had 15 clues, each pointing to a specific place on Grounds that first years might not know about, but would be very beneficial for them to know about. Some of my favorite clues were a student and a red cross (Elson student health center), free Blockbuster of UVa, and "I cost three dollars". (Any guesses for the last two clues?) Due to my rather small stature, I had to stand on a chair in the middle of Newcomb Plaza to kickstart the festivities. Apparently a lot of my friends and sorority sisters saw me in the middle of the Plaza yelling on a chair. Must have been an amusing sight. =P

We had a pretty good turnout for the event, I was really proud of all the work my exec board put into it. Then of course today is the big game day of us versus USC. By now there must be a lot of tailgating on the lawn, and one of my sisters just left to practice in the marching band. Get excited! Football games are a great spectacle, I'll blog about it tonight.

aaand the first weekend!

Well, for me anyways. In our Comm school we don't have Friday classes, so my weekend begins after my classes finish at 1pm on Thursday. That may sound like we're huge slackers, but really, we need that extra day. It's only been my first four days but I already really appreciate the breathing space. I mentioned all the group work in my last post, most group meetings take place on Fridays. I've had around 100+ pages of reading due everyday, so that's been a time crunch as well.

Alright, I digress. I'd promised myself that I would write a nice long entry today, but I got up, took care of a lot of work, and am now out of time. I need to shower and get ready for a presidents' meeting. And then after that one of my clubs is having its first club wide event, and then after that I'm attending the annual hypnotist's performance. ..and then after that I'll come back to the house and blog some more. A typical day! =D

first day of classes!

Wow. It feels kind of weird to be getting up early and going to class again. It's almost as if summer never happened -- time flew by wayyy too fast this year.

I mentioned before that I'm going to be in the McIntire School of Commerce, today was my first day in what essentially was college all over again. I feel very privileged to be using the new building, the facilities are beyond amazing. Yesterday was an all day orientation in which we were introduced to our blocks, faculty, and technology. For those of you unfamiliar with our comm school and wish to know more, read ahead. If not skip my next paragraph.

The comm school is a two year program in which students begin in their third year, so you apply for admission the spring of your second year. The entering class of around 300 students are divided into eight blocks, with around 40 students a block. Each block has their own set of professors and fourth year mentors, and you spend all school year with the block and the professors. The third year experience is called ICE - integrated core experience. All the different areas that professors teach are interrelated, so they all flow into each other. There is a lot of emphasis on teamwork and groupwork. Each block is also sponsored by a corporate partner, and students will work on some projects and presentations for their corporation.

My block is sponsored by Rolls Royce, so during orientation we received an annual report to read and discuss. Right then I could tell that the style of learning would be different in the comm school. For me, it's rather similar to high school. Although there's 40 people in a class, the professors focus very heavily on student interaction. People raise their hands to answer a question or bounce off ideas off each other -- rather different from the lecture style teaching method for larger classes. I had to take a moment and recollect my high school self as it was very tempting to sit back and just scribble notes.

Other highlights of these two days was the technology orientation. The comm school... is awash in resources. For our stock market lab, each station has dual computer screens. There's a stock ticker running around the ceiling of the lab and a board on one wall with real time stock changes. There's LCD screens in the four corners of the room so you can see what the professor is doing based on your orientation, and there is a huge projection screen up front. Students have almost an entirely separate web system compared to the College of Arts and Sciences (where we all applied from). We have our own email servers, shared servers, and everything I've already forgotten.. it's quite amazing really.

Along with the high school theme is homework everyday! Hahaha. Because comm school classes meet everyday for three hours a day, there's quite a lot of reading to do. With that said, I'm going to do some of my reading.

mia again..

Oh dear. So sorry. This time I got snatched by the evil monster who is... 'Move In Day!' Indeed, these last three days or so have been a whirlwind of moving in, partially unpacking, getting wall decor, and things like that. And the few days before that twas the end of my day job at UVa Admissions (aw, I'm really sad that's over. It was such a large part of second year summer that it really defined it), so that's been another hectic whirlwind itself.

But about my new digs.. I'm really excited about them! I moved into my sorority house -- which by the way, was quite unproductive as I kept getting sidetracked into two hour conversations with my sisters, and have not really unpacked yet. My things are still scattered on my bed, rather helter skelter and boxes everywhere. Why'm I excited about living in the house? Of course I'm close to my sisters and can hang out with them all the time, but I'm also very close to class. I have around a 10 minute walk to class, which is quite a short walk compared to my dorm buildings of the previous two years.

Other exciting things about the house include new carpets (alright, that was a kind of silly thing to be excited about) and proximity to other friends. Some non so exciting things include our unfortunate, or fortunate location, depending on how you view it. My sorority house is close to a lot of fraternity houses, whiiiiiich means blasting music into the wee hours of the morning on weekends. Hmm, I'll update you guys on how that goes. Otherwise, not much else.

I do suppose this is the closest to single gender occupancy I've ever come close to, I'll definitely tell you guys how that goes as well. I did have co-ed housing my first two years - remind me to talk about that later as I definitely need to go to sleep as it's past 2am. G'night, or good morning!