Classes

Classes this week weren't too bad, but my teachers didn't waste their time with giving us assignments. I have never had so much reading for homework before, that I don't even know what to do! The first two days were dedicated to going over the syllabus'. In one of my classes we had a 26 page syllabus; YUCK!

This is what my biology lab looks like.

It's going to be so much fun having this girl in my lab! This is Jade Gleich, one of the girls from my floor last year who is in my group for biology lab. 

Mud, Mud and more Mud

Mud Volleyball!!

As the village staff we made a team to compete in the mud volleyball tournament that was going on. The mud was literally a foot deep and made the game a little more challenging and fun. We won our first game and lost the second.  

The next morning I was still finding mud on me.

First Night of Duty

Went to a wilderness club event the other day and had to do different activities to win tickets that would be put into a raffle. There was trivia on the most deadly spiders, ice fishing in the Tundra, filtering water in the Rainforest, matching insects in the desert and more. The easiest way to get tickets wast o eat a chocolate covered maggot or cricket. It may sound bad and look bad, but it really just tasted like chocolate.

Later that night I had duty and hiked all the way across campus with a watermelon in my arms. Everyone was asking what it was for and gave me funny looks. Spencer, the RD of the building I was on duty in, said that he had a machete that I could use to cut the watermelon, because all I had was a short 3 inch knife. The machete ended up being a saw and worked kind of well at cutting up the watermelon.  

My first night of duty was a little rough. Just as my first round came up the weather decided to down pour and I mean down pour for a good hour. Within the first 2 minutes I was completely soaked and it was only the first round out of three. The weather got better as the night went on, still wet, drizzling and a lot of thunder and lightning.

Classes Started

Today was the first day of classes of my sophomore year! That's hard to believe.

I had biology, english and organic chemistry and then had a break for lunch and finished out my first day with animal nutrition. In organic chemistry I found Ashley. It was sooooo good to see her smiling face again!

Me and my favorite Sarah reunited in animal nutrition, oh how I've missed this girl!

Our lunch group kept growing as time went by that we had to move to a different table and split up.   

Today marks the 25th anniversary from when the Findlay officially became a university. So in honor of the 25th anniversary we had ice cream and cookies on the front lawn. 

Lets just take in the drastic difference in color here, not only that, but also the length of our legs. 

Block Party

Saturday night we had our annual block party. At the block party was a DJ, photo booth, zip line, mechanical shark, inflatable twister and free food. John and Dallas had a challenge going to see who could ride the shark the longest. Dallas won with 13 seconds

Meeting New People

Day 2's highlight of events was the arch ceremony. The University of Findlay has a special tradition where as Freshmen you walk through the arch heading towards campus and when you graduate you walk through the arch towards main street. Each students family was given a balloon and as their son or daughter walked through the arch they would release the balloon. 

The view of the sky as all the students walked through the arch. 

To finish off the night we had "building oiler nation." This is a time that freshmen get to meet most of the students in their class and participate in some team building and ice breaker activities.  

This is my family. An activity that we did included getting in a group of 12 people you didn't know and doing different get to know you activities. We shared our hobbies, major, interesting facts and more. Now every time I see the guy to the left he yells "Hey Sister!"  

Freshmen Are Here

The Freshmen are here and orientation has started. As ResLife we take a back seat in these events. The first night that the students were on campus we had movie night in the recreation center on a blow up screen and watched Captain America 2 with free popcorn and drinks. At the end of the movie we were all having a great time helping tear down the screen.

Birthday Celebration and Remembrance

Last night after everyone, everyone who was interested, finished their "mock duty" rounds we all met in Jenise's room to watch "Patch Adams." We chose to watch "Patch Adams" the other night when we heard of Robin Williams' death. So in remembrance we watched "Patch Adams" and since it was Brayden's birthday we also celebrated. We managed to surprise Brayden with an ice cream cake!

Tuesday Torture

After getting to bed around 12 on Monday night everyone in the village woke up at 4:30 am to the fire alarms going off. All the RAs made it out and 2 football players, but where were the other 20 players? Well they decided that since they had to be at breakfast at 6:30 there was no point in getting up and out of bed, so all of them slept through the alarm. I don't know how they did it. Apparently an air conditioner at the other end of the building was smoking, so it wasn't just a drill or a faulty alarm.

However, 4 hours later when all of residence life staff are in the building the alarms go off yet again. I better get used to it, because this isn't something that never occurs. Last week the fire alarm went off at midnight because Colton, one of the RAs in the village with me, was taking a shower and the steam set off the alarm. Thanks Colton!

After a jammed pack day of learning how to fill out paperwork, practicing incident reports, fire alarms and so much more I got to have a little down time with this girl!

Yep, Marie was in town for the day and stopped in to hang out for a little bit before I had to go to dinner.

For dinner we all went to the University President's house, Dr. Fell's house, for dinner. There we had a catered meal on her back patio. Steak, vegetables, pasta salad, rolls, chicken, potatoes, fruit and ice cream sundaes. The steak was not the greatest, there was more fat than anything else and wasn't fully cooked. 

A selfie of all of the village staff at Dr. Fell's house before dinner. 

The Village staff behind Dr. Fell's house

I got to get a picture with one of the best RAs and friends that I get to work with this year and got to know her so well last year. (Haley and I) 

This is Emily. Emily is from Delaware and is a Pre-Vet major too. I knew her last year, as a friend of Morgan's, and then got to know her more at the end of last year and a lot in just the two weeks we have had together so far.

Village Staff in front of the arch and Old Main 

Aaron and Colton riding with the wind in their hair and in style

Last Week of Training

Sunday Night we had it rocking! Haley's birthday, the RA of the haven last year and this year, was Sunday and it was our off day. So during the day everyone was busy getting tasks done before students started to move in this week and then we all came together in the evening to play some volleyball. The volleyball courts got new sand and they have become a popular place to be in the evening. Tonight we upgraded and got some really good speakers and had the music blasted as we all had some good laughs and fun in the sand. 

Monday was our first "mock duty" night. On "mock duty" nights we follow an RD around the area that we are assigned for that night and walk them twice and then are done for the night. For our first night I had Dallas showing my group and I areas 1 and 2. While on our rounds we decided to check out the haunted house that students will be living in this year. It was kind of creepy and still needs some work done on it before students move into it. After that we were circling the OilerPointe, which contains the nicest apartments students can get on campus. Students who live in these apartments have to sign a very strict contract saying that they will maintain a certain GPA, will not drink alcohol both on and off campus and so on. If they happen to violate any of the policies that they signed to on the contract then they get expelled from the university. Since students weren't on campus on Monday we all wanted to check out one of the apartments while we could. So we walked up to one of them that looked like no one was living in it, with no lights on. We knocked and no one answered. After we unlocked the door we all gathered in the kitchen which was directly inside and turned on the light. As we were looking around we noticed dishes in the sink and realized that this was not a vacant apartment and we all high tailed it out of there before we got caught by the owner. Whoops. 

Retreat

On Thursday this past week we had our all day retreat to one of the local parks in Findlay. All day we played games while getting to know each other better and working on our communication skills. We had tasks that had to be completed with no talking, finding a common link,interesting fact about ourselves, between each of us and so on. It was really hot and a long day, but we all survived and enjoyed the fundatory for that night. We got to spend some time sitting in the grass hanging out while enjoying Dietch's ice cream sundaes and ice cream bars at the Townhouses. 

1999's Party

Last night we had a staff party with the theme of "Party Like It's 1999." Everyone had to come dressed as a 1990's character or person. Every building staff decided on a theme for their building to dress as. Can you figure out what we dressed as, as the village staff?

 The village staff decided on The Little Rascals. My costume was Froggy as everyone else dressed as Petey, the dog, Spanky, Darla, Waldo, Stymie, Alfalfa and Porky.

Ninja turtles, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter, Rugrats and Brittney Spears were some of the other staff's themes.

Preston and the lovett staff did an amazing job dressing up as the Rugrats. Preston was Tommy as you can probably tell as he is only wearing a shirt, shower cap and an adults depend. 

Let the feast begin! Everything was delicious.

Earlier in the day I went for a morning run with Jenise and came across a farmer's market. We couldn't pass up all the fresh produce they had to offer so we came back and bought some peaches, a watermelon, fresh bread and a cantaloupe.

Fire Safety

I loved Fire Safety day that we had on Friday. In the morning we got to learn how to use a fire extinguisher and practice on a propane fire, which wasn't too difficult, but it was so much fun. 

Then came the real test in the afternoon. After lunch we had a fire safety demonstration. This included building staff to be blindfolded and led by the RD to some place on campus and seated in a dorm room with the door closed. In the room we talked, played games and just hung out until the fire alarms went off. We opened the door to leave the building and we couldn't even see the wall of the hallway, because there was so much smoke. We heard people yelling and talking and so we got on our hands and knees and started crawling towards the staircase that we came up, as we back tracked. We got to the door and it was blocked. So we turned around and headed back to where we had came from and had heard from down the line that the stairwell at the other end of the hall was unlocked. We crawled to the stairwell and it was open so we got into the stairwell, stood up and evacuated the building. It took up at most a minute to get out. 

Now this was all just a drill and practice. The fire department was there pumping in the smoke and security had locked and blocked certain exits and doorways to make it somewhat of a challenge, but honestly it was hardly a challenge at all. The first group got out in 25 seconds where as last year it took about 10 minutes before the first group got out. I really liked this simulation and helped me better understand why we have certain policies and rules for in the dorms regarding fire safety. I would do that again in a heartbeat.

Later that night we had "fundatory"- mandatory fun, games, team builders. For fundatory this night we played campus wide sardines.For those of you who do not know the game, sardines is a mix of hide and go seek and tag. A person hides and then everyone is released to go and find them. Once you have found the person you then hide with them, trying your best to not give away the hiding spot. The game is over once the last group has found everyone in the hiding spot. For our first round, the partners picked one of the staff houses and hid on the porch. We all couldn't stop laughing as everyone started crawling and piling up on the porch. Try fitting around 50 people onto a porch! Lets just say we got really cozy and got to know each other a little better. 

After sardines a group of us went to play volleyball for fun on our new sand volleyball courts. All the school needs is a pond right next to the sand and you will feel like you're right on the beach. The sand is so soft and feels amazing on your feet. Practically every night so far sand volleyball has been the place to be.