Being in Buffalo all summer long I must have forgotten how much I really loved school. The first week of classes FLEW by and if the rest of the semester goes this way it will be Christmas before I even have time to blink. My schedule is amazing! It’s awesome to be able to take classes that I want to be taking and subjects that I’m interested in.

On Wednesday night I had my first program as an RA! My co-RA (the RA on the floor above me) and I held an ice cream social for our residents to get to know each other and we had an awesome turnout! It was really cool to be able to be a part of everyone getting to meet each other. They have all turned out to get along really well which is awesome because since there are only two floors of residents here they can all be looking out for each other.

On Thursday I headed out with a friend to the football game, and as Andrew has already mentioned it was a great game. The football team really seems to be making awesome progress so it gave all of us high hopes for the rest of the season. This past week we also had our first UB STARS training. The majority of the STARS this year is newcomers so it will be interesting to see how the dynamic of group changes. It was nice to be able to meet all of the new ones, but training without some of the STARS from last year made it seem like something was missing. It’ll definitely take some getting use to not having them around.

But I am about to run outside because the weather here in Buffalo has been AMAZING for this Labor Day weekend and I am going to take full advantage of it before classes on Tuesday!

Okay, so I know I have been gone for quite some time, I apologize for that. But I have to say I didn’t realize how intensive RA training was going to be! Even when we did have time off (which was a rarity in itself) we had about 5 billion paperwork and setting up tasks that had to be done. I found myself stretched pretty thin but it all worked out in the end. I had my first floor meeting with my new residents last night and they all seem awesome! I really hope that this is going to be a great year and that they really enjoy their time here on South Campus!

Opening Weekend, this past weekend, was another crazy time for me. Between my RA position and my Orientation Aide position I was literally running from one event or shift to another. I barley got to see many of my friends that have just gotten here this weekend so hopefully I can take some time this week to have lunch or dinner with a lot of them, just to try and catch up! One of the coolest things I think I did this past weekend was work the Opening Ceremony on Friday night. Some other Orientation Aides and myself were flag bearers and opened the ceremony by carrying in flags representing all of the different schools here at UB (i.e., the graduate school of Social Work, the College of Arts & Sciences…). It was a really formal ceremony and included such speakers as the president of the university John B. Simpson and other faculty and staff. I had never gone to my welcome ceremony the year I came to UB so it was a cool thing to not only see, but be a part of as well!

Well since today is the first day of classes I should probably get moving on getting some stuff together in terms of notebooks and things. For all of those new college students out there…have a great first day of classes!!!!

One of the things that is hard to adjust to once you get into college is that no where you live is really that permanent. Every few months your moving back home for a break or moving out of the dorms for the summer. It’s something that I have really never gotten use to. I’m one that likes to settle down, decorate and make the place I’m in my home. But today I settled down in what will be my home for the next year, Michael Hall. It took a couple of good friends and I some very long hours to get all of my stuff into the room and move all of the furniture around, because I’m quite a picky person. And now as I sit here in my new room with boxes and suitcases piled around me, I’m reminded once again why I hate moving around so much. But then again, I guess you can look at the positive side and say that every year I get a whole new room to decorate which is right up my alley!

Work this week was crazy!! Everyone has time off in August so I’m pretty sure that everyone that can comes to visit the college campus and sometimes it seems like there aren’t enough work hours in the day to get everything done! I ended up working longer hours than I was suppose to just to finish different projects in the Office of Admissions. It was nice though, definitely a change from May when we didn’t have much to do. I’m excited about being able to be in the office throughout the year. The people are just awesome and I really enjoy working with prospective students!

I should probably hit the sack since us RA’s start training at noon tomorrow and I want to get as much of my room settled as I can before we have to start!

So this week was suppose to start my first “week off” and I don’t know if you could call it just that.

On Monday I gave two tours which takes up a pretty good chunk of the day. Then I did a Psych experiment down on South Campus. I totally got lost walking through the medical buildings but it was kind of interesting to just kind of wander around down there. My worry was that I would run into the room that held the different medical tools. Also, one of my friends came back from spending a month in Paris and so we brought him over a cake that we made. I spent time in Paris during high school as part of an exchange program so it was cool to see his pictures, it was almost like I had just been there.

The big news this week is that it’s my parents 25th wedding anniversary! It’s nuts to think that they’ve spent 25 years of their lives together. It’s really weird to think about how I’m about the age that my parents were when they met and got engaged and that I’m getting old enough to start thinking about things like that. Things that always seemed so “adult” now are the norm for us. It feels like just yesterday that we were heading into high school!

I’ve finally got my schedule set for next semester and it just makes me that much more excited for classes to start! I did end up deciding not to participate in the research lab this year because of a variety of different reasons but I really think it’ll give me that piece of mind back so that I won’t go completely crazy this next semester!

So this past Friday ended Freshman Orientation’s 2008. Both Thursday and Friday were totally bittersweet. I’m excited for the year to get rolling and pumped that I finally have a few days to catch up on some things I’ve been meaning to do but I am really going to miss working with all of the other Orientation Aides. We really have become a little family and for the most part we have gotten really close. It’s going to be really weird this week not getting up at the crack of dawn and having breakfast together or sitting around making door tags while watching a movie. I think we’re all going to take a little time to ourselves but I’m sure that most of us will get together a bunch of times during the year.

My best friend from back home came up this weekend and I helped her move stuff into her new apartment. It’s just getting me so excited for the year to get going!!! Another one of my friends is coming to visit this week, another one the next week and then everyone comes back up!!! I can’t wait to start this semester, I’m really excited about where my life is heading and everything that I involved in. There are definitely things that I want to work on or things in my life that I wish I had but for the most part I’m really just trying to go into this semester with an optimistic view!