Yay for chilly weather! Well, not this chilly AND rainy weather but I LOVE fall!! The weather’s getting cooler, leaves are changing and my birthday is fast approaching!  Fall is the best, especially living in New York. Another CA and I are planning an apple picking program for the residents of Hadley and I couldn’t be more excited about it! It should be a really good time, even if it is not for a couple of weeks.

Most of my time lately has been studying. Everyone has their first round of tests hitting them around this time and so the libraries are filling up a little bit with those of us trying to fit in late night cram sessions. I also have had some work to do for my CA position. Twice a month we are required to go around and check in on all of our apartments (each CA is responsible for two different buildings in the complex). That is our chance to touch base with our residents, make sure everything is going okay, see if anything needs to get fixed…things like that. I really like it because it gives me a chance to introduce myself (if I haven’t met them before), and try and get to know each of them. It’s so nice the little conversations that I get to have with so many different people and I am really trying to get to know each of them. I want them to be able to feel comfortable coming to me in case they need anything, whether it be from a major roommate conflict to they’re not sure where a building is on campus and they don’t know who else to ask. It’s a little bit different than being an Resident Advisor in the residence halls because all of our students are upperclassmen so many of them know their way around the school and the in’s and out’s of things like registering for classes but it’s still nice to know that they would feel comfortable shooting an e-mail off to me if they needed to.

Today is my little brother’s 15th birthday too! I can’t believe that he’s already a sophmore in high school. I know this is going to sound like something your grandparent would say but it really does feel like just yesterday I was in my sophmore year in high school, with no idea where I wanted to go college at all and now I’m getting ready to submit graduate school applications. It’s crazy how it all just flies by…

Anyone that knows me knows that if I didn’t have a planner, I would NEVER remember anything that I need to get done. So I have it down to a science on how to schedule events, meetings and work however after 4 years of high school and almost 4 years of college I still haven’t figured out how to successfully use a planner to handle my school work.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not the slacker that the previous paragraph makes me sound. I get my school work done and have always been a pretty good student. But I have just never figured out a successful way to use a planner to keep track of my school assignments. I have been to many time management workshops and things like that and I still just can’t get the hang of it. Like yesterday I spent almost 4 hours in the library for an exam I thought was tomorrow only to find out that it actually isn’t until next week. Now either way I would have had to get that reading done and go over that material and I should PROBABLY say that I knew it wasn’t until next week to save face for waiting to study till the Saturday before but we all know the truth. =)

Other then my non-existence test tomorrow my sister and I are going to get a chance to have a little piece of home. My Dad comes to Buffalo for work tomorrow and is going to take us out for dinner. It’s always nice to step away from school for a little bit and it never hurts to get a free meal.

Ever get into an elevator and ask someone to push one of the buttons for you? Or say ‘excuse me’ to someone who was standing in your way? These are things that the majority of us do everyday without a second thought. Now what if everything around you was suddenly silenced. You couldn’t hear the request from the person in the elevator asking you to push floor 5 or you had no idea that you were in the way of the person behind you. This is what it is like for the deaf community everyday.

This semester I am taking a sign language class and this past Monday I went to the kickoff event for National Sign Language week. Both have been hugely eye opening for me. I was enrolled in ‘Sign Language Club’ in elementary school and was able to sign all of the songs that we would sing in Morning Program. Now in college, I wanted to learn more about sign language, try and build on those skills I had acquired so many years ago. Not only have I been learning what I believe to be one of the coolest languages in the world but I have been exposed to one of the most amazing cultures as well. Hearing people can’t possibly understand what it is like to be deaf and that in and of itself bonds this culture together.

I am really excited about learning everything I possibly can about the language and the culture. I think it’s an awesome opportunity for me to be able to take this class and I’m really looking forward to what the rest of the semester will bring. Here’s a video that I think that you may find truly eye-opening…I did at least.

Deaf Awareness

Ever wonder what you would look like without all of your skin?? Probably not and neither had I but as a program for the Hadley residents we travelled downtown to the Buffalo Science museum for the Body Worlds exhibit taking place there right now. They were running a special for college students, if you brought your ID it was only $10! The exhibit was sooo cool! It had a bunch of different bodies in different positions to highlight different muscles in the body. They even had some animals! It had different parts showing you the difference between a healthy lung and the lung of someone who smokes. It even had a cross-section of a brain that has migraines! It was just really interesting to see and learn about things like how much blood your heart pumps in a day or what the arteries in your body look like.

After the exhibit three of my friends from freshman year and I got to have a really nice dinner at one of my favorite restaurants right off South campus called Amy’s Place. It’s nice to spend time with people who have known me since the first couple of weeks of my freshman year and who have been there for the last three years, who now will be there as we get ready to decide what we are all going to do after graduation. You don’t realize how much friends like that very quickly become like family, especially when most of us are some distance from our actual family. It’s comforting to have people like that surround you.

Now onto some MAJOR school work mode. I have put it off all weekend since my little sister was in town visiting UB and I wanted to try and sneak in as much time with her as I could. I also of course had to watch with my head hung low as the Patriots lost to the Jets today.

…I wish it was mine. =( September and October seem to be filled with birthdays! Yesterday was my roommate’s 21st birthday, today we are celebrating with fellow Student Assistant in the Admissions office for her 21st as well. In addition to my roommate’s birthday yesterday also kicked off the countdown for my birthday! 4 weeks and counting! So it’s okay to start planning presents for anyone that feels compelled to do so, just remember pink or sparkly!

Tonight is the kickoff of UB’s Distinguished Series as we invite Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General. I am definitely going to go because it’s an awesome opportunity to see such an influential person speak, even though the people that are more excited to see are going to be the Political Science majors (for example, my fellow blogger Steph). Other Distinguished Speakers that are coming to UB this year include Tony Blair (former Prime Minister of United Kingdom), Steve Lopez (author of the Soloist), Bill Maher (political satirist), among others.

This Friday I am SO excited about! Another Community Assistant in Hadley with me have made a program out of the Body Worlds exhibit at the Buffalo Science Museum. We are taking some residents down there to check it out! The Body Worlds exhibit is the “story of the heart” shown using ACTUAL human cadavers to teach viewers about different muscles in the body, ways the heart works and other different things about the human system. I am SO pumped to be able to check it out. It’s been open since early in the summer but I never got a chance to go so I’m glad I’m sneaking it in before it closes up!

YES YES YES! This weekend commences my FAVORITE time of the year… (no not Christmas-that comes in a close 2nd) Football Season!!

We’ll start with our hometown Bulls. Although we took a hard loss from Pitt on Saturday it was an eye-opener for me. I had to venture over to South Lake Apartment complex (which is right next to the stadium) early Saturday morning and already people were hanging out in the parking lots. The amount of support that came out for our football team was mind-blowing! I was so excited for the guys and although I had to work in the Hadley community building I hear it was an awesome time!

Now I’m gearing up for the Patriots opening game on Monday night against none other then the Buffalo Bills. I’m so mad I have class but I’m definitely going to run straight back to catch the end of the game! I hope it promises to be a good one!

My fellow blogger Steph mentioned it quickly but I figured I’d talk a little bit more about it.

As a Community Assistant in the apartments here on campus we are required to do a certain amount of programs here on campus. What’s interesting is that since all 7 of us community assistants are so different we all do very different programs. One of the CA’s is a pre-dental major and very into health care awareness and things like that so he programs around that. I’m much more a community oriented person so a lot of my programs reflect that.

The program that went on last night was part of the Wellness Center’s Suicide Prevention Week going on all week long, called To Write Love on Her Arms. It is a non-profit movement started by a couple of guys who took to MySpace in an effort to raise money for a friend’s rehab stay after several suicide attempts. It has now become a global movement gathering support from more than 100 different countries. It was an awesome presentation and the nicest treat of it all was that we actually got to hear the founder of the movement himself.

I had today off because my internship got cancelled for the day so I was excited to be able to catch up on all of the ‘life’ errands I needed to get done!

Life has been nuts! This first week of school feels like it came and went so fast that I didn’t even have a chance to blink!

My internship has to be one of the best opportunities that has ever been opened to me. I am working hand in hand with a caseworker for Child Protection Services and I’m loving it. My first day was a little unorganized because the case worker I am working with had the previous couple of days off but when I stepped in on Thursday it was down to business. We have gone on a couple of home visits, I’ve helped fill out paperwork and input it into the computer. There is no doubt in my mind that the information and connections that I am making through this internship are going to be so helpful in the future. And even that is a little scary to me. When I go to my internship every week I’m not just learning facts and figures, I am possibly looking at the work that I could be involved with for the rest of my life! It’s exciting and nerve-racking at the same time.

With all of this talk about future careers and things like that I made sure to get on the phone the other day and make appointments with my academic advisor to make sure that all of my ducks were in a row for graduation. Graduation. It’s going to be a while before I get use to that term. I also made an appointment with the graduate school of social work here at UB to make sure that I had a good timeline of when things needed to be into their office in terms of applications and things like that.

Wing Fest was in Buffalo this weekend too! It was an awesome time! The weather was beautiful and the wings were hottttt. There were restaurants from all over the country there and you could try all of their different flavored wings, we even had a taco flavored one! Hmm…talking about it makes me wonder if we brought any leftovers home.