Undergraduate Admissions

So happy to blog today, which means that I survived Yom Kippur and survived fasting.  Since I’ve been home, I have definitely been relaxing, and sleeping.  Wednesday night I went to services with my family, and began the 25 hour fast of Yom Kippur.  Yesterday, I was in temple all day, preying / repenting for a years worth of sins and for a happy and healthy year upcoming.  Last night, I broke the fast with my family, aunt / uncle and cousins, as well as family friends.  I spent all day today working on my history assignment, which is not even finished yet ( I am taking a break now ).  Tonight I am eating / going out with my family, and tomorrow I am hanging out with my friends and probably going into NYC to go out tomorrow night.

Home has been good to me, but I am ready to go back to school.

I am so excited to get through today (Monday) and tomorrow.  That is because once I do so, I get to go home.  I am taking advantage of Thursday off for Yom Kippur, and I am going home for six days.  Flying home Tuesday night to Sunday night.  I am not missing any class or anything major outside of class.  And I am really excited.  This year, unlike years past, when I am home on a break during school, my sister will also be home to spend time with.  In the past, while she was in school, our breaks never coordinated.  Then last year, after graduation, she worked in Philly, so I didn’t see her much either.

So as far as today goes, I just got out of my class.  I was going to run to the gym, but I am really tired (class on Monday morning at 9am will do that to you, especially a three hour class).  At 130, I am giving a tour.  Followed by a nap / HW in the library.  At 5, I am doing Blitz calls with UB Stars (calling prospective students to get them to come to UB True Blue Weekend / Open House).  And when I am done with the calls, I am attending a meeting for a Communication Honor Society, which I am trying to get into.  tomorrow, just my two classes and hopefully I’ll have time to meet with my academic communication adviser.  And then I’ll try to find some time to pack.

Over the week, I have a large assignment for my history class, involving reading and analyzing a good amount of text.   Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my work done and have plenty of time to relax following my commitment for Yom Kippur, fasting.  And to everybody out there, have a healthy fast.

So its great that I am not so busy anymore.  My schedule has really opened up a lot, which I love.

This weekend is like 10 of my friends birthdays here at UB, and I’ll be spending the weekend celebrating.  Tonight, me and almost 40 people are going downtown.  One of my roommates is a bar tender at some bar downtown, the one we are going to.  Because there are so many of us, they are picking us up in multiple limos.  It sounds like it’ll be a really fun time, so I kinda can’t wait.  On Friday, a bunch of people including myself are going out to dinner, and on Saturday we are having a small group of people over to hang out.  On Sunday, I am planning on participating in a pro-breast cancer walk downtown.

Before I go, I am posting a link to a survey for one of my classes.  It only take 10 minutes to do, and it is all about the upcoming election.  Its for my COM 205, research methods class, and it would be great if anyone could help out.  Again, the link is:

http://survey.ubcomm.org/galileo/index.php?sid=52279&lang=en 

L’shanah tovah, and happy new year.  Today is one of the high holy days of the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanna.  I just got back from services for the holiday, that were held in the student union a few minutes ago.  Now that I am back, today’s schedule includes laundry, reading, homework, and a much needed nap.  I really look forward to an other day off of school tomorrow.  Because a lot of people do not celebrate Rosh Hashanna, today’s day off of school is simply a day off for them.  For me, I spent the day in prayer, so having tomorrow off is really nice.  

There really is not too much going on this week.  The flag football game for tonight was canceled.  I gave a tour yesterday that went really well.  Thursday, my fraternity is throwing a fundraising poker tournament in the student union, where the proceeds are going to Smiles for Scott.  On Friday, I have a training session for the UB Stars.

Well not really.  As my last post said, this past week was not planned to be the most exciting, and it did not disappoint.  Monday, after my classes and I posted my blog, I applied to graduate schools for almost three hours, and am still not done ( I have not paid for the online applications).

Tuesday has become my busy day of the week.  My TA class had an in class activity, lunch, class, meeting, gym, flag football - the greatest show on turf beat down some other team in our first victory.

On Wednesday, I worked on some more applications and homework like reading for my history class.  Then Sinai Scholars, a Chabbad run class, independent of UB.

Thursday, I helped proctor a test in my TA class and some notes in my other.

Tomorrow, I am really excited to see Karl Rove speak and Saturday - - Nas and Ludacris, very excited.

You’re allowed to be lazy sometimes.  That is my intention for this week.  But while being lazy, I also intend to be productive.  It appears that by stressing out and having a lot of work last week, this week will be the opposite.

Last week, I had a paper to write, over 150 pages of reading, in addition to busy work from other classes.  I also finalized my personal statement for graduate school applications.

This week, I am going to try to apply to all my graduate schools.  Thats the majority of my work, plus some reading.

So this weekend was nothing special, plenty of work as I fore mentioned.  Also a game of football, and plenty of watching football yesterday.  We had some people over to watch Entourage, like every week, and on Saturday night we had a handful of people too.

Today, by 1pm I had already been to all my classes for the day and the gym.

In some order, I am going to shower, eat lunch, apply to some grad schools, and take a nap.

So I just found out today, and am very happy to know, that I have completed and have received credit for my summer internship.  I completed the correct amount of hours (135+), received an evaluation from my supervisor (which I heard was great, thank you Tsipi and Kim) and have written the internship essay, which has resulted in me receiving my credit.

So besides this great news, my day has been pretty good so far.  In my two classes, things are moving along well.  In my TA class, I am helping with two upcoming projects, one on gate keeping and one on propaganda.   In my other class, we are working on surveys about the most important issues of the upcoming presidential election.  In my history class, I have a decent size paper and reading due for next class.

Today I also picked up The Kite Runner, so that I can have it finished before the author, Khaled Hosseini comes to speak next month.

So I have 45 minutes before my STARS meeting, so I am going to go read / nap.

Oh and if you missed it, the football game last night was amazing.

To all sports fans, have you heard?  Have you picked up the paper?  Heard the news?  Watched your most recent edition of ESPN?  If not, you are severely out of the loop.

I am talking about the University at Buffalo’s Bulls.  Now, I won’t lie to you, I did not go to the game this Saturday versus Temple, but I have to thank the powers of DVR, because I did see the whole game.  While I was out playing my own game of football in the rain (which is great), scoring a touchdown, with ~100 yards receiving, and 2 interceptions and multiple tackles, UB was playing their own game.  A thriller at UB stadium, where the Bulls won 30 to 28 in a last second play.  With six seconds on the clock, our beloved QB Drew Willey threw a bomb of a hail-mary which WR Naaman Roosevelt caught in the front of the end zone to win the game as the clock expired in dramatic fashion.

This win puts the Bulls at 2-1 for the year, only losing a close game to UPitt, a top 25 team.  Next week our opponent is Missouri (Mizzou), who i s ranked top 5, I believe #2, in the nation.  They stomped all over Nevada this weekend, scoring something like 61 points.  I am not giving UB a chance this weekend, but I will definitely give them a chance at a Bowl game, I mean they look way better then I can ever remember.

Aside from all the sports this weekend, I did a large amount of HW, reading, and working on my post undergraduate life (Grad school), along with laundry, and rush week for AEPi, my fraternity.

Lunch - Tour - Gym - HW

mmm… Graduate School is officially in sight.  Thats right ya’ll I started my personal statement / essay today.  Its not finished, but everybody that’s read it has given me great feedback.  That, with some HW and classes made up my day pretty much.

I was woken up by massive construction this morning, way too early, and so I took a nap today.

I heard a lot of the whole 9/11 thing on the radio on the bus today, and I am not sure how I feel about it.  Obama and McCain were not asked to come to the early memorial service to avoid a media frenzy.  The candidates also agreed not to campaign on such a day, but I was hearing how they were trying to sneak it in anyway.  It makes you wonder what really matters to these people, is it themselves?  or our country?  I personally am not sure.

I was also reading about some major projects for our University that are actually in progress.  On the south campus, they are completely revamping the lighting and adding more and brighter lights.  Also, they are completely redoing the blue phone system, by adding more and better phones.  They are also adding security cameras to the campus.  It is costing a few million $$ to do this, so hopefully it will be effective.

So I woke up this morning, two hours early, and arrived to campus two hours before my class today to pick up my ticket to see John Edwards.  I remember when the Dalai Lama and Conan O’Brian came to UB, the line to pick up the free undergraduate tickets was 2 hours long.  Today, when I got to the Alumni Arena to get my ticket, I was surprised to not see any line at all.  I was more surprised and now upset at the fact that Edwards is not even coming at all.  He canceled.  Instead of Edwards debating Karl Rove, we are getting Wesley Clark (who is that?).  And instead of being excited about Edwards, I am very disappointed.  I would have still been disappointed that Edwards is not coming to speak, but I would have at least appreciated somebody from UB letting students, like myself, who woke up extra early for no reason, know of the change of plans.

So I now have an hour to spend before class, during which, I will be taking the attendance for the first time, now that the add/drop period of class has ended.  In my second class, it seems as if we are going to be taking some form of notes today.  In between class, lunch.  After my second class, meeting and then gym.