Stress.

I'm very stressed right now.

Last night I spent from 530 to 11pm in the library writing my final paper for World Lit. Not exactly my definition of fun. But I think I wrote a pretty good paper.. at least I hope so because I really want an A in this class. Then when we passed in our papers today, my professor went over what will be on the final exam next week. Seems like it's going to be a tough exam with lots and lots of writing. Not looking forward to that.

Thennnn after I spent all of Monday night working real hard on my PR project, making it look all nice and presentable, I get to class and realize that it isn't due until THURSDAY. Ugh. Well at least I finished it... Oh and then, I thought that we didn't have a final in that class. Turns out, we do. And it's tomorrow. And what else is tomorrow? My Ethics final exam. To say the least, I'm uber stressed. It's going to be another very late night full of studying. And I'm slightly behind in office hours so I'm going to have to work during finals week, which isn't a big deal, but it's just another thing to think about...

Ok, trying to think of some positives to come from this insanely stressful week... After tomorrow I will be completely done with both my Ethics and PR class. So I guess that's good, and I'll definitely be happy tomorrow night to be done with it all. But as of now I'm really freaking out.



Oh another good thing is that one of my best friends from home is coming into the city tomorrow night! She goes to school at McGill in Montreal, but she decided to skip her last few days of classes to come home. :) So excited to see her! She'll definitely be able to pull me out of my end-of-the-semester slump. To the right is a picture of me and Sarah from last summer :)


Not only has this semester flown by, but it's actually my last semester ever to live in the dorms. Although I feel ready to move off campus, I'm sad to be leaving the comfort of 10 Somerset... as well as living with 10 of my friends. Also, this weekend will be my last weekend in Boston until next fall! Eeeek. That is a strange thought. But next semester I won't have time to feel sad about it as I'm sure I'll be having way too much fun in London :)

I'm really looking forward to winter break. Hopefully I will be able to work full time at the job I held over the summer, which would help me make some more spending money for London. This winter break I am really looking forward to seeing my family and friends as much as possible before I leave. This Thanksgiving break I had a chance to see everyone a lot, which was really nice. A bunch of us went to the traditional Beverly vs Salem football game, hung out at friends houses, and pretty much just relaxed for the weekend. It was the calm before the storm of finals week. Below is a picture of some of us at the football game on Thanksgiving day.
There's a good chance this is my last post until next year, so have a wonderful holiday season everyone! :)

So clooseee!

End of the semester is approaching... very very quickly. Last week was our last full week of classes, and now we only have 6 days of classes(not to mention only 1 weekend left in the city) left until finals start on Dec 8th. Eeeek. I know I've said this a million times already, but this semester has flown by. I didn't think I would be sad once the end was nearing, but I am as I keep reflecting on the events of this year. This will be my last few weeks in the dorms, my last few weeks living with 10 of my closest friends, and last few weeks in Boston before London for 4 months. As excited as I am for London, the reality has finally began to set in; I won't be able to see my family and friends for 4 months. 4 months is a long long time, and I've never been away from home for that long.

ANYWAYS, on a happier note, I had a pretty good weekend. On Friday I had to go home for an MRI on my knee... which was not fun at all. But after the MRI was over, my mom cooked my favorite dinner(mashed potatoes, steak and veggies :) ) and then I went to my brother's powderpuff game. Now for all of you who don't know what powderpuff is, let me explain. Basically, the girls play flag football, and the boys dress up as cheerleaders and cheer throughout the game for the girls, and at half time they perform their practiced routine. In short, it turns out to be a hilarious night. Being from Beverly, our rival is Salem, so each year the girls play flag football against the Salem girls. It's always a rough game, and when I played we lost to Salem, but on Friday the Bev girls won!! Yay! To the right is a picture from the day of my powderpuff game.

So this weekend I had to write my first press release for my PR class. We were given a list of about 4 scenarios and we had to chose 1 to write a release for. I hope I did the assignment right, because I've never done one before, but it was really a fun thing to research and write. Also, the second part of my PR project is due next week. I have not started it. Uh oh. At least I have Thanksgiving break to catch up on some work. Basically it's only PR that I have a big project in, and I have an exam in my Ethics class sometime after Thanksgiving break. Due to the project, I don't have a final in PR! Which is awesome. So I guess its give and take with that class; lots of work now, but none during finals week. :)



Have a delicious Thanksgiving everyone!!
*R

Every Grain Of Sand

Hello everyone,

Again, I'm terrible at thinking of post title names soooo I've decided to name them by the current song I'm obsessed with at the time of the post. Every Grain of Sand is a song that I recently started listening to by Bob Dylan(surprise surprise). I love Dylan, by far my favorite artist. Everything he does is just so unique... I could go on and on about him..

So last week was very busy here at admissions. The tours during the week were big, and on top of that the open house was on Saturday! Everything seemed to go very smoothly though, and it definitely was not as chaotic as I thought it would be. It was a rainy and dreary day though so I'm sure that factor kept alot of people at home instead of out at Suffolk. For all of you who came I hope you enjoyed your day at Suffolk!!

For all you hockey fans, I went to the Bruins vs. Montreal game on Thursday, hosted by PC. It was such an AMAZING game. Bruins won.. 6-1. Totally dominated the entire game. I don't think I've ever seen the Bruins beat Montreal by 5 goals. And of course my favorite player, Milan Lucic, got into a fight which was awesome! I love hockey fights they're so entertaining.

This weekend was pretty low key... for the most part. Friday night we went to our friend's apartment in the North End. I love the North End, it's such a fun community, and there are tons of college students living there as well. On Saturday, after I worked at the open house, my friend from home came up! I was so excited to see her. We went shopping at H&M and out for sushi at Zen. I really don't think I can go a week without getting sushi -- it's pretty bad but my roommate got me completely addicted!


Tonight I'm volunteering at the International Thanksgiving Dinner(ITD). The ITD is basically a chance for international students to learn about Thanksgiving in America, and eat the food that we eat on the holiday. There is going to be a speaker to tell the story of Thanksgiving, and the meal is catered. I'm really excited for this dinner because Thanksgiving food is my favorite.



I decided to start a countdown to London... and as of today, I leave in 57 days!!! Eeeek. I can't wait. :)

A New Chapter In America's History.

The New Team




and Our New First Family!



What an amazing night. After 21 months of grueling campaigning, a new leader has been chosen. Amazing. It seems that the only word to describe this monumental event is "amazing" -- it's the only word I've been able to use to express my feelings of the Tuesday night results.
A few of my friends were able to go to the Copley Plaza where John Kerry was hosting a results show party. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to go, but it was for a good reason! I spent the night at home so that I could vote. :) At my place of voting, the poll workers were explaining that there was record turnout and they had never seen such high numbers. In my precinct, 1600 out of 1900 registered voters came to the polls last night. Incredible outcome, and so encouraging for us new voters!

Just a quick recap...
Obama won: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington.
McCain won: West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota,Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona, and Alaska.
All the italic state names mean that they were battleground states. So, all together the electoral college votes equalled out to 349 for Obama, and 163 for McCain. Bit of a landslide. With the popular vote, Obama won 63,354,607 to McCain's 56,013,026. Also, you may have noticed that 2 of our states were not named -- North Carolina and Missouri are still being calculated. As of now, it looks like McCain will win Missouri, and Obama will win North Carolina.

I'm so excited to see what kind of President Obama will be. I know he will be good, and I know he is going to work as hard as he can to get America back on the right track, but it's going to be difficult. Like he said in his acceptance speech, it might not take 1 year, or even 1 term, but things are going to start changing. I also believe Michelle Obama will be a wonderful First Lady. I love her. She's such a warm, heartfelt and sincere person, and I can't wait to see what she'll do in the White House!

Okay, enough about politics. School-wise things are starting to pick up; more projects, exams, papers, etc. But, I definitely can't believe we only have 1 month left of this semester! I think my last day of finals in December 9th, which is super early. Then I leave for London on January 14th! This semester really has flown by.

Program Council sold tickets to the Bruins vs Montreal game on Nov 13th and I was lucky enough to get tickets! PC was only selling about 38, so as you can imagine, the tickets sold out real fast. I'm so excited to see this game -- I love the Bruins and Montreal is one of our biggest rivals so it should be a great game.

I think that's about it for now...
*R

Accepted!!

Very exciting news for today's blog... I officially got accepted into Regent's school in LONDON!!! I pretty much knew I would be accepted into the school, but it is sooo much more comforting to actually have a definite answer. Also, I found out that I got all the classes I wanted for the semester over there!! So excited -- I'm taking Biology, Media Productions, Art History, The Civilization of London, and Contemporary Theatre. In my art history, civilization, and theatre classes we get to go on field trips around the city! I'm super excited for that, I love history and theatre :-). I can't wait to go to London, and I'm hoping this semester will continue to fly by -- speaking of which, I can't believe November starts this weekend, it's crazy.



In other news, tonight I'm going to a concert! In my last blog I told you about the band The Bridges and tonight I get to see them again! I'm so excited, I absolutely love concerts.... and I have 2 this week :). Joan Baez is on Saturday! Sounds like it's going to be a great week... music-wise.

Unlike all my friends, and everyone in America, I am not celebrating Halloween this year. This is actually a pretty good decision money-wise because costumes are sooo expensive, and since Halloween is on a Friday I'm sure that a full weekend of going out for Halloween celebrations would be pretty expensive as well.

As for classes, not much is new. I had my group presentation on Arrow of God today and I think it went pretty well. We did a powerpoint and had a class discussion of the book as our presentation. Last Tuesday I passed in my PR project so I'm waiting to hear about that... hopefully I did well, I'm pretty nervous because the project kind of confused me. But other than that, things are pretty good and I'm definitely looking forward to this week of concerts!

Have a great week everyone.
*R

My Back Pages..

Helloooo everyone,

I can never really think of good blog titles, so I just chose the title of a Bob Dylan song that I've been listening to a lot lately. Anyways, it's been a lonnnng time since I last blogged. Sorry about that, I've been kind of crazed lately. I'll try to remember what's happened since I last blogged.



We've been having midterms the past few weeks... which was stressful. But I got 2 exams back and I got A's on both! :) I haven't really had many other grades in those classes so getting a good grade on my exam was important. Tonight I have to finish working on part 1 of a huge PR project. Part 1 is due tomorrow, and of course, I've been procrastinating. I also have a group presentation to work on for my World Lit class; we're presenting info about the book we're currently reading, called Arrow of God. It's an interesting book about the native people of Nigeria and how the British started to take over their land and convert them to the British way of life. Seems like the British do that to a lot of different cultures around the world...


15 days until November 4th. Why a countdown to that day? That's when people will cast their votes, and let their voices be heard in this extremely important election. In 15 days we will finally end all the sleezy/dishonest advertisements, and all the lies about each candidate will come to a halt. On Novemeber 4th we will have declared a new president! I am so excited, and very nervous at the same time. Yesterday, my friend Melissa and I volunteered at Head of the Charles for the Obama-Biden campaign. It was a great experience, and in spite of the cold, we had a really fun time getting to talk to interesting people about our current political situation. A lot can change in just 15 days, as the McCain-Palin campaign keeps telling us. Honestly, I just want the 15 days to go by fast so America can finally have an answer. As Obama said over the weekend,

"One thing we know is that change never comes without a fight. We've seen it before, and we're seeing it again today: the ugly phone calls; the misleading mail and TV ads; the careless, outrageous comments. But we're not going to be distracted. We're not going to be diverted -- not this time, not this year."

Well said, Senator.

On a completely different note, the Jason Mraz concert on 10/09 was absolutely amazing!! I wasn't a huge Mraz fan before the concert, but I am now! He is such an amazing performer, and such a nice, down to earth guy. Me, Haley and our friend Kirsten volunteered to help out before and after the concert, which was a lot of fun. On top of getting free food, and amazing seats, we got to meet Jason and take a group photo with him! If Jason ever comes to tour in a city near you, I HIGHLY recommend going -- even if you're not a huge fan it is such a fun and energetic show to go to. Also, if you go to Jason's website, you can read his blog about life on the road, recording, and all the other fun stuff he's doing. Here is his new music video for his single I'm Yours. Also, I wrote an article about his concert for The Suffolk Voice... so check it out if you have time :)

I just love live music at concerts, clubs, shows... anything. Next Monday my friend Alaina and I are going to see a band called The Bridges. I interviewed them a few weeks ago and am currently writing up an article about them for the Suffolk Voice online paper. They toured with my favorite band, Rooney, this summer, which is how I learned about them, and I instantly fell in love with their unique sound. Then, on November 1st, I'm going to a Joan Baez concert at Berkeley! Hopefully everyone has heard of Joan, but if not, she's a legendary folk singer/peace activist from the 60s, who's voice is still as beautiful as ever. I am so excited to see her!

That's all for now. Have a great week everyone! :)

*R

October 1st!

Hi everyone :-)

Happy October! I love the fall, and all fall decorations. All the ambassadors have helped to decorate the office, so we have some wonderful arts and crafts hanging from the ceiling and on the wall. Looking around I see a Frankenstein, a pirate pumpkin, a haunted house, a ghost, a spider and a black cat -- as well as some fun Halloween jokes.

So this week has been really stressful so far, and it's only Wednesday. Last night I tried to figure out what flights I'll be taking to and from London. Three of my friends who are going to London with me already booked a flight together, so now I really have to figure out my stuff so I can take the same flight as them. My mom is coming out after my semester is over to do a 10 day travel vacation to France(for 5 days), Belgium(for 2 days) and then Amsterdam(for 3 days). I'm so excited, but we haven't made any finalized plans yet, so it's hard to decide which day my return flight home will be. Very stressful considering I've never booked flights before or anything like that. But besides that, I'm so excited for London... and I can't wait to travel after the semesters over! During the semester I'm planning on traveling as well, but mainly staying on the British Isle and of course making the trek over to Ireland for spring break!

Also, for all of you who are interested in, or looking to get more involved in politics, the vice presidential debate is Thursday!! So excited for it. The best thing about debates is that they can really go either way - there's not teleprompter telling the candidates what to say, and even though they do tons of preparation, the answers are still completely spontaneous. As I said in my first blog, I wrote an article on both Governor Palin and Senator Biden for The Suffolk Voice, our online newspaper. Here's a link to my article, if you're interested in learning some background info on the VP picks.

Today, Whitney left us an envelope of square cloths, and asked us to decorate a square to contribute to a quilt being made for St. Jude's Hospital. Jill and I both made some really cool square :) On mine I quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." And I cut out little pink and purple hearts to jazz up the cloth a little bit.

That's all for now, have a great week and weekend everyonee!

rachel

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind...

I'm having one of those days where I constantly have different songs popping into my head. Mostly I've been in a Bob Dylan funk, and it's songs such as, Vision of Johanna and Blowin' In The Wind, that keep distracting me. I saw Bob Dylan in concert in May, and was in the front row. It was probably one of the greatest experiences I've had yet -- I can't wait to see him live again. I've been to a lot of concerts, seen a lot of live music, and despite the fact that Dylan 67 years old, I swear he's still a great performer. Being so close to this little old man who is such a legend in American music, and music all around the world, the energy in the venue was just completely indescribable.

So anyways, here we are - another day in the office. Most of us here are working on getting our blogs up to speed and fiddling with the format, colors, pictures, etc. There's a lot that goes into blogging, I'd never realized how much thought and time goes into this process. Also, I gave my first tour today! It went very well I think, and thankfully Haley came with me to keep me company and fill in the blanks when I forgot some information :).


The school work seems to be accumulating pretty quickly. I have a PR project I really need to start thinking about. We have to market a specific organization and I have no idea where to begin -- definitely an assignment to think about this week. In World Lit this week we're reading a novel called "The Secret River" and it's about Australia which is really interesting because I don't know the history of Aus at all. I love learning about other cultures especially through a well written book. The novel we read last week is "A Long Long Way" by Sebastian Barry. It was about Irish involvement in World War I and the divide of ideas and opinions in Ireland - whether to go out and fight for the British, or to refuse to fight and demand freedom of Ireland. The story followed the journey of an Irish solider, and all the hardships he endured.




For all you jazz fans out there, there is a free jazz festival going on this weekend! It's called Beantown Jazz, and it's all along Columbus Ave on Saturday. Even if you aren't a huge jazz fan, nothing beats seeing live music on a beautiful day in Boston (well let's hope it'll be nice out) :).


Wow, long post. Have a great week everyone!
-Rachel

My First Post.

Hi everyone. My name is Rachel, and I'm a sophomore here at Suffolk. Seeing as this is my first blog I'm not quite sure of what to say, so just bare with me here.

So, sophomore year. I can't even believe it. Last year seems like it went by so fast... and all the things I was worried about last year at this time have completely faded into the distance. All the anxieties of being a freshman are gone, and now I am adjusting to being a sophomore and it feels good.

It's the second... maybe third week of classes - things are already blurring together for me! I love my classes so far. Right now I'm taking World Literature, Public Relations, Ethics and Computer Science. As the classes are still getting underway I haven't had too much work yet which has been a great because I've been able to focus on my new job as an ambassador, and figure out what clubs I want to do this year. As of now I'm involved in The Suffolk Voice(an online newspaper), and I'm part of Program Council(PC). Right now in PC we're planning a Jason Mraz concert! Should be a really fun show, I'm very excited about it. We're also planning a trip into Salem MA for Halloween, and as I live in Beverly MA, right next to Salem, I am looking forward to helping plan that trip. For the "Voice" I just was assigned a profile article about Senator Biden and Governor Palin. As I am recently becoming more political I was excited to get this assignment.

So that's all for now, but more to come.

:)
Rachel