Friday, March 12, 2010

Something for All to Experience: SEC Tournament

One of the biggest times of the year, especially at UK, is March Madness! We always go into the SEC expecting to win the conference. I mean HELLO!!!! We have more SEC regular season titles than all other teams in the conference COMBINED!!! We have more than any other SEC tournament championships than any other school as well. This means so much to the University that we go in always expecting to win.

It would be a good idea during a students career at UK to make the trip down to the SEC tournament. I can only imagine the atmosphere there. UK always has a huge traveling crowd that follows them to their games during the tournament. A March 12th Kernel article said that UK had a new home away from home, at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. We always make it like a home game for our WILDCATS!

This would be a great thing to experience. The atmosphere at Rupp during the regular season is electric, and to be there, especially during UK's come back season, would be a great experience to have, with wonderful memories, especially when we have a legitimate chance to make the Commonwealth proud and bring home banner #8 to Lexington!

This is something all students should experience during their college years, and who knows, you might see Ashley Judd doing the John Wall Dance!!!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

So many books....so little time!!!

In college, every Professor seems to think you just have their class and that's IT! They give you a ton of books and expect you to keep up with all their assigned reading. When you do have 15 or 18 hours what are you to do? You have five or six books your trying to read and keep up with, along with their homework, studying for test, maybe a job, and having free time to get on Facebook (playing farmville!), or just spending sometime with your friends or girl/boyfriend!

I know this semester I had a stats 200 book and a History 109 text book that I returned back before the end of the first week of classes. I knew I would never have time to read them and keep up with them with all the other books that I had for my classes. I still have seven books that I'm going to have to read this semester. Most of them are boring reads that you struggle through. For HIS 109 they are books that are just 200+ pages of documents from a specific era in American history. For PS 212 (Third World Politics) I have three I am suppose to read, because we have pop quizzes to see if we've read, but they are so dull, boring, and just guys who have been in high positions, that think they've solved the problem of poverty in the third world, but won't do anything to enact their policies!

With so many classes its hard to keep up with all the books, especially if there are papers associated with some of the books. You have to worry about remember where certain things were in the book, so you can go back and quote and cite it to help the paper. I wish classes were more like COM 101 with DeSantis. He has his notes in a book and you take them there. That's the only reading you do, when you study.

College is spent in so much reading, its easy for bookstores like Kennedy's to make a ton of money from us poor college kids. I originally spend over $350 on books for this semester, so after I took two of the books back, I spend $158 for books, yes more reasonable, but still way too much! Just space out your time, and don't let the reading back up on you, especially if its important to test!!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

DanceBlue Looming...best be sitting a lot!!!

This past week has flown by. Just seems like we were in the Dancer meeting having a week to go, yet here it is almost 24 hours from the event. Students should get involved in this while they are a student here. They don't have to dance, but they can get on the DB Committee with SAB, volunteer at the event, or support their friends that go to the event, hell they can even donate if they don't want to do anything else. This is a really good cause, and we are showing cancer and the nation that we are as passionate about DB and helping the kids as we are about our #3 Rank Men's Basketball team!!

It is going to be a great 24 hours, especially with the line dance they have made. Everyone seems to be wondering at this point if and how they incorporated the Big Blue Nation's latest craze, the John Wall Dance, into the line dance we will be doing 24 times over the course of the marathon. Everyone has been doing it: kids who killed their first deer of the season, small children, older people, GameDay crew members, and even me! They filmed me and the people around me doing the JW Dance at GameDay in the famed eRUPPtion zone. It should be on coachcal.com.

Can't wait to start the dance-a-thon. If you want to donate still just text the word DANCE to 50555 and $5 will be added to your cell bill this month. Lets "Just Dance!" the night away FTK!!!!

Should be fun w/ my ΦΣΠ DB Team!!!

Crazy Little Assignments...a waste of time

Some professors, or Grad Students teaching classes, like to give out assignments just to take up your time. One of those are map quizzes. Students are given a list of countries on a certain continent and you are to learn their location and be able to point them out when he gives you a blank map. First was the Western Hemisphere, of North, Central and South America, then came Asia/Middle East, and now its Africa. Does he think we have all the time in the world to study for a little quiz that is less than 20% of our grade (that's all the quizzes combined!)? I don't think so. He alone makes us read at least 80 pages per week from books that are just about an old washed up person from the IMF, WB, WTO or some other IO that thinks they know how to solve the problems of the 3rd world. Well NEWSFLASH: If you think you have the answers, use your contacts and enact this stuff and make it work. Show us the results!!!

These little assignment take up so much of a students time that they don't have time to study for the other important stuff, like test, or doing other important college stuff, like writing articles for the school paper, reading for other classes, or just having time to hang out and catch up with an old GSP friend, or texting that special girl and letting her know how special she is!

So you newer students, make sure you spend enough time before hand studying and doing the little assignment, because they can come back and bite you in the ass at the end of the semester when you need just a few percentage points to get that A in the class. But most of all make sure you have time for others things and don't just stress yourself out on all the little things.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Dorms.....or Apartment?? That is the question!!

Its the lovely time of the semester where people are scrambling for housing for next fall. People should have their housing applications in to the Housing Office in Funkhouser, but others are waiting to find an apartment and sign the lease. For others, they have two choices still on the table. They turned in a application for university housing, but have offers to get a house/apartment with some fun friends. Guess who that is? ME!!!

There are such good reasons to stay and live on campus next semester. You are right there living close to classes and don't have to use your car too much. Plus there's always the predicament about a transfer student that you wanna spend all your time with if your living on campus. You have meals and money on your card and don't have to worry about it.

Apartments have their own pluses as well. You are with just a few people that you know and trust. You don't have to share a bathroom with 30 kids and worry about how nasty it smells because of drunk students. You get your own space and can have lots of fun there and not deal with a ton of crazy neighbors blasting music at 3am.

Its really hard to choose but I'm sure I'll be able to pick soon enough, because I'll have to! Just make sure your doing what is right for you!!