Holiday Dinner

From the organza and lights wrapping up the railings to the upper level of the Campus Center, to the 10 foot tree covered in purple and gold ornaments and decorations, the Holiday Banquet is a tradition that most students anticipate and look forward to. One of the oldest traditions at Elmira College, the Holiday Banquet has been held for students every year for over 130 years. All students are invited to choose a table in the Dining Hall with a host professor or administrator and eat a holiday dinner feast prepared by Elmira College Dining Services. The students from Hillel (our Jewish club on campus) opened the dinner by reading a prayer in Hebrew and lighting the first candle on a Menorah to celebrate their holiday, followed by a prayer from the Christian Fellowship Club.
For the past two years, I have been lucky enough to sit with my advisor and my roommate for the feast. This year, they served each table a whole turkey for the faculty host to carve and serve, green means, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. My roommate, advisor and I were joined by three freshmen girls, who were experiencing this Elmira College tradition for the first time. Following the dinner, the senior class leads the rest of the attendees in singing a series of classic Christmas and Holiday music, followed by our Alma Mater to close the night.
This was my last Holiday Banquet at Elmira College, and it was one I will never forget.

NYC!

Yet another awesome opportunity that Elmira College offers is a trip to New York City for the students who are enrolled in Professor Wolfe's Strategic Retail Management classes. For a small additional course fee, students can catch a bus to New York City and view many student-exclusive places, have special tours, and network with Elmira College Alumni who currently live in the city. This year since we were only able to stay in the city for the day, Professor Wolfe packed as much activity and opportunity into one day as possible. Wednesday morning, met the bus behind McGraw at 3:50 am. and left for NYC at 4:00 am. There was heavier traffic than anticipated since President Obama was visiting the city and Justin Beiber was in the area to perform for the annual tree lighting ceremony at Rockafeller Center, so we arrived for our first appointment at the New York Stock Exchange a little after 9:00 am. After going through security and getting our photo I.D. badges, we met Mr. Smith, a stock broker, who gave us a tour through the building. Then, we met the bus and traveled to our second appointment at Tommy Hilfiger Corporation where we met with a graduate of Cornell College who recently started her employment at Tommy Hilfiger. She showed us two videos of the history of Tommy Hilfiger and we heard a Public Relations representative speak before beginning our walking tour of the building. Our favorite part of the tour was "The Closet" which held over 30,000 articles of clothing which was every single piece of clothing made by the company. They were organized first by type of clothing, then by color. There was even a section of clothes from the most recent collection that had been viewed at fashion shows and runways. We were told that when celebrities contact Tommy Hilfiger for clothes to wear, a selection is always made from the rack of clothes from the latest collection. There was also a display of Tommy products that had been worn or embellished by well-known celebrities that Tommy had purchased back at auctions to showcase for the company. There was a black sequined Tommy dress worn by Tina Turner, Tommy jeans worn by Marilyn Monroe, butterfly embellished jean shorts by Tommy worn by Mariah Carey, and various pictures of other celebrities wearing Tommy clothing.
After our tour of Tommy Corp, we met the bus and traveled to nearby Tommy Hilfiger store in Soho. From there, we went to IAC where we met an Elmira College Alumni from the graduating class of 2004 who was recently promoted to Director of Event Planning. She gave us a brief tour of the building and brought us to a meeting room on the eighth floor where she showed us a powerpoint presentation of her experiences working for IAC. Every floor of the building had floor to ceiling windows displaying the Manhattan skyline, which was breathtaking to view during the tour. Then, we had some free time to explore the Apple Store, FAO Schwartz and Barney's before heading to the Union League Club on 37th Street to meet with Elmira College Alumni and network. We headed back for Elmira around 9:00 pm. and returned around 2:00 am.

Crunch time

December is here already, and the buildings and grounds crew are slowly winterizing the campus. The water in the Iris Fountain has been turned off, the last of the leaves are being removed, and truckloads or purple rock salt are arriving. Coming back to campus from Thanksgiving break is always hard, with Christmas just around the corner everyone wants to stay home with family, go Christmas shopping, buy Christmas trees, and decorate for the holidays, but instead we have to force ourselves to stay focused for these last 3 weeks on campus before Christmas break. Luckily, these last couple of days have made coming back to school for finals easier than in past years. On Monday right after break, I hosted a prospective freshman for an overnight program. After my classes, I headed to the Hamilton Admissions Office and met Melissa and her father who were visiting Elmira College from Long Island. Once they were done with their tour of the campus and an interview, I took them both to Mackenzie's for dinner. After dinner, her father left for his hotel for the night and I took Melissa to my room in Meier to show her around and drop off her things. Then, I contacted a bunch of my friends that live in different dorms throughout campus so Melissa could see almost every dorm on campus and the different room layouts and dorm personalities. Afterwards, we went to Mackenzie's and went bowling at the four lane bowling alley on campus that is free for students. We grabbed some vanilla ice cream and met one of my friends at the information desk on our way out who said he was attending a Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) meeting in a few minutes and invited us to join him. Since Melissa is interested in pursuing Business Administration as a major, I thought sitting in on a business club might be a good experience for her, so we headed downstairs for the SIFE meeting. Following the meeting, we headed back to the room for the night and talked to my friends and roommate about school and student life and high school drama for a while before we turned on the movie Friends with Benefits to fall asleep to. Tuesday morning at 8:15 am. I brought Melissa to my Market Research class so she could see what a typical upper level college business class was like. We grabbed some breakfast at the campus center during our brief, five minute break from class and grabbed some coffee at 9:45 am. on our way to her Strategic Management class she was scheduled for at 9:55 am. I picked her up at 11:30 am. and we went back to Mackenzie's for some lunch before heading back to Hamilton Hall to meet up with her dad and prepare for the long ride home. This was my first time as an overnight host, but it was a lot of fun and I hope I will get a chance to do it again soon. It feels good knowing that I was able to help someone else make one of the most important decisions of their life. I know when I was a senior in high school, I could use all the help I could get, and I'm glad that I was able to help Melissa decide if Elmira College was right for her. If nothing else, I was able to hang out with someone I otherwise would have never met and made a new friend. I wish Melissa, and all the other high school seniors good luck with their final year of high school, and my advice to them is to relax and let things fall into place. I visited 4 colleges, all of which I hated before I found Elmira, and I let myself get very stressed out about it, thinking that there was no right college for me. Once you find the right college, you'll know right away.

Eventful Thursdays

Today was a very eventful day at Elmira College. Elmira occasionally has representatives from different graduate school come to recruit undergraduate students for their programs. At 12:30, I met with a representative from the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester in the campus center to discuss my post graduation plans and the programs and opportunities at Simon. Although the meeting was only twenty minutes long due to the amount of students that requested a meeting, I was able to submit my resume, learn first hand what student life is like at Simon, and I received information packets to review on my own time. Tonight, the Elmira College Dining Center set up an '80's themed dinner for students. They decorated the entire upper level of the campus center with memorabilia from the 1980's including gaudy fabrics and patterns, bright balloons and tablecloths, pacman cakes and cookies, and they were playing popular movies and music from the '80's. They even had a DJ on a stage with a runway and all of the dining staff dressed up in outfits and hairstyles from the '80's including leg warms, side-ponytails, crimped hair, off the shoulder t-shirts, and jean jackets with buttons. They served pineapple splices, chips and bean dip, ham, lasagna, ziti, rolls and butter, and chicken dumplings, and a potato skin bar, all free of charge for the attending students.

They also had a variety of candy and treats on each table and tinsel wigs, rubber spike jewelry, plastic sunglasses, and mesh gloves for students who wanted to fit into the '80's setting. Also tonight held in the Speidel Gymnasium was Hoops Hysteria. Hoops Hysteria is an event to showcase our school's cheer leading teams and basketball teams in an informal, entertaining environment. There was a slam dunk challenge for the men's basketball team in which they competed against each other the be the slam dunk champion by performing outrageous stunts in addition to slam dunks.
They had one teammate pass the ball from across the gym to set up for the dunk, spun in an 180 degree turn before dunking, and jumped over obstacles and people as they were dunking. At on point, they had one teammate on all fours acting as a leaping platform towards the hoop with our school mascot, the Eagle, as an obstacle to leap over. Throughout the event, they read off raffle tickets for prizes including ipod touches, flat screen televisions, a futon, and tickets to a Bills game. The event was a short and sweet break from homework and it was very fun to watch and be with friends. I'm getting sad as events like these pass and my time left at Elmira grows closer and closer to the end, but I'm enjoying every minute of them and I'm creating a lot of great memories in my final year here.

End of Term 1 Events

The end is near, and the usual term-end events are underway on campus. Friday I met with a Counseling and Career Service Representative to review my resume and discuss my options after I graduate in June. I have made a definite decision whether or not to continue my education and go to graduate school or to begin searching for jobs and join the workforce. The advice I was given was to take the GMAT test (a common grad school test requirement for business majors) and apply to some graduate schools and also submit applications and resumes for careers of interest and see what options come my way. At first, I thought I was finally done with school and wanted to jump right into a career to start paying off some debt, but Elmira College has a special 4+1 program agreement with several graduate schools in which students can earn a bachelor degree at Elmira College and attend one of the dozens of partner schools for one year to achieve a master's degree. The Counseling and Career Service office is always very helpful with guiding me in the right direction and assisting me in making these important, life changing decisions. Yesterday I registered for classes for the last time, and was able to get into all six of my term 2 classes without a problem. Also, yesterday afternoon, my class ring (that my wonderful, awesome parents bought for me while they were here for Parent's Weekend) came in the mail! I am usually not the kind of person that buys things like that, I never bought a high school class ring, but Elmira College has become my second home and I wanted something to have all my life that would remind me of the wonderful opportunities I was offered, the knowledge I learned, and the life-long friends I have made here. This afternoon was the Elmira College Career Fair on the second level of the campus center which has dozens of representatives from local businesses that are looking to interview, hire, and acquire student interns from Elmira College. I actually worked at one of the booths with my store manager and district manager of my current part-time job and internship at Family Video. We interviewed some of my fellow students and I explained my experiences as a full-time student with a part-time job and internship at the store. The fair was an overall success and a great time to meet new people and think about possible career opportunities. Next to come is my Thursday meeting with a representative from the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester and Hoops Hysteria Thursday night!

Opportunity at EC

No matter what major students at Elmira College choose to pursue, a lab science is part of the general degree requirements for graduation. Since science is not really my cup of tea, I chose to take an Animal Behavior class where the topics are more general and not too heavy on complicated science theories and methods. I would highly recommend the class to anyone of any major, and it has been very theraputic and enjoyable since many of the labs are outside and off campus. Earlier this term, we traveled to Eldridge Park to observe the behavior and activities of ducks for a lab. We also went to the Gleason Meadow site at Tanglewood Nature Center a few weeks ago with insect nets and caught bees, butterflies, praying mantises, spiders, beetles and grasshoppers and observed the behavior of butterflies in a meadow environment.










This Tuesday for lab we took two school-owned vans to the Binghamton Zoo and saw cougars, bears, goats, crows, penguins, reindeer, and wolves. Also, last night was the annual Elmira College Big Event show featuring OAR. The tickets were free for students and $20.00 for anyone else that wished to attend. The show was held in the gym, but the atmosphere and massive stage transformed the room and made everyone forget that we were still at school. They performed at radio quality and everyone had a lot of fun taking a break from the stresses of being students to be with friends and enjoy the show.

Yesterday, I also met with my advisor to create my last full schedule at Elmira College, and we recieved our dates and time to register for term two classes next week. After these little, much-needed and well-deserved breaks from being students, we are all back to the grind to finish mid-term tests, homework and projects and everyone is counting down the days to go home for our week-long Thanksgiving break in 14 days (told you we were counting). Friday I am meeting with the director of the counseling and career services to review and edit my resume and Monday I register for term two classes, so stay tuned!

Halloween Time at EC

The weather is getting colder, the leaves are falling, and Elmira College is preparing for Halloween! The campus center is decorated with all kinds of festive crafts from top to bottom. Mackenzies, a popular pub style dining room on campus is covered with jack-o-lanterns, cobwebs, spiders, and gourds, and most of the staff are in costume. This morning, we woke up to find the campus had been TPed (covered in toilet paper) from mischief night. Of course the buildings and grounds staff, being anal about having immaculate grounds, hired a tree service to remove the evidence of mischief and by noon, the entire campus was clean again. Tonight, Elmira College is holding an annual Haunted House in the Lounge of Columbia Hall (an all-girls freshmen dormitory) for the residents and children in the Elmira community to enjoy. The children can also trick-or-treat on pre-determined dorm floors, and many student volunteers enjoy interacting with the kids to make their Halloween memorable. Also, some teachers are getting into the Halloween spirit. My strategic retail management class was bribed by our beloved Professor Wolfe to wear our costumes to class for extra credit points on our upcoming or past tests. Although there is no place like home for the holidays, Elmira always brings the spirit of every holiday to the campus to make students feel more comfortable and at home. Happy Halloween everyone!

Changes on Campus

Over the last three years that I have lived at Elmira College, there have been several significant changes to the appearances of the buildings and the campus grounds. When I first arrived in the fall of 2009, the multi-million dollar Meier Hall was not yet erected. In fact, as I walked around Elmira College for the first time following around a Gold Key tour guide, I remember him pointing to the dirt foundation that would become the great Meier Hall and listened intently as the guide described the school's vision for the building. I watched during my freshman and sophomore years as the dirt foundation turned into wooden framework and then gradually evolved into a Gothic-style, brick exterior, intricately carved castle of a building.

One of the reasons why I chose Elmira College was because freshmen are allowed to have cars on campus. However, when I was assigned a dorm room in Alumni Hall my freshman year, I was frustrated by the lack of parking lots on that side of campus. So when the school purchased the land behind Alumni Hall last year to build more sufficient parking lots over the summer, I was very pleased. Also, this year, the school is having the roof of the campus center redone. Cowles Hall, one of the original Elmira College buildings, is also being gutted and revamped to become a usable, academic building once again. Just this week, workers completed re-laying the octagon-shaped stone crosswalk over College Avenue that connects one side of the campus to the other. However, the largest change to Elmira College in all of my years here, was just recently announced this week. After over two decades of living on the Elmira College campus and interacting with students on a daily basis, Dr. Thomas Meier is retiring as the college President. For this reason, I am even more proud to be a member of the graduating class of 2012, the last graduating class under the reign of President Dr. Meier. This June will be even more special since Dr. Meier, along with myself and the rest of the graduating class of 2012 will be remembering our experiences and memories at Elmira College and leaving to start new chapters of our lives. The Astonishing members of the class of 2012 are honored to be the final class to have President Dr. Meier as the college president during our graduation. He has left a legacy and I am proud to be one of the first residents of the Meier Hall building during his final year as president.

Public vs. Private Schools

Now that we are coming to the end of our Mid-term break, I have noticed several main differences between public and private schools. I spend most of my smaller breaks, including this past one, at Buffalo State College visiting my friends and boyfriend in Buffalo instead of going home. Buffalo State has about five times as many students as Elmira and the campus is significantly larger than Elmira as well. I remember when I was a senior in high school trying to narrow down the college search and I came to the point when I had to choose between attending a large school or a small school. Obviously, I decided to choose a small school, and now that I have experienced both, I am still very happy with my choice. First, everyone knows, or at least recognizes everyone else at Elmira College whereas in a large school, everyone is a stranger and the walkways across campus are silent with students walking with their heads down. Second, the farthest building on the Elmira College Campus is still within eyeshot from every dorm and is less than a five minute walk, whereas on larger campuses, student have to leave 20 minutes or more early to get to class on time. Third, there are traditions and closeknit relationships that larger schools are incapable of producing. Fourth, I feel that the Elmira College environment is more conducive to learning and education than larger metropolitan schools. With average class sizes no larger than 25, attendance is necessary and absences are moer noticeable than larger schools with class sizes of over 100 students, when missing class is easier and focusing on the topic at hand in a large, stadium shaped room, surrounded by dozens of people on every side is nearly impossible. Fifth, there is more opportunity on smaller campuses. For example, Elmira has three terms, the third of which offers "fun," lenient classes including several term three international travel trips that larger schools are unable to offer so frequently. Sixth, the Elmira College school year lasts about two weeks longer than other SUNY schools, but we have more, much-needed small breaks in between terms. Most college students would agree that having small, week-long breaks after mid-terms are much more welcome than plowing through a semester with few or no breaks just to be out of college two weeks earlier. Overall, for the students who want to graduate college feeling extremely proud of countless accomplishments, and have life-long friends at their side, having countless memories and trips of a lifetime and knowledge that will help them succeed in whatever future endeavors life has to offer, smaller schools like Elmira College are the better choice.

Term 3 Trips

So last week I spontaneously decided to sign up for this year's term 3 trip to Hawaii!!??

Let me tell you the whole story. Since I am a new blogger I should start by telling you that I originally came to Elmira College with the class of 2013, however, I had 25 college credits from high school, so I started Elmira as a sophomore, which is why I am now a member of the class of 2012. Anyways, I have been taking 6 courses or more every term since freshman year so I could graduate in 2012 with marketing and management specializations and a minor, so I didn't think I would be able to go on any term 3 trips during my college career. However, I was able to attend the United Kingdom term 3 trip last year for 6 credits of European history, which is a general degree requirement. That was last year, so I don't want to get too into that but I was the trip blogger for the entire 3 weeks we were there, and I blogged everyday, so if you want to read more about it, the website is http://ecuk11.blogspot.com/. So, now that I am done with my history requirements, I figured that was going to be my big trip, until last week when my roommate busted open our door screaming in excitement that she had just put down a deposit on the term 3 trip to Hawaii.

I was fuming in jealousy, and decided to check out the trips and my schedule one more time. Turns out, the Hawaii trip counts as 6 PED (physical education) credits, which is the last general degree requirement that I had not yet fulfilled. I frantically reworked my schedule to fit the rest of my classes into term 2 this year, and ran to drop off my deposit, securing a spot on the trip to Hawaii 45 minutes before the trip was completely full. Talk about luck!

I am overwhelmingly excited for this trip to celebrate the last three years of hard work and my upcoming graduation from Elmira College. It is times like these that I am reminded that I made the right decision to attend this school. I honestly do not feel like these opportunities would be so readily available elsewhere. Stay posted for my blogs from Hawaii in a few months!

Parent's Weekend 2011

It was a bittersweet moment seeing my parents for the first time since move-in day, for our last Parent's Weekend together at Elmira College. They arrived a day earlier than they had every other year so that they could experience Simeons, Elmira College's 5 star restaurant on campus. After showing off my awesome room in the brand new Meier Hall again, we walked as a family to the campus center for our 7:00 dinner reservation. It was so refreshing to be together again, and catch up on the activities that had occur ed throughout September both at home and on campus. We enjoyed scallops, grilled salmon, won-ton crusted shrimp, salad, bread, and mousse cakes for dessert and luckily had the entire restaurant to ourselves for most of the time! After dinner, we met up with my roommate and headed to Gibson Theater to watch a comedy show called the Dynamite Project that was scheduled for the night. We were unsure what to expect, but we were all pleasantly surprised as the show started, and the performers immediately had every audience member in tears from laughing. The performers handed out a limited supply of posters after the show, and I had them autograph mine so I could hang it in my room as a conversation piece. The following morning, I met my parents for a buffet breakfast in the Campus Center and immediately after breakfast, we decided to take our second trip to the nearby historic Quarry Farm, where Mark Twain spent his summers and wrote many of his famous novels. We took the old purple bus with other students and parents and relived the life of Mark Twain through a student and scholar exclusive tour that occurs only on special occasions, Parent's Weekend being one of them. We took the bus back and grabbed a few sandwiches at a buffet line in the Campus Center before heading back to get dressed up and ready for our last Dinner Dance together. Before heading back the hotel, my parents dragged a week's worth of laundry out of the car to wash in the laundry room on the terrace level of my dorm, since our washer at home had recently broke, and the replacement had not arrived yet. Some students bring their laundry home for their parents, but my parents bring their laundry to school for me, what can I say? Anyways, after we changed into our fancy dinner clothes, my parents met me at 6:00 and we walked to Doctor Meier's on-campus house for the class of 2012 pre-dinner party celebration where we were met at the door, congratulated on our achievements and my nomination for graduation, and offered a glass of champagne. At 7:00, we headed for the upper level of the campus center to find our table for the dinner dance. This year, we sat with a sophomore, her parents, and her younger sister and found out that her father attended culinary school in my hometown! (What a small world) We were ecstatic when we were one of the first tables called to go to the dinner buffet (we hadn't had such luck in past years). After dinner, and after we sang the Alma Mater, the mothers and sons were called to the dance floor for a dance together. Immediately afterwards, the fathers and daughters were called to share a dance, and I started to tear up thinking that this was my last father daughter dance with my dad at Elmira College. We danced shoulder to shoulder with dozens of other fathers and daughters who all shared memories and laughed and hugged throughout the duration of the dance. The following morning, we shared breakfast together, talked for a while in the Meier Hall Lounge, and then shared a few tears as we embraced in a familiar, but unwelcome, goodbye hug, knowing that the next time we would see each other, would be for Thanksgiving dinner almost two months away. It was my favorite Parent's Weekend and a perfect way to start my final year at Elmira College, with the two people who helped me get here and who have supported me throughout my college experience.