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.