Happy Halloween!

Hi everyone!  Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Halloween, and a Happy Thursday to anyone who does not celebrate Halloween.  Below is a link to one of the cutest Buzzfeed posts I've ever seen.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbellassai/costumes-that-prove-pugs-always-win-at-halloween

This post alone helped me get through the 3 papers that I had to write this week.  Enjoy!

Hurricane Sandy

As many of you know, today marks the 1-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy.  I was born and raised in New Jersey and I also attended college there, so I heard a lot about Hurricane Sandy relief efforts and the devastation that it brought to NJ, NY, and many other areas.  The ironic part is, Sandy hit during the one year that I moved out of NJ and relocated to Florida, the hurricane capital of the country.  Luckily my family did not encounter many issues with the storm since they live about an hour from the beach, but I have friends who lost their homes and most of their belongings.  This past weekend I went to Seaside with my family to participate in a Jersey Shore clean-up service project.  The task we got assigned to was trail clean-up, which basically involved clearing branches and debris off of the nature trails at Island Beach State Park.  It was sad to see so many uprooted trees and bushes from the storm, but it was nice to be able to contribute to restoring these outdoor spaces.  Despite the devastation, it's really beautiful there.  Below is a picture of the bay that we could see from walking along the trails that we helped to clear:

Here is a photo of my family before we began our project.  It was chilly that day, especially with the breeze from the ocean!

I'll write again before the end of the week, but I wanted to add this post in honor of the anniversary of Sandy.

Recruitment trip to Washington, D.C.

I'm on my way back from an Admissions trip that I went on for my GA.  I attended an Off-Campus Info Session at the Hotel Palomar in DC with Lois, who is the Assistant Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at GSE.  It was a lot of fun!  As opposed to the On-Campus Info Session that I wrote about a few posts ago, these sessions are held at hotels in different cities...in the Fall, we had sessions in NYC, Chicago, Boston, and DC.  Part of my GA duties was to coordinate the catering and registration for these events, so it was great to actually go to one and see what it's like. The food was amazing; this cheese display was my favorite:

Oh, and the actual Info Session went really well!  Contrary to what my photo may suggest, I spoke with prospective students and didn't just stand in the corner and eat the whole time =]  It was interesting to see the variety of academic and professional backgrounds that prospective students come from.  Lois led a Q&A session and we each got to chat with small groups of students.  

I'm on the train back to Philly now.  We get back at 1, and then I have a meeting with a professor, a meeting with a group for a project, class from 4:30-8:30, and then I need to write a paper and prep for a group presentation, both of which are due tomorrow morning.  It's hard for me to save work until the last minute because it stresses me out even more, but I've found that in grad school, schedules can get so busy that the last minute is sometimes the only minute available!  I hope this train ride takes a while... 

On-Campus Info Session and Apple-Picking

Hello!  Happy Tuesday, everyone.  I am much less stressed than I was when I wrote my last blog post.  The On-Campus Info Session that we had on Saturday went really well.  We had a great turn-out and the weather ended up being nice (I was the MC for the event so I got to make awkward comments about the weather in between presenters like most MCs do).  Our faculty and student speakers were awesome, as was the Admissions presentation by my wonderful supervisor, LaToya =)  And I'm really thankful for all of the help from our Admissions GA team as well as our Admissions Ambassadors.  Finally, a special shout-out to my co-GAs, Amanda and Wesley.  We all work in the Admissions office together and they have been extremely helpful in planning this event.  Here is a picture of us from Saturday!  From left to right:  Amanda, me, & Wesley (Wesley was the student speaker at our event).

After the Info Session I was exhausted and took a 3-hour nap.  Then my parents and younger brother came to visit and we had dinner at New Deck Tavern, which is an Irish pub down the street from Penn's campus.  As I've mentioned in previous blog entries, Philly has amazing food, but my family is extremely picky about what they will eat!  I had to email them 4 menus ahead of time and they picked New Deck.  The food was really good though.  Here's a picture of my brother and me outside of my apartment:

On Sunday I was still exhausted (along with planning the Info Session I also had a midterm and a paper due the week before), but I went apple-picking in New Hope with two of my friends from the Higher Ed program.  It was really nice to get away from the craziness of Philly for the afternoon.  There was a quick hayride that took us over to the apple orchards, and the guide gave us very descriptive explanations of the four different types of apples that were available to pick.  I am a total sucker for food descriptions--it can be a McDonald's cheeseburger, but if someone describes it in detail to me ("hand-diced onions, Dijon mustard, locally-sourced vegetables") I would probably think it's amazing.  Even if that description is a bit of a stretch.  Anyway, here is a photo from apple-picking!  I am on the left, and then there are my friends Jenna and Kaitlyn.

Time to go do some reading for class now, but I'll post again soon!

On-Campus Info Session this Saturday!

HELLO!  This is going to be a very brief post.  I have a midterm in a few hours and I'm in the middle of planning our largest on-campus admissions event of the fall semester (which you should all come to!).  The event is our On-Campus Information Session, and it will be taking place this Saturday, October 12th, from 10AM-1PM.  As the title suggests, the event takes place on campus and will include information about admissions, financial aid, student life at GSE, and the different programs we offer.  It will be a lot of fun, very informative, and there will be plenty of food!  Needless to say, this week has been very stressful for me, since I am balancing my coursework (midterm time!) as well as this big event for admissions.  I have been drinking a ton of coffee this week so please excuse any typos in this post.

Even though it's been stressful, I'm so excited for the event this Saturday.  I really want to continue working in Admissions after graduating, so this is really great career experience.  I've done some event-planning in college, but never anything this large-scale.  I've been making a ton of lists and delegating tasks where I can (currently my co-GA's, Amanda and Wesley, are being awesome and updating the Admissions PowerPoint presentation to reflect this year's information!)  It seems like everything is in place, but things are bound to happen at the last minute.  Just trying to anticipate issues wherever I can.  Anyway, I gotta go study for my midterm...updates will come on Monday as to how to session went, and I'll include pictures this time!

Papers on papers on papers

I feel my fingers getting ahead of my mind as I type this blog entry.  I had so many papers due this week that it seems like I've done nothing but type for the past three days!  Things are also really picking up at my GA since I've been working on planning our Admissions events (the first of which is an On-Campus Info Session at Penn GSE for prospective students, 10AM-1PM on Saturday, October 12th!--see our Events page for more info and to RSVP).  

This program has taught me a lot already, but time-management is the #1 professional skill that I am developing.  I always thought I had good time-management from being busy in college and then teaching high school, but I am slowly getting used to the idea that I have to plan out every minute of my day if I want to get things done efficiently.  I also hate when people complain about being busy (major pet peeve), so I want to emphasize that I am NOT complaining (well, maybe a little bit...) but I'm trying to view everything as a learning experience and not a burden :-) 

My two best friends from college are coming to visit this weekend.  One of them is in med school in New Jersey, and the other works at a law firm in DC.  We don't get to see each other too often, so I'm so excited for them to visit!  We're going to explore the city a little bit, so I'll take pictures to post.

My friends and I took this photo at Penn's Landing using an automatic timer on one of our cameras!  This was our first try--we attempted to take another, but they were all epic fails.

This is me (on the right) with Vicki (center) and Grace (left).  They're my best friends who I met my freshman year of college...we don't get to see each other too often, but when we do it's always an adventure =)