Author Archives: marottah

Honors Requirements

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If I am being completely honest, I had no idea the requirements for the Honors Program were due at the end of the semester. I thought I had all the time in the world to get them done (before the end of the year). However, at class Wednesday morning, Professor Duntley sent me into a tailspin. He started talking about the service requirements the class had been doing throughout the semester, and I did some things. I wasn’t sitting around doing nothing, but I was nowhere near where I had to be. I had never felt more panicked here than I did after that class. It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one who had completely dropped the ball so far. My friend Rachel (who was also completely shocked at this new discovery) and I devised a plan to get all of our requirements out of the way with only two weeks to spare.

On my sheet, I already had one Honors Activity (an honors meeting), a dialogue (the Convocation), and an ongoing volunteer activity being a tutor for young kids. However, to me in my moment of crisis it seemed as if I had done nothing and this was the end of my stay in the Honors Program. Luckily for me, Rachel had done even less than me which made me feel a little better about where I stood. I started planning out what I could do as soon as I got back to my dorm, and as I started looking at the different dialogues I could attend in order to get credit, I started to feel better and better because there were so many that would count as an event.

I am not in the business of procrastinating getting stuff done though. I like things to be done weeks before they are supposed to in order to give me peace of mind. I decided I would go to the first possible thing, which happened to be the next day. Working with Children and Families in Social Welfare just happened to be the next event, and also the only one I could see myself remotely being interesting in and wanting to sit through. It was an hour long event, 5-6, and upon my arrival I got a very nice surprise. They were serving pizza, drinks, and dessert at this event, which was a plus for me. There were a ton of people in the room, and there were almost not enough seats for everyone, and I later found out that was because it was required for another class to attend this event for extra credit.

I got my pizza and sat in the first seat I saw and patiently waited for the speakers to begin with the PowerPoint that was on the board, but they never did. They didn’t use the PowerPoint at all during the presentation, and they did not just tell the audience what they do and how they help people. They actually spoke to the audience in a way that would spark a conversation among everyone, and the people in the crowd were loving it. There were so many questions I couldn’t keep up and I almost felt bad for the speakers because the questions were flying in from every angle.

Towards the end of the talk, some people who were clearly just there to get the extra credit and didn’t care about anything the speakers were saying began to get up and leave as the presentation was still happening. I found this to be extremely rude because it was ten to 6 o’clock and they only had to wait ten more minutes before the presentation was over. However, the people getting up to leave did not seem to faze the presenters in the slightest (probably because it was clear that most of the room was extremely interested in what they were saying). When they had said all they needed to say, and the questions ceased, everyone started to occasionally get up and walk either out of the room or towards the presenters to ask them more questions, and I patiently waited my turn to get them to sign my paper and tell them how surprisingly interested I was in their presentation.

Overall, I have almost completed my requirements form, and therefore am not in crisis mode anymore, but being forced to go to this presentation turned out to be more fun and rewarding than I ever would have imagined.

Trying New Things

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Walking into the campus center Coffee House on Monday, October 9th, seemed like such a routine occurrence. However, this night there was a tie dying event at 8 o’clock and because my friend is a tie dying fanatic she wanted to go. But I had never done anything like this, and I had no idea what to expect. I left my last lecture in F Building at 7:45 and went straight to the Coffee House to secure us a table. When I first arrived, there were a decent amount of people sitting and waiting. However, around 7:55 we started lining up, and the line was past Dunkin Donuts within minutes. As time went on it seemed like the line continued to grow and before I knew it the line had stretched out past the glass doors and into the main hallway of the Campus Center.

I was not the only one who was shocked at the turnout. The staff working the event were not set up or prepared for this many people at all, and at one point during the event someone had to come and bring them the backup stock of shirts. We stood in line until about ten after 8 and then finally we saw the workers start setting up the tables with tarps and the different colors of dye, and then finally the line started moving.

We got up to the table and one of the workers swiped our cards, and then we moved over to a different table and told them what size shirt we were. After picking out what size we wanted, the worker dipped the shirt in a bucket filled with some kind of liquid. I still don’t know what it was, but one of the people in front of me said it was to help the shirt hold the color better. We picked up a paper with instructions on how to make different designs, rubber bands, and gloves along the way, and then finally we were ready to start. The tables were not very big, which made it difficult to lay your shirt out and rubber band it, but we had to make it work. Although I had never tie dyed before, I didn’t want to use the paper, so I just made up my own design.

Coming in I had an idea in my head about what colors I wanted to use, but of course when I actually got to the table, I saw someone else’s shirt and immediately fell in love with their color scheme. I put my shirt down on the table and began working. I probably should have looked at the paper because I had no idea what I was doing, and I just picked up the dye colors I wanted and sprayed all over the shirt with no rhymer reason.

When you finished your shirt, the staff gave you a ziplock baggie to put it in so the excess dye wouldn’t get all over your hands, which it was anyway. I didn’t know you had to let it sit a whole day before taking it out and washing it, and I was pretty upset about it because naturally I wanted to see my shirt at that very moment. However, the next day when I finally got to cut the rubber bands off and see what it looked like I wasn’t so sure I actually liked what I had done. But I washed it and dried it anyway, and when it finally came out of the dryer I fell in love with it, and immediately went back to my room to try it on, but ended up wearing it for the rest of the day.  

 

What Will I Become Here?

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When I first walked out of my Argument and Persuasion class at 12:20 on September 19, I had no idea what was going on because there were so many people everywhere, and then it hit me that the Get Involved Fair was today and I was standing right in the middle of it. There were over 100 clubs with tables set up throughout the hallways, and let me just say it was one of my most overwhelming experiences here. I never imagined that enough people would be interested in these ideas to even form a club. But the depressing part was I wasn’t seeing anything I would be interested in joining, and I began to feel very discouraged. I saw other people going to every table they saw and signing up for everything, but I didn’t want to waste my time with things that didn’t interest me. I had some possibilities in my mind about clubs I had heard of and wanted to join, but I didn’t see any of them.

Just then I saw a dog running around on a blanket and my love for animals persuaded me to go see what the table was. It was a volunteer organization at a local animal shelter. This was right up my alley, and the more the women at the table talked about the responsibilities I would have and the impact I would have on these animals, the more interested I became. I signed my name on the sheet and was a little more positive now that I found something that I liked.

As I got further into the different stands, I finally came across one of the clubs I was looking for: the photography club. There were a few people talking to the students in charge of the stand, so I waited until they were done and then walked up and filled out the iPad with my school login and pushed the “join” button. And just like that I had officially joined my first club.

Honestly, I would have been happy joining only one club, but as I was walking away from the table I saw the student ambassador table. This caught my attention because I remember wanting to become one when I went on my campus tours during my senior year of high school. I went over and the two students were so inviting and energetic. They told me the whole process you have to go through in order to become an ambassador, and I am willing to do it all. I wrote my name on the paper and am going to the interest meeting.

At this point, I thought I had seen everything and was making my way out of the building when I saw the Criminal Justice Society board. Being a criminal justice major, I wanted to see what their club was about and see if I would be interested. After talking to the students, I decided it would help me determine what I want to do with my future at Stockton and beyond. I signed up and got a meeting time for that as well. After all was said and done, I signed up to join three different clubs and one volunteer activity and can’t wait for the meetings to begin.