Stocktonopoly happened the first weekend of October. On Friday the 4^th there was a parade and pep rally to show appreciation for clubs and sports. I am a member of our Track and Field team and our coach wanted all future and former members to meet up and join the parade for some team bonding and to show everyone how wonderful our team was. We met outside of Big Blue or The Sports Center, all wearing a track shirt with other teams that were meeting. We were all led to the gym where every club was preparing or gathering around their float and there were a lot of floats. The whole gym was colorful and full of people. It made me realize that Stockton really does have a lot of clubs and organizations, and they clearly put a lot of effort into their monopoly themed floats.

I stayed with the track team the whole time. In the gym we were all talking and laughing with each other and waited for the parade to start. We took a nice team picture and then were on our way. As we were walking out, my friend and fellow pole vaulter asked me if I could pull up “The Fox” by Ylvis to show his friend. Since I thought the song was hilarious, I gladly pulled up the song and we all had a good laugh about it. Who doesn’t love that song right now?

We walked from the back of Big Blue to the Campus Center for more pictures and some spectators. It was nice seeing support from people around the campus for this event. We paraded along in between other floats and banners. Everyone seemed in high spirits and happy to be there, which was wonderful. The day was hot but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. We paraded towards the freshman dorms where people were starting to come outside and waving from their windows. We walked from Housing 3 to Housing 2 where the parade dispersed and gathered for the pep rally.

The pep rally was on the side of the TRLC and there was a little stage. My friend and I sat down on the ground to watch the events of the pep rally. There were performances by different clubs which were pretty impressive. Cheerleaders, dancers, and singers were all pepped up and bravely performing in front of all the students that were gathered. Each group earned cheers from all the students. There were speakers from different people around the campus, and each sport team got individual recognition. They all were together with their team and cheered when their accomplishments were announced. Homecoming King and Queen were announced and each gave a short speech. When the pep rally ended, almost everyone lined up to get a free t-shirt. Everyone loves free t-shirts.

The pep rally and parade definitely raised spirits that day. I know I walked away in a great mood from seeing how close, talented, and determined these clubs and organizations were.

One event that I have been waiting for since the summer was the Get Involved Fair. I was on a mission to try out as many clubs as possible because I really wanted to be as involved as possible. Since I am an incoming college student I’ve heard many people talk about the importance of getting involved and how it makes the college experience. A week before the fair one of my friends had a pamphlet about the different clubs which especially got me interested. I looked at the list and found that Stockton has a lot of clubs to offer, and just by looking at the names of the clubs I knew I was interested in at least twenty.

The morning of the fair I wasn’t sure when I would be able to walk around and see all the clubs I wanted. I had a class in the morning, then I had to do my daily track workout, and I had an evening class. I wasn’t going to attend class due to having a meeting for track, so I still did not have much free time that day. I thought I would have to go after the meeting but that really wouldn’t have left much time to visit all the clubs if they were even still there. Some did pack up throughout the day. Thankfully my roommate wanted to go, and I got my workout done early so I got to go in the middle of the day, so we went on to adventure at The Get Involved Fair!

My roommate and I started from the very beginning. Every table had nice decorations to relate to their club and many of the tables had free stuff. Some of the people sitting at the tables did not seem interested at being there at all, while others smiled and waved and would call me over if they heard me ask a question about their club. It was nice, no matter what table I walked to I was greeted with a smile even if the person was just sitting in boredom a few seconds ago. All the tables I approached were very good at explaining their club and I ended up signing up for a lot more clubs than I planned to.

We made our way through the fair and began looking at the same clubs. We walked through for 10 minutes and couldn’t really find all the clubs we were looking for at first so we stuck together just talking and walking. As we got to the main part of the fair I started seeing more and more clubs I was interested in. It got to the point where my roommate walked on without me since I was stopping at almost every table. I was really excited to get to the EDIBL club since I remembered it being about bugs. When I got to the table I learned that it wasn’t a club about just bugs, it was a club about eating bugs. At that moment I also realized how clever the name was. EDIBL. I felt silly but I was super excited to learn about eating bugs.

I continued to make my way around the giant circle of clubs. I was finding most of the clubs I was interested in but I was really looking for the Geology and Art Club, they were nowhere in sight though. As I was talking to all these people about their clubs I realized that I couldn’t make a lot of the meetings. So many clubs had meetings around the same time and same day. That was kind of disappointing, especially since I had evening classes on Tuesday and Thursday. Still I was determined to try and be a part of all these clubs. I finally started to make my way down to the end of the fair where I finally found the Art Club. I was impressed with their setup since art was being displayed. After that I saw the Math Club, it caught my eye because the poster mentioned the possibility of being a Wu Warrior. I had Dr. Wu as a professor over the summer and he was great. Who wouldn’t want to be a Wu Warrior? I definitely wanted to join that club. That was the last club table I got to, and then I walked into the track meeting since it was right in that hallway.

Overall I really enjoyed the Get Involved Fair. I would like to think it has helped me get involved a lot, and even though I’m going to have trouble making it to most of the meetings. I signed up for 21 clubs, but I was disappointed that I didn’t see the Geology Club even though I went both days for the fair. The friendly faces and free candy was a very nice touch. If I had any complaints it would be about the lack of organization, or how sometimes I couldn’t see the signs for some of the clubs. The Get Involved Fair was a very useful event for students and I enjoyed it.

One of the service projects I did during the first half of the semester was an annual Atlantic City Beach Sweep for a club called Water Watch. I found out about this service project from walking through lower D Wing. There was a little sign that was made by hand and a table that was advertising the event. I love doing beach cleanups, so I went to my next class and asked fellow honor student Dhvani Shah to go with me. She had wanted to do a road cleanup that weekend, but I thought we could get more done at a beach sweep. So on Saturday October 19^th everyone going for the sweep met at the Arts and Sciences Building at 8:15 in the morning. We all signed in, got our gloves, and found who out who was carpooling with who and we were off to Atlantic City.

The volunteer group arrived in Atlantic City near the Rainforest Café where other organizations were there to help with the beach sweep. The mayor of Atlantic City was there to talk to us along with a representative from Atlantic City Electric since they were one of the sponsors for the annual event. We were instructed on how the people in charge wanted us to clean up the beach because we weren’t just supposed to pick up trash. We were to record every piece of trash on a piece of paper and separate recyclables from trash. We also found out that towards the end of our service, a band called The Barenaked Ladies would be there to perform for us and help pick up some trash. The Barenaked Ladies is the band that sings “The Big Bang Theory” theme song, so I was pretty excited to see and hear them play.

The volunteers were then dismissed to go pick up trash where they pleased. Dhvani and I started for the beach and immediately found trash. We recorded and counted each piece we picked up while walking up and down the beach. Later in the day we were finally called to come back to the boardwalk where we found out that everyone else was already done and that The Barenaked Ladies had already played and left, which was disappointing. We got a little too into cleaning up the trash and missed some exciting things, but we had no regrets about the cleanup.

There were a few reasons why I enjoyed the beach sweep. Everyone had a partner for cleaning up, and mine was a good friend, so I didn’t feel alone or left out while cleaning. I also enjoy doing labor while volunteering; moving around is a lot better than just sitting down at a table to talk to people. Also there was actual volunteer work that was possible to do. I heard that at the animal shelter there were too many volunteers and not enough jobs. At a beach cleanup there is no set job, and of course there is plenty of beach to walk and clean. Another reason I liked the beach sweep is how the people in charge were organizing it. We all had a paper with items we could just mark down to keep track of what trash we picked up. I was impressed with how well the organizations were prepared to clean up the beach. My only problem with the project was the lack of communication. There was a lack in communication in getting information about this event out, there was lack of communication for when we should be done volunteering, and there was almost no interaction between the volunteers almost the whole time.

I was able to learn through this beach cleanup as well. A person can learn a lot about the population from what trash they discard on the beach. Cigarette butts were one of the most picked up items on the beach. Dhvani and I had gathered a total of 246 cigarette butts. We learned that this number fluctuates every year, and researchers learn about smoking and whether or not it has gone up. This is the same for any item. Any item can tell that more people are drinking more water from the bottle caps they leave behind, or that styrofoam cups are becoming a problem from the amount of styrofoam pieces that are being gathered. We were able to learn about how the importance of what people leave behind can say about the population and how people are changing or consuming more products. Overall, it was a pretty good community service event.