Finals are Over!

Berries on Campus [Near Mckenna Language Building]

Horray! I know I can speak for everyone when I say I am BEYOND relieved to be done with all my finals and starting winter break!

Being in the dorms with everyone studying all the time- and 24/7 quiet hours- was really weird! I got very used to being able to visit all my friends and take breaks from studying at any time during the semester, so so many tests at once was sort of overwhelming. At my high school students could be finals exempt, which I was except for one semester my entire time there. It was sort of shocking then to have to actually take all my finals and not be able to relax at the end of the semester. Time management was way more important while I was still in classes as well- I ended up having two of my finals at CU on the first day finals could be scheduled, and they were my hardest ones! :( It was tough, but since I had studied well for the Intro to Business midterms I didn't have to spend nearly as much time on the material for the final. Yay!

Overall, taking finals wasn't too bad, but I think I would have done even better if I had taken that type of exam after more classes in high school. For now... it's time to enjoy winter break! Happy Holidays everyone! :-)

Reflecting on the Semester

Last night was the last horrah night for my floor friends before finals- we were all just hanging out, attempting to get motivated to study, and decided that it would be an awesome idea to bake some cinnamon rolls and wait until tomorrow to worry about it. It was a celebration of sorts, and lead to a really intense and honest conversation about our college lives so far.

Susanna, Emily, Jessica and I all came into CU for varying reasons- Susanna and I partially because there was nowhere else to turn after not being admitted at different schools, Emily didn't get in at her dream school but found CU amazing, and Jessica came as an out-of-state kid to escape her native Houston and experience the mountains.

Reminising, Susanna mentioned how she had just been really angry at the beginning of the year about even having to go to school in state, and after working incredibly hard through the IB program at our high school she was left high and dry (like nearly half of the IB class) to come to CU, which for many kids had been a backup school. As the semester wore on though, things improved immensly- after all, college is college, and it's really hard not to have a little fun. :) Now she's really built a community at Colorado because she still got involved, even though she wasn't super psyched about the school- and she's much happier than she expected. :)

Emily came in going for a serious college experience and wanted the whole nine yards- football, dorm living, and bleeding black and gold. The semester went really fast for her too, and her enthusiasm for being here was evident in how many people she has gotten to know over the course of just a few months.

As for me- school is great. I'm bad at adjusting, and going to college was not a happy thought in my book because I had such great friends in high school. Watching everyone go off and create new lives, be in pictures with people I'd never seen before, was almost hurtful at first. I couldn't figure out why I just wasn't getting the same amount of joy out of being at CU that they were from being at different schools- in our hometown even! I managed to force myself into meeting people- I moved out of a single room and in with a roommate (which was the best choice I could have made) and tried to start talking to the people in my classes. Overall the semester has gone well, and now that I know how things work around campus next semester should be amazing!

Emily, Jessica, Me (right to left) [My Room]

Norlin Library

[Norlin Library]

In honor of the ever-dreaded finals week, I decided to scout out Norlin Library and see exactly how packed the place was getting with finals rushing towards the entire school while we finish up our last week of classes. I discovered several things, well known to most CU students:
1. Anywhere in the library where you have a chance of talking/being loud and studying at the same time is totally full. All the time.
2. If you don't want to talk, there's around a zillion nooks all over the place that you can use to study, in every library and most buildings on campus.
3. Construction is never-ending on campus, and although useful, is rather irritating when half of the library's usual study space is taken up.
What I discovered, instead of the lack of space I previously found when wandering through the main parts of the library, was the most extensive collection of books I'd ever seen and tons of room to spread out and work in a quiet place. That's so handy after attempting to do anything resembling studying in the highly distracting dorm environments!

For those of you who haven't been in Norlin, imagine this (and yes, that black dot is a person!):Now multiply that by 3 levels and 3 or 4 shelves wide. THAT IS SO MANY BOOKS! I'm a total bookworm, so I find this to be a really impressive feature of CU. I couldn't even find exactly how many books there are in the Norlin collection on their website, but it's not of any great importance- with an extremely adept inter library loan system, CU-Boulder can put just about any book in the world in your hands.

The Library's typical Boulder view [Norlin Library]

So if you're scrambling to prepare for finals or just want to find some more info for a research paper, I would definitely recommend hitting up Norlin- once you enter the "Norlin Stacks", which are the huge collections I mentioned above- there's some great desks and tables where you can get your work done. But simply wandering around until I found a new room seemed to unearth plenty of empty seats for me as well. :-)

SNOW!!!

[The Koebel Building]

Hey everyone!
Hope that break went swimmingly and that everyone is gearing up for their finals! My break went pretty well and consisted mainly of cooking my first ever turkey solo and sleeping in... pretty typical I suppose! : ) I didn't even realize it when we went to break, but we only have one more week of classes coming up after this Friday- and then finals are upon us!

Everyone should know that after your last final, you need to "vacate the building" after 24 hours- and all the dorms are closed over break. Don't forget anything here, because no one will be around to let you in! : (

Today was the first real snow of the year, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it! It's really funny to be around to see my friends who haven't seen snow before- I can't even imagine how weird it must be to see it in movies and on TV all the time and never get a chance to make a snowball or build a fort! Outside Darley Commons today people were so psyched for snowboarding that they built jumps along all the stairs, which was pretty funny to watch when I went to get dinner and my mail.

Campus looked even more picturesque than usual (hard!) and even though my feet were freezing because I left my boots at home, I managed to snap a few shots of our first storm of the season. Biking around campus in the snow seems like a feat within itself... somebody told me earlier this year, "Once you fall off your bike in the snow once, it never happens again." Sort of scared me into taking the bus for a while. : )

My camera even got snowed on! [Norlin Quad]

Snowfall, measured in bicycles [Norlin Library]

Flatirons Hiking

So this week, my older brother Karl was in town. Having graduated from CU in 2005, the guy knows Boulder and its surrounding activities pretty well, mainly focusing on everything outdoors. I requested that we hike the flatirons- I've seen the pictures from tons of friends who had done it, and I wanted to get my very own picture of our lovely campus from the mountains!
The view of Boulder from the top was breathtaking or rather, I was just still out of breath from the climbing up the trail, which was steep and rocky but not excruciatingly difficult. The only major danger we faced resulted in some kid pushing a relatively huge (think big watermelon-sized) rock off the trail above us and failing to warn anyone below of the boulder of death hurling down the mountain.
Luckily, the rest of the hike went on without incident and was definitely worth the climb for the gorgeous view of Boulder you get at the end!

My New Favorite Method of Procrastination

Generally speaking, I am a relatively good student. When it comes down to it, I'll do the assignment. Given, more often than I'd like to admit it's the day before my work is due, but overall I keep on top of things.
On those days when I have nothing to do (or rather, that I want to do :P) I turn to StumbleUpon.
Basically, it's the internet finding everything you never knew you loved and sticking it in a convenient button, alike so:Every time you click, a new page pops up from a category that you specified when you first installed the program (Art, photography, cooking, bikes, etc.). By clicking the little thumbs-up or thumbs-down, Stumble becomes even more you-specific and bookmarks thumbs-up pages for you.
Today I even stumbled upon a site that prods you to do your written work- you chose varying levels of annoyance and the website makes sure that you get a certain number of words or minutes of writing done. Check it out here!
Other cool stuff Stumble has brought to me-
-Pimped out drainpipes
-College ruled, that creates your schedule in a pretty, printable weekly sheet.
-The Top 10 Candy Stores of NYC

Seriously, the possibilities are endless. Whatever you love most in life stumble will find for you in all kinds of super interesting stuff on the web.
Sadly, it's only available for Mozilla Firefox (not Internet Explorer) which you should all be using anyway because it is less likely to be targeted for viruses; so you can protect your laptop and get a cool program! :)
Once you've installed Firefox, click here to install Stumble and begin procrastinating. Best of luck in all your web-based wanderings! :)

Surving the Dining Hall Recipes #1

At this point in the year, I think I'm correct in saying that most of us are looking forward to a serious Thanksgiving dinner or food at home more than we ever imagined we would. Let's face it... the dining hall food will get you by and is sometimes surprisingly delicious, but there are definitely those nights where you grab a plate, walk from one end of the line to the other, and end up having a piece of bread and carrot sticks.
I was having a particularly anti-dorm food week this week, and I discovered some creative and delicious ways to use what the halls provide everyday- sandwich fixings and the salad bar- to create delicious eats that are seriously reminiscent of elementary school and packing your lunch back in the day. Hopefully you can hold yourself over until Fall break with these ideas:

1. Peanut Butter, Honey, and Banana Sandwich
It's really, really impossible to find these ingredients and not have them taste good- which makes it an excellent standby when you're really hungry.

2. Ants on a Log
In case you weren't aware, ants on a log is super yummy- and although it's another peanut butter based dish (I think that was my theme this week :P) it rocks pretty hard.
3. BLT
BLT's are classic, delicious, and super easy. You don't even have to cook the bacon here and the toasters are really, really hard to mess up.

4. Breakfast
Breakfast is actually a good chance to get normal food- bagels, waffles, and basic fruit is excellent in the morning, especially at Libby. The waffle makers even have the CU logo on them! I just noticed that the other day and made a waffle just to test it out. They ended up tasting really good besides looking very school spirit filled and cool looking. :)

5. Deli Bar
And, of course, make your own sandwich. Can't skip that one! You can also have them toasted/grilled at chef's stations if you bring your food over and ask them to pop it on a hot surface for a few minutes which is also tasty.

Hope everyone manages to stay well-fed and that next week will be the fastest of the semester- Get excited for break! :)

Career Connections- Matchmakers of the Job World

Career connections' presentation this evening was long and somewhat tedious- and luckily, also extremely useful! :) Basically, career connections is a one stop shop for getting the most out of your degree- from finding jobs, internships and other real-world business opportunities to editing resumes and deciding on an area of emphasis, Career connections is the real deal- one upperclassman who came to talk to us got to go to a networking fair in NYC with over 150 CU alumni to get advice from.
CC also can give your application a boost with employers who are generally looking for Ivy League graduates- which means you could get the same employment opportunities as the kid sitting next to you from Harvard. Getting competitive internships allows you to experience a job and make the mistakes you're bound to make- without risking your career on learning how to do what you're supposed to.
Other advice offered by the older people who had used career connections extensively:
1. Go to your advisor every semester and make sure you're on track- do not be the guy who doesn't graduate because you don't have 3 core credits.
2.Get involved. This has probably been pounded into our brains more times than you can even count, but it's true- high school activities can't go on your college resume for more than a year. :( So much for DECA and FBLA...
3. Get to know your professors so you can beg them for letters of recommendation later... and do better in their classes. :)
4. Find what you love and go for it- pursue what interests you because in the end, that's where you will be the most successful.
I realize this all sounds like stuff that you'll be worrying about junior/senior year, but you have the chance to find internships even as a freshman.
Signing up on the Career Services website (Career Services is the overarching career service for the whole school, whereas Career Connections is Leeds-specific) allows you to scan through available positions and apply to any that sound intriguing, and if you're feeling lazy it can even provide you with a list of jobs that want you.
TO SIGN UP FOR THIS COOL STUFF: Click on the sign in link in the upper right hand corner, and when given the option to sign in click on register.

Me vs. BCOR 1010

So here I am, a survivor of both BCOR 1010 midterms! Horray! After such a grueling time on the frst midterm of the class (the average was 60-70%), I think most of us went in with a hope that this test would be a little easier on the grade. No such luck however as we recieved our 8 page monster in the Coors Events Center last night. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I was totally hit hard when we were asked to prepare a balance sheet and income statement from scratch. Needless to say, it was not an easy first question to open up the book to. Or really an easy question at all.
Just out of curiosity, did anyone actually run out of time on the test? I know I was cutting it close and I take tests quite fast usually.
Despite some serious studying beforehand, I still felt like I didn't know as much for this test as I did for the first one, which is definitely stressful since this one is 25% of our grade instead of the megar 15% of the first one! It seems like the recitation leaders are looking for more examples in our writing than I'm used to, so hopefully I improved in that respect. At least the week was a little less busy without class on Wednesday or recitation tomorrow! :)
I guess the next thing to turn to is our company project due at the end of the semester. I'm giving up some of my lovely free time from canceled recitation to work on it in one of the group rooms that you can reserve in the Koebel building. It's so awesome and way easier than I expected- just check out the library's website HERE and then you select your time slots and click enter! The rooms open during your time slot with your buff card and give you a really good place to do group work. Hope everyone did well on the midterm and enjoy a free hour tomorrow! :)

Technology, Media, and the Arts Certificate Program- Horray!

(Pictured Above: The ATLAS building this evening)

Hey again everyone! Today I decided to check out a presentation on the Technology, Media and Arts certificate (TMAC) that CU has- and it is super awesome! When I walked in I was expecting the program to be more computer and communications oriented, but that's definitely not the case! Within the program you get to take all kinds of sweet classes in digital art and media, so you get to learn how to make flash animations/games with Java, create websites, and take other art classes.
Into the technology section of the certificate, many of the classes overlap with the requirements for the Information Systems area of emphasis.
Benefits of the certificate include access to a private study lounge in the ATLAS building (basically brand new and so pretty!) and tons of media equipment like video cameras that you can check out to work on projects. They literally have to code your buffcard to open this lounge and some other study rooms because they are reserved only for Communications and TMAC students. Oftentimes for a senior thesis people create a website or project based around their major, because the certificate is available for anyone who attends CU-Boulder.
People in the business school can achieve this certificate without taking any extra classes if you plan it right as well- the classes you take for the certificate can apply to your core requirements and electives so there's no extra classes involved!
With 21 credits and classes ranging from "Music Video Projects for Social Change" to "Digital Poetry", the TMAC sounds like a really interesting way to gain a more media oriented education within technology fields.
If you're interested in the program, check out their website HERE! Their offices are also availiable in the ATLAS building, room 225. The program is growing really fast and has almost doubled in size in the last two years, so get in there quickly if you think it's something you're interested in! :)
The guy giving the presentation was actually the co-ordinator for the certificate, Dave Kalahar, who can meet with anyone interested and let them know how the program works. His email is david.kalahar@colorado.edu.
Hope this was helpful, good luck to everybody on the BCOR 1010 midterm tomorrow! Woo! :)

The Hill and Boba Tea!

Hello again! Yesterday I decided I should figure out some of the cool stuff available to do on the Hill- we all know it's THE place to hit up for good food, shows, and just walking around if you're ever bored and on campus, but what precisely to eat or drink? Heading out with two of my buddies, we were specifically searching for Boba tea- the coffee-esque drink with "pearls" of tapioca at the bottom. Needless to say, Boulder is a great place for finding strange food and Boba tea definitely falls in that catagory!
According to my Boba experts, Jessica and Susanna, the best place in Boulder to get authentic Boba tea is Tra-ling's Oriental Cafe, directly on the intersection of Pleasant Street and Broadway. For $3 bucks you can get a large Boba tea sealed in a cool cup, like so:
Not to mention the straws that come with the tea are huge so that the tapioca can zoom up and totally shock you the first time you try it! Here is me enjoying my first ever Boulder Boba tea:

Boba tea searching tends to bring out quite the hunger in people, so it was brought to my attention that salad would be an awesome addition to our Boba. My friend Bree is vegetarian, and being a leaf eater she suggested that we go to Boulder Greens, a sick create your own salad restaurant with just about everything you could possibly think of to put on a salad. Tasty and filling (the salads are really big), it's a nice alternative to usually fried/over-cooked dining hall food.

Generally speaking, most of the food on the Hill is pretty excellent- my personal favorites are Cheba Hut and Jimmy John's. I'd love comments on other places I should hit up- let me know what's better! :) That's all for today, have an awesome week everyone!

Getting up to Speed

Since I'm starting the blog a little later in the year, I just wanted to do a (hopefully) speedy post as to what's been going on so far for me at CU.

The year started off really well during my first few days- instead of moving in on the really big, major move in day of the year, I signed up to do Stampede- a freshman leadership camp in which you got to meet other cool people, hang out in Boulder, and most importantly... move in early! None the less, getting all my stuff into my room in Baker took forever, even without a bunch of other kids, upset parents, and random relatives blocking hallways. Stampede turned out to be a really good way to get a jump start on making some new friends- that's where I met my current roommate Susanna, who I shall probably be mentioning quite a bit throughout the year since we usually go Boulder-exploring together. It was kind of like a second orientation, which was really sweet because my orientation experience wasn't so great.

After a few days of blissful silence in my dorm came the entire rest of the freshman class and things got really busy for the few days before classes started! Basically we got a bunch of free food, stickers, shirts, fliers, concerts, and anything else that you can slap a logo on to get all of us informed about happenings around CU.

Leeds also hosted its own freshman welcome event, appropriately titled "Leedsapalooza". Not only did we get awesome shirts (free!) and ice cream (free!), we also got to go on tours of the Koebel building and talk to upperclassmen about the business classes and what other clubs and student organizations CU has that are specifically business related. Here's a list of undergraduate business clubs, most of which allow anyone to pop in and check out a meeting or several to see if they're interested at any time during the year.

Classes started off great and finding rooms was easy- buildings on campus are unlocked almost all the time, so taking an hour so in the few days before classes start to find rooms is easy and helpful once you have your schedule. Big classes at CU- which you usually get a few of as a freshman, for the most part really basic courses like Introduction to Business, Intro to Microeconomics, and Finite Math- haven't really been too much of a problem. Depending on your ability to pay attention and how much sleep you got the night before and are planning to make up for in class, you can sit accordingly. A good rule of thumb is that your class is only as big as however many people are sitting in front of you, because the first few rows don't feel like you're in a room with massive amounts of people. In my Intro to Business class, I sit near the front and it feels like a smaller class because my professor recognizes me and looks directly at people in the front rows while she speaks.

So that's what's been going on on campus and in class so far. Next blog I'm probably going to put up a bunch of different cool things to do around Boulder and off campus, so stay tuned! Have a good one! :)

And so it begins...

Hey there! My name is Heidi and I'm a Colorado kiddo from Fort Collins. This year I'm living in Williams Village, the tallest and most fortress-like buildings in Boulder. I've been recruited for this awesome job by the business school- not only do I get to write about doing cool things all over campus and Boulder, but you get to sit and read about it! I do the work, you reap the benefits of knowing all kinds of insider info about Leeds, CU, Boulder, and any other really awesome stuff I find to do around here!

What else to say about me? I'm a freshman majoring in Business Administration, but I haven't decided on an emphasis yet... tough decision! I'm a serious internet addict so I'm online constantly- checking email, checking facebook, checking WSJ.com, checking facebook, updating facebook, etc... and then maybe a few sentences of homework, and then facebook. : ) I'm a bit of an art nerd so I'm really into photography, painting, drawing, and even writing when I get inspired.

Traveling is my passion and I want to go everywhere. Literally. So far so good! : )

I'm a serious music junkie, but I have problems breaking out of my current collection. Some favorites would include Billy Talent, Bayside, Cartel, Paramore, Saosin, Tegan & Sarah, and various swing of the 1920's.

A few things I like best in the world: polaroids, The Office, movies, getting real mail in envelopes, snow, skeleton keys, the purple christmas lights in my room, bright colors, springtime, and Europe.

A few things I like least in the world: people who don't vote, black jellybeans, tapioca pudding, broken fortune cookies, bad shampoo, and running out of something you love or need. Such as right now, I have run out of thumbtacks with which I could be covering my bulletin board with personal momentos and reminders of fun previous happenings.

Anyways, now that you know masses of random things about me, I hope you'll be intrigued enough to come back and read more of what is to come from my wanderings of CU- I'll be posting pictures of life in Boulder so far shortly! Peace!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Leeds First Year Student Blog! Follow Heidi as she navigates the highs and lows of college life- exams, friends, activities, laughs and reflections. It's the real deal. Join in the conversation!