Wow! Is semester already over? It’s ridiculous how fast time flies. I can’t believe I’m already 5/8 done with college!
This semester was interesting. I took on a lot this semester, thought about what I actually for real want to do with my life, and have definitely come out the other side with a different point of view on things.
Taking on the role of Colleges Against Cancer president has been way more work than I ever would have expected, but it’s also been amazingly rewarding! We have a ton of new members this year, and it’s great to see freshmen stepping up to the plate and helping us out on huge events right away. I could fill an entire photo blog just recapping CAC stuff, but I think I’ll just post a picture of our kickoff we had last week.
We lined a prominent park on campus with luminaria celebrating the lives of those who have been affected by cancer. It was pretty big and a TON of people came out and read our inspirational stories and added their own luminaria!
Academy coaching was also super legit this year. This was my second year doing it, and I loved it even more. I really felt a lot more confident in the role and I think I was able to help the freshmen a lot more. I can’t wait for next year when I can be a coach again!
Here's a peek at the awards ceremony from my academy. On our last day we did a competition where they had to build bungee jumping rubber bands for balloons (with painstakingly handdrawn faces!) and also build them boats to get across a fountain fastest! It was a really fun competition, and a great way to end the semester!
Being a VSA has also been an amazing new experience! I loved meeting a ton of prospective students and answering questions for them! If I haven’t met you yet, I hope you visit soon, haha. Mention this blog post to receive a FREE HIGH FIVE!
I may have used this picture when blogging about Discover USC and the Viterbi Expo last week... but it's a great picture so I'll do it again!
Just remembered I also have this picture from the CAC rally. Guess I pose with balloons a lot. It's a good life!
I can’t forget about ASBME! Being the chair of mentoring programs this year has been legit to the max! The mentees have been amazing at hanging out with their mentoring groups! In addition to all the awesome events I’ve planned, mentors have hosted potlucks, taken their students to Jacks N Joes, played ultimate frisbee, and way more! I’m super proud of the organization, since mentoring programs are hard to pull off and they all did a great job!
Here's a mentoring family getting breakfast together!
Other than all that, classes have been pretty neat too! My GE turned out to be SUPER interesting, one of my favorite classes by far! It was called “World of the New Testament” and it was a historical and philosophical look at the world of the earliest christian churches. The professor, Ronald Hock, was AMAZING and really made the class interesting and intensely educational. I also won an “Owl Award” for my first term paper in that class, so that was fun. He tried to make it like the academy awards. Coincidentally, Chandler, another VSA, was chosen to open the envelopes and announce the winners!
I also loved my Electrical Engineering class this semester. I just finished putting like 40 really enjoyable hours into an awesome recreation of pokemon using just hardware and verilog coding. I finally presented that today, and now I’m on to finals!
Everyone always freaks out about finals week, but honestly, because everyone freaks out, all the clubs cancel all their stuff, so finals week is pretty much the easiest week of my life because approximately 80% of what I spent my time on during the semester suddenly disappears.
After finals, I’m going on a SKI TRIP with people I met in Rome, so that should be amazing. Then it’s home for the holidays in Wisconsin. I’ll enjoy the snow for a little bit, cheer for the Badgers from home (if USC can’t play in a bowl, I’m glad Wisconsin can… but it would have been great to have a chance to cheer for the Trojans against the Badgers!). Ironically, all my friends from home will be in california for the rose bowl… so I won’t really get to see them much haha. But my family will be home, and my mom has all kinds of plans for tree shopping and decorating!
Pictured: a tree I'd like to decorate
