Albertus Blog

Albertus Blog

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Need Creative Ideas?

So I started using the website Pinterest last year out of mere curiosity.  Everyone had kept talking about Pinterest and how amazing it was so I wanted to see what the hype was about and decided to join.  However, because so many people want to have a Pinterest account, you sign up with your email and they get back to you at a later date to "give" you your account- it could take a day or months.  Mine took about a month and a half until I could actually have an account and start pinning.  When I first started, I had no idea what I was doing but after a while, I got the hang of it and I'm obsessed!  It's basically like a Tumblr (from what I hear from people that use both Tumblr and Pinterest) where you re-post pictures that you like.  On Pinterest, you can have different boards for each group of pictures- like I have a board for arts and crafts,  fashion, tattoos, food and drinks and even a resident assistant board.  I've gotten so many fun ideas to try, recipes to attempt and just cool pictures to look at through this website.  It's amazing what people can come up with.  Being an RA, we have to do one social program and one educational program a month.  After a while, coming up with ideas can get hard; you want to do something that's fun, entertaining and that the residents will want to come to.  By "pinning" photos to my resident assistant board, I can keep track of things that I want to do for my social program.  Coming up on February 27th, I'm having my social program which was supposed to be D.I.Y. Sharpie Mugs.  However, when I went to the dollar store to purchase the mugs (hey I'm only working with a maximum of $40 here!), they didn't have any plain white mugs! I was really upset but knew I needed to improvise instead.  I saw small white plates that I figured I could get instead and I also bought some glasses if students want to decorate that instead of the plate.  I also bought various colored Sharpies that will not come off of acrylic of glass once written on so they can decorate it! I hope some residents come down to enjoy themselves and take home a craft as well :)  

DIY sharpie plates





If you're interested in signing up for a Pinterest account, you can follow the link Here

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Blizzard Nemo 2013



Nemo, the blizzard that brought us nearly 37" of snow has gone but it's effects are still taking its tolls on New Haven.  The storm began Friday morning and didn't stop until Saturday morning but it hit us hard.  I think we all thought that we would get a decent amount of snow but none of us would have thought that it was as much as we really did get!  Waking up Saturday morning, I was amazed because I just never saw that much snow in my life before.  We were lucky that the Chartwells workers at our school were able to provide us with brunch and dinner every day.  They actually slept here for four nights before they were even able to get home!  That is dedication and they kept a smile on their face the whole time.  I think everyone here truly appreciates their efforts considering they didn't have a bed to sleep in.  Walking down to brunch and dinner the first few days were horrible!  Nothing was plowed yet so we had to walk through all of the snow.  At one point, the snow was up to my waist!  The next day, my co-RA and I decided that we should go and attempt to shovel our cars out- bad idea.  We got about half way down to where our cars were parked and couldn't do it anymore.  The snow at that point was up to our waist and was in our boots so we "ran" back to our building to thaw out.  When we finally did reach our cars the next day, we shoveled a bit around it but we weren't able to get out because the parking lot wasn't plowed yet.  We were finally able to get out Monday but some roads are still bad.  Dixwell Avenue, which is a main street in Hamden, is only one lane, causing excessive traffic.  It always seems like people forget how to drive or abide by traffic laws when things like this occur so I'm trying to stay off the road for as long as I have too!  We didn't have it as bad as other people did because we still had food, heat, power, and water.  The wind was very strong as well.  The wind made the snow drifts even harder to deal with and would push the snow into huge piles!  I felt like you could never accurately tell how high the snow really was because the wind kept blowing it around.  It's like the world stopped for a little while and we didn't know how to deal with it:  schools got closed, work places closed.  After a few days I got restless and my residents did as well.  I'm just glad it's over and life can get back to normal!
Here are some pictures of what Nemo caused:




















This one made me laugh :)

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Valentine's Day Spectacular


 






On February 2nd, we had our first annual Valentine's Day Spectacular event in the campus Pub.  This event was set up and run by Residential Life.  At the end of last semester, the RA's were assigned different dates on the weekend where they would have to think of any type of event and go forward with it.  Myself, Shaun, and Alex who are all RA's were chosen for this date and because February is known for Valentine's Day, we decided to do a Valentine's Day event.  We bought various crafts from a website called Oriental Trading.  This website is great for novelties, crafts, party favors, & decorations!  If you need to buy anything of this sort I would recommend buying them from there because they have anything and everything you can think of for holidays and everything in between.  Also, they send you various coupons to use towards your purchases.  We bought heart magnets, love bug pins, and mini candy foam pieces for the valentines.  We also played the move Valentine's Day and the students were able to make Valentines for their friends or loved ones.  I also found an organization Give 2 The Troops which accepts letters.  I thought it would be nice and something different to have the students make valentines for the troops.  A lot more people did valentines than I expected them to and we plan on sending them to this organization so they can send them over to the troops overseas. 
Heart Magnets

Difficulty with courses

 



This semester, I started taking an online course called Money and Banking.  I thought that the class would be a breeze because:
A. It's online
B.  I've had the professor before
C.  I'm a business major so I've learned about banking systems from Micro/Macroeconomics.

However I was wrong!  The class is pretty difficult and it's taught through an outside sector called Aplia.  I didn't really need the course to fulfill a business requirement; I simply just took it because I felt like it would be good to know and it wouldn't be too difficult.  In the mean time, I found out that my friend Olivia who is also a student blogger is in the class.  We have decided to try and meet up at least once a week to study and attempt to do the assignments together.  Each of the questions on the Aplia website are different from another persons, so Olivia and I never get the same exact question even though we will be working on the same chapter.  I feel that having a study buddy though has helped me in the class.  If I don't understand something, Olivia is right there to explain it to me and vice versa.  So one tip if you are having trouble with a course:  Get a study buddy! It really helps when someone explains how to do something instead of reading it out of the book sometimes.

When Olivia and I couldn't meet up one day but I wanted to get the assignment done, I decided to meet with my professor.  She has designated office hours, where if you don't understand what's going on in the course, she'll help you (just one of the small perks of attending Albertus- small school equals professors knowing you and being able to help face to face!)  My professor helped me with some of the questions on the quiz and also on one of the assignments.  It's crazy because even some of the questions she was stumped on!  Even though the work was difficult, she was still able to help me and I got the assignment done.  So tip Number 2:  If you need help, ASK for it!! There is really no harm in asking or letting a professor know that you don't understand something.  They are here to help you learn so never be too scared to ask for help because it will do nothing but help you do better in the course!