It all makes sense now

I normally wear sports bras even when I am not running around. Today, I wore a pretty black underwire brassiere. Now I know why I normally wear sports bras. (SARAH - This post is for you. Next time it will be all about panties HE HE HE)

Stinky breath

I work with a person who nine times out of ten has the most rancid breath in the world. Of course, this person always wants to get right up in your face when you are having a conversation and every time I go to a meeting I swear this person always sits next to me and wants to whisper things to me.

Close call

Finally home from the last conference for awhile. I don't have anymore traveling to do until Christmas when I leave for Italy (future post with more information coming soon - I promise).

Student conferences are always fun and I did have that silly "what the hell are you thinking" moment when I thought about not leaving Evansville - don't worry, it was brief. It is hard though when you get a group of students at the conference who get all kinds of ideas and plan to change the world - you want to be a part of it - you want to help them - you want to support them and see their dreams become actions. So for a moment, I thought...what if I stayed and helped them...but the moment was brief. I am still excited for my students and I will help them lay the ground work but I really am of no use to anyone if I stay here another year.

If you thought the idea of staying here was scary, I can top it. As I was driving to the conference banquet, I passed a car that was making a left hand turn. It was a two lane county road that opened up with a passing lane when there was a left turn possibility. I passed the car on the right but county roads are quite dark. The car behind me didn't notice the car making the left hand turn and rammed into it full speed. Everyone was okay but the sound was horrendous and my nerves were shot for awhile.

Tornados, drunk and naked roommates, and web cams - Quick update

He he he - that title makes my life sound so scandalous!

Busy, busy, busy...that's what I have been. On top of all the rush before finals (3 more weeks), I got knocked out of commission this week with a nasty sore throat and an earache. Who likes to use their sick days for when they are really sick?!

Well, here is a quick update on all that has been happening:

Around midnight on Sunday (November 6th), I turned off the TV to finish packing for a conference in Indy. We were leaving at 7am. There was a thunder storm warning but this really was no big deal. This area has some magnificent storms - sheets of rain, ear shattering thunder, and lightening that lights up the entire sky.

Around 2am, I looked out the window of my apartment door and saw that the storm had arrived. The rain was flowing down and I decided to step away from my window because the lightening was so close and frequent. When I first moved here, one of the students told me in order to truly experience Indiana, I needed to watch a high school basketball game, hit a deer, and get struck by lightening. I haven't done any of these and with just nine months left, I wasn't about to start with getting struck by lightening!

At 7am when I picked my colleagues up in the university van so we could head out to Indy, Brian asked if we had been watching the news. A tornado hit this area and wrecked havoc. Twenty-two people lost their lives. The majority of the damage happened about 20 miles from the school.

For those of us from earthquake land, being 20 miles from the epicenter is a big deal and means that you have a lot of damage but it does not work that way with tornados. USI was damage free.

We watched the news in Indy and saw the destruction.

At GLACUHO (the conference I was at), my roommate got drunk on Monday night and came stumbling in at 4am. She proceeded to undress and passed out in the bed in her bra and panties. Okay, this would be acceptable if you were my friend but I don't hardly even know this girl! Can you imagine the site I had to wake up to!

On this Tuesday the 15th , despite being sick as can be (some fool at GLACUHO gave me a nasty germ), I came to work because we were expecting to have three tornado warnings. Now a tornado watch means that the weather patterns would support a tornado but the likelihood of it occurring are not very high. A tornado warning means a tornado is going to happen and your area is in the potential path of where it might touch down.

The first warning hit around 9am. The wind was blowing, the sky looked nasty, and nothing happened. That level of fright that comes from thinking something bad might happen cannot be healthy. People were taking cover - fretting about their stuff (I put my purse and my computer in the bathroom because it is supposed to be the safest place in your house after a basement). After the warning was over, I decided that earthquakes were much better. The anticipation is too much and I had a lot of students that didn't take it seriously because they are used to tornado warnings. It's like the boy who called wolf.

When the second warning came through about 3pm, I was outside with my digital camera looking for that money shot. I decided that I was going to accept what I was told when I first moved here - the location of Evansville to the Ohio river has prevented the west side from ever being hit by a tornado. The north and east side have a history of being hit but never on the west side. I found that comforting when I first moved here and decided to ignore the panicked people and enjoy my first tornado experience.

The final tornado warning came around 5pm and I stayed in my office and tried to catch up on some work. The tornados did touch down in a couple places in the tri-state and did cause some damage but all was safe with USI. I did get in trouble from my supervisor from not role modeling positive behavior and taking cover like I wanted the students to do but her reprimand was pointless since she said she would have wanted to be out there too but wasn't smart enough to take a camera.

My friend got me a webcam for my birthday in August. It just sat in the box till last night. I hooked it up and today I was able to see my niece in Korea. She looks just like her dad did when he was a baby - chubby cheeks and no hair :)

Other than sleeping and studying, you are all caught up on my life. I am heading to Lacrosse, Wisconsin for a student leadership conference this weekend. Hopefully I will get to see some snow. It is about 23 degrees here but no snow.

Take action against evil politicians

This is from an email I got from Rock the Vote:

Have you had to take out student loans to pay for college? How about working while you're going to school? Have you had to work one or more jobs to pay for textbooks and tuition?

If you're struggling to get through college or know someone else who is you should take a look at what Congress is doing to education funding. They want to take $14.3 billion from the student loan programs to help pay for tax cuts for some of the wealthiest Americans.

Take Action Now! Check out www.studentaidaction.com

These cuts will increase interest rates on student loans, making them more expensive and harder to repay. And while they're talking about cutting taxes for the rich, they want to put new taxes on students taking out loans.

The legislation that would make these changes is called "Budget Reconciliation." In addition to cutting aid for students it will cut other social programs like Medicaid and foodstamps.

Budget reconciliation will make student loans more expensive for more than 6.5 million students, including 240,000 students in Michigan, 124,000 students in New Jersey, and 313,000 students in Florida. Click here to see how many students will be affected in your state.

So, you ask, what will this mean for me? Well, the average student with loans leaves school with $17,500 in debt. With budget reconciliation that student could have to pay up to $5,800 in additional interest payments. That will make it harder to buy a car, a house, start a family or take the job you want.

Want to make yourself heard, or find out more information?
Check out www.studentaidaction.com

For these employees, work is home

Taken from University Notes, our campus staff newsletter:

USI has many employees who take their work home with them, but there are some for whom work is home. The University currently employs five area coordinators who live in student housing.

Area coordinators develop programming in student housing and administer and manage housing-wide disciplinary systems. As live-in staff members, they supervise resident assistants (RAs), advise student groups, and oversee apartment operations.

Area coordinator Ebony E. has been with the University since July. She was formerly a resident director with Student Life at Kentucky Wesleyan College. She oversees eight RAs in the O’Daniel North Apartments.

“Every day is different,” she said. “We have office hours, and we have meetings, judicial hearings, and programming within our office, and at night we have meetings with our RAs and other committees. We work with the Physical Plant if someone has a maintenance emergency, and with Security. We deal with drug and alcohol issues.”
Because they live and work with students, area coordinators have the opportunity to make a real impact on students’ lives.

“There is a freshman who is having difficulty adjusting,” Ebony said. “She is homesick, and I’ve been working with her RA to try and get her involved with activities on campus. We had a long talk about what she wants to do, and I think I was able to help. I encouraged her to hang in there and focus on who she is and what she is learning.”

Area coordinators take turns serving on emergency call 24 hours a day for a full week.

“If there is an emergency, we are on campus, so we can respond,” Ebony said. “It would be a lot harder for us to do our jobs living off-campus.”

Tracy has been with the University for over two years and oversees 14 RAs in Ruston and O’Bannon halls. She was similarly employed at California State University-Northridge.

One of her responsibilities as an area coordinator is to meet with students who violate University policies.

“Once I met with a student who violated the alcohol policy,” Tracy said, “and we talked about how his actions would affect him in the long term. He wanted to go into law. I asked if this might affect which law schools would accept him. It’s rewarding when you see a light bulb go on, and students start thinking on a bigger scale. They realize their actions have an impact.”

She said that area coordinators are always on call, whether or not it is their turn on the emergency shift.

“It is very difficult to say, I am not going to help a student now, even if that student is one of my staff members. You can’t say I’m at home now and I need time for myself.”

Tracy is pursuing a Master of Business Administration degree, and often sees students she works with on her way to class. “If my staff members or students see me, and ask me for help with something, I’m not going to refuse,” she said.

Brian H. is area coordinator for the O’Daniel South Apartments, where he supervises nine RAs. He has been with the University for two years. Previously, he was a graduate assistant in the Housing and Residence Life Department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan.

“I’m willing to help students out when I see them on campus,” Brian said. “I take the time because I feel it’s part of our responsibility as professionals. The students’ focus is to get their education, and when they’re having issues the best we can give them is to assist their needs when they arise.”

He struggled with getting away from the job. “If there was something going on, I wanted to be involved,” he said.

Brian has found an outlet in church and community activities. “I’m away from USI but still helping out the greater good, through parish events at the church I attend, or Tri-State Alliance, which I volunteer with,” he said. “We also know that we have a support system. There are other area coordinators who are here to assist us.”

Purple

Today I wore a purple sweater, black pants, and black heels to work . Everyone said to me, "Gee, you must really like purple". Color me confused.

Time for a little computer cleanup

Okay, yes I could be doing some homework, but it was very important that I clean up my hard drive and remove all the files that I don't need to save. They are taking up valuable space, don't you know. So here is one of my crazy attempts at writing - saved under "I went to a psychic once". Mom thinks it would be cool to have an author for a daughter. She was thinking Danielle Steel but from this, it looks like I may be a little more off the deep end.

I went to a psychic once. It costs $25 for a middle-aged brunette to flip over some cards and give me some vague clues about what the future had in store for me. I was 19 and at that time $25 was a lot of money. I was working for minimum wage at a local pizzeria. I didn’t like my job. Every night I went home with my clothes, skin and hair permeated with the smell of pizza. Yum, pizza, you might think there are worse things to smell like but next time you have a pizza delivered to your home take a big whiff of the delivery boy. It’s a stale greasy smell that stays with you forever after you have worked in a pizza joint no matter what kind of detergent you use or how many times you wash your clothes.

$25 was my month’s laundry bill or a week’s worth of food. I really couldn’t afford such a frivolous expenditure but I felt bad for the psychic. My friend Maria and I went to the psychic’s store. Was it really a store? What was she selling? Hope? Fear? I just went out of curiosity. Maria really wanted her future told. She was looking for love like the song says in all the wrong places and was interested in any guidance she could get on where to look. Maria wasn’t really interested in paying a lot for this information, which is kind of ironic since she felt that love was the most important thing in the world, the thing she was longing for most. It’s funny how when money enters the picture a person’s value system changes. I wonder if that held true when currency was salt and not pieces of paper? Were people willing to trade the salt for what they wanted most or did they hoard it like we do now?

Maria clearly wasn’t going to part with $25 for the psychic to do her thing. I felt bad. We listened to her spiel on the services she provided and then decided we didn’t want anything. Even when I worked at the pizza place, I got paid even if no one came to eat but this lady just spent fifteen minutes telling us about her powers and we weren’t going to pay her for her services. There wasn’t a line outside of people we prevented from seeing the psychic but still I felt we owed her something. I have a bleeding heart I am well aware of that. Did the psychic know I was coming? Was she able to figure out I was the gullible one? Was sucker tattooed on my forehead like the angelfish tattooed on my ankle? Okay, it’s a henna tattoo. It will wash off in three to five days. No major commitment on my part required. Bob, the henna artist, doesn’t quite understand. I visit him every week. He redraws the angelfish takes my money and sends me on my way. Last time I visited him just two days ago he started again on our timeless argument.

“You know it’d be cheaper if you’d go and get this tattooed for real”, he said
“It’s not about the money, Bob”. Which it isn’t and he knows that. Long gone are the days of the local pizzeria and stressing over an expenditure of $25.
“Well, if you insist on getting a henna every week, you should change it up a little. How about a pretty dolphin or a rose? You know I am quite an artist. I can pretty much draw anything you’d like”
I’d seen Bob’s artwork on many occasions. “I don’t doubt that you can draw. I am just partial to the fish”
“Tattoos don’t really hurt. After you get one it just feels like a sunburn for a bit”. And of all people he should know. Save for his face, I don’t think Bob has a piece of flesh that is untouched by tattoo ink.
“It’s not the pain that stops me from getting one”. I have a high tolerance for pain. Once when I was mountain biking I hit a rock and flipped the bike. I ended up landing and breaking my arm and leg. The paramedics schoked by how little refused to give me any painkillers on the scene because they were concerned that I may have had some kind of drug in my system already. I didn’t, at least not that time,

Don't ask me what that last sentence is supposed to mean.