The End is Near!

Hello, hello, hello! 

As I sit here and write this, I am barely able to believe that my first semester at university is almost over! Today is my last day of classes and my exams start next Monday! My friend Gaby pointed out today that we only have 7 semesters left, which seems like both a lot and not enough! It honestly feels like just yesterday I was applying to schools and now here I am, about to take my first set of finals!

As always, I had another great week here at BU! Admittedly, things are starting to get a bit hectic with the term coming to a close but I haven't had to seek out complete isolation in the library just yet! Last week was pretty stressful for Jocelyn though, as she had to finish and hand in about 8 different papers. She came close to pulling a few all nighters, and so being the great bogmate that I am, I would leave her little study snacks to help her get through all of her assignments. 

My inspirational messages to Jocelyn on our bathroom door!

So while Jocelyn was swamped with her papers, I myself was out and about doing all sorts of different things. Last week, the Residence Events Committee had a Holiday Mystery Raffle so I helped sell tickets for that a few times. Also, on Wednesday, my friends and I went to see the new James Bond movie, Skyfall. It was the first James Bond movie that I had ever seen and surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. Also, fun fact - movie tickets here are only $7! How crazy is that? At home, I believe I pay $12. So needless to say, I will be seeing all new movies in Quebec from now on. 

On Thursday, Jocelyn and I went to the Free Yoga in the art gallery again. Then, her, Hannah and Elizabeth went to the Gait for Christmas-themed Happy Hour. I, unfortunately, am still not old enough to go, but that is about to change in less than a week! 

On Friday, I was up bright and early to do my online course selection. Registration started at 9am and I logged on about 5 minutes in advance to ensure that I got all the courses that I wanted. Next semester, I will be taking Biology, French, History, Children's Literature and Teaching Ethics and Religious Culture, an Education course.  Later that day, Jocelyn, Hannah, Elizabeth and I went to the mall to do some Christmas shopping for our Residence Secret Santa. Finally, Jocelyn and I ended the night by watching and singing along to the greatest movie of all time, Mamma Mia!

We were too cheap to pay for a real photo with Santa so we settled for having him in the background!

On Saturday, I volunteered with the school club Big Buddies, which is a program that pairs university students with a Little Buddy from Lennoxville Elementary. I had originally signed up to help at one of the activity stations, but a little girl's buddy was unable to make it so I became her Big Buddy for the day. We had a lot of fun swimming, playing board games and doing arts and crafts and I hope that I will get a chance to be a Big Buddy again soon! Saturday was also closing night at the Gait and the theme was Movemberfest to celebrate the end of the moustache-month! There was a music group called "Ain't No Love" performing and there was also a contest for best moustache, grown or made!

Our frosh leader, Denise, sporting her beautiful purple moustache!

Jocelyn making her first appearance at the Gait since Halloween!

On Sunday, Elizabeth and I made our first attempt at dorm room baking. We made Rice Krispie squares for our Secret Santa presents! It was the first time that I had made RK squares in a microwave and they were surprisingly delicious! We had a holiday themed day in Abbott, with Christmas card making and a Secret Santa Party in the basement! There was a wide range of gifts, including everything from socks to chocolate to avocados! Despite what others may say, I personally feel as though I got the best gift - a Justin Bieber bookmark and a One Direction bracelet! After the party, we all headed over to Dewie's for the Grey Cup Party where we watched the game while enjoying chicken wings and waffle fries!

Dorm Room Baking with Erica and Elizabeth!

Thank you Secret Santa!!!

Speaking of Justin Bieber, today I made the executive decision to travel to Toronto to see him in concert on Saturday night! My sister and I bought tickets back in June and when I found out my exam schedule, I decided that it might be in my best interest to stay here and study. However, after hearing my friend talk about how amazing his Ottawa concert was and seeing him perform at the Grey Cup, I have been inspired to study hard this week and go to the concert!!! I am super excited and cannot wait for Saturday! It will be a long day of traveling but it will certainly be worth it!

So that's all from me for now! I really need to go to bed and get some sleep because my life is about to get extremely busy and probably will be until next Wednesday! The next time you hear from me I will officially be an adult and will be preparing to head back to Ancaster for my Christmas break! 

All my love! Erica xoxoxoxo

PS Being the devoted synchro fan that I am, I spent a good portion of Sunday watching videos and looking at pictures from the Nexxice Gala that took place on Saturday! I shed a few tears as this was the first time in seven years that I haven't been a part of the gala but the teams are looking great! I can't wait to see their programs live in the near future!

PPS I got my Math Midterm back on Monday and was the only one in my class to earn 100%! I was so happy that all of my studying paid off and this gives me a lot of confidence going into my exam next week!

Essays, Term Papers, and More Essays

Hey Everyone! 

As you can tell from the title of this post, we are getting down to the crunch time here at BU! With only 2 weeks left of first semester, finishing term essays and studying for finals are at the top of everyone's to-do list! I am currently in the middle of two essays and one major assignment but I am well on my way to finishing them. It's hard to believe that my first semester of university is almost over. Time has flown by!!

So last week, approximately one hour after my last blog post, I received a message from a third year student who works for Recruitment here on campus. She is the head of the school blog project and she asked me if I wanted to be a part of this project. The Blog Project is a select group of current students, recent graduates, and faculty who regularly blog about their lives, their Bishop's experiences, what they are doing now, etc. My name had been forward as the first year blogger by Stephanie Higgins, a recruitment employee who gave me a tour back in March and by my Frosh Leader, Denise! I am super excited that I get to be a part of this and I sent my first post in last night! It hasn't been posted yet but it should be up soon! The link to get there is on the side bar of this blog under "Check it Out" and here it is as well: http://blog.ubishops.ca/blog/

Myself and Stephanie on my tour back in March!

Alrighty, so last Wednesday I had my second math midterm. I think it went fairly well but I will find out my mark this Wednesday, so keep your fingers crossed for me! Also, last Wednesday night, we had our first Donald Lecture Series speaker, Susan Cain. Susan is the author of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. She was here promoting her book and discussing the value of introverts that is quite commonly overlooked in today's society. From a future teacher's perspective, I found this talk really informative, because everything she said was very true - we often mistake the people that are quiet and reserved as unengaged, unmotivated or unintelligent, when in reality, they could be having the same, if not more complex and insightful thoughts and ideas as us but are containing them inside their head. I think that everyone benefited from hearing her message and we can all take something away from what she had to say. On a side note, Santa, please bring me Susan Cain's book for Christmas. I promise I tried my best to be on the nice list this year!

Susan Cain during her lecture last Wednesday!

On Thursday, Champlain College, the CEGEP school that we share a campus with, had a screening of The Bully Project, which is a documentary movie about bullying in America. I had been dying to see this movie since my work on anti-bullying and Pink Shirt Day last year in high school and I jumped at the chance to see the film. The movie had about 7 different stories of bullying cases, including two stories of kids who took their lives because of bullying, one girl who was put in a juvenile detention centre for standing up to her bullies and one girl who had dropped out of her school for coming out as a lesbian. The stories were heartbreaking but the messages within the movie were very powerful and I strongly encourage everyone to watch this movie and to take the pledge to end bullying today. 

Also on Thursday, Jocelyn and I went to a yoga session in the Foreman Art Gallery. You would never think to have yoga in an art gallery but surprisingly, I found it a great place for it! It was so nice to look at the paintings and pictures on the wall while doing the poses instead of looking in a mirror or at brown gym walls. Yoga is being offered there every Thursday from now until exams so Jocelyn and I will definitely be making more appearances there in the near future!

On Friday, my Education class had our final visit to LES. From my final observation, I was in the English kindergarten classroom. The kids were super cute and super fun to be around but I definitely do not see myself teaching kindergarten. Later that day, I volunteered with the BUMT's Reading Circle. For this, we took a group of kids from LES after school to the community centre where we played games, read stories and did crafts with them for an hour and a half. I brought Jocelyn along and while we both had a lot of fun helping out, we both noticed that kids have way too much energy on a Friday afternoon to want to sit still and read books!

On Saturday morning, I helped with the BUMT's Pancake Breakfast at the local church. The food was delicious and a lot of the kids from LES and from the Reading Circle came by with their families to support the club. A lot of BU students made an appearance too and the fundraiser was a huge success! Thank you to everyone who came out to support BUMT!

Later that day, Elizabeth and I met our two friends, Vicki and Kasey at the mall in Sherbrooke. It was a busy day at the mall because Santa Claus was there for his first day of photos and visits! We did not want to wait in the line but we are highly considering going back there and having a photo with Santa in our Christmas sweaters. Later that night, Elizabeth and I had a girls' night in - she painted my nails and we watched the Bachelor Canada and Glee! Now I am all caught up and ready for the Bachelor finale on Wednesday! 

Sunday was a library day because we all had some serious essay writing to do. I also wrote my first blog post for the BU Blog Project and had a nice Skype chat with one of my best friends from high school. Jocelyn came back from her weekend excursion to Montreal to see the Santa Claus Parade and guess what? She ran into another one of my best friends from high school, Natasha by complete chance! They even took a picture as photographic evidence of their encounter to send to me!

Finally, today was exciting because I got a nice package from my Grandma (who is currently in Disney World!). A few weeks ago, I asked for a purple knit headband and to my surprise and complete joy, she knit me two! I have been modelling them around campus all day and everyone is super jealous! Myself and my ears are super thankful for these nice additions to my winter outerwear collection!

My headbands and some candy from my lovely Grandma!

So that's all from me for now, folks! To keep the countdown going, I have 11 classes, 1 interview and 3 exams left of my semester and 18 days until I return home for the holidays! I wish you all a wonderful week!

All my love, Erica xoxo

PS As a part of my blog post for the school, I made a collage of some of my favourite memories here so far! Take a look!

PPS I'd love to know who has been taking the time to read my posts because I am super thankful to you for reading! Feel free to leave a comment below! I'd love to hear from you!
 

Discover the Leader Within

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had as good a weekend as I did! Wondering why mine was so great? Read on to find out!

A few weeks ago, I got a letter in the mail informing me that I had been nominated by my RA Maria to attend the annual Leadership Retreat. I immediately accepted and filled out my attached Myers Brigg Type Indicator Test that would later become a key component of the weekend. I then began the wait for the arrival of the retreat!

And finally the day came! On Friday, the retreat began at the Lennoxville Golf Club. We began with some simple ice breakers to start to get to know the other students on the retreat. Then we were given our MBTI Results from the survey we had filled out when we registered. My result was ESTJ, or Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking and Judging. The picture below describes what this means for me and for other people who fit this code.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the MBTI, essentially there are 4 different dichotomies and the test determines your preference for one of two options in each dichotomy. It then puts these 4 preferences together in a 4 letter code and assigns it to you based on your preferences. There are 16 different letter codes and each code describes how a person with that particular code behaves, thinks, processes information, deals with stress, interacts with others, etc. It was really interesting to read through my results, mainly because I found that my code described me perfectly.  After reading through our results, we started an MBTI activity, breaking into groups of extroverts vs introverts, sensing vs intuition, thinking vs feeling and judging vs perceiving to start to become more familiar with the meaning behind each preference. 

Later that night, we had our opening dinner with many special guests. These guests included past participants in the retreat, student leaders at BU, alumni and community members. I was seated at a table with Ms. Deb Langford, the director or Residence and Conference Services, Laura Harrison, a student leader at BU and a lady who was the former director of the Foreman Art Gallery on campus. 

After we ate, we had two guest speakers. The first was a student from BU discussing his dream to work for Cirque du Soleil. The second was a lady named TA Loeffler, a professor from Memorial University and a mountain climber. She is currently working on climbing the highest mountains on each continent and has only Everest left to conquer. She has climbed the mountain twice already but has yet to make it to the summit. Her talk was extremely inspirational - she challenged us to find out what our own personal Everest is and to start taking the necessary steps to conquer it. 

On Saturday morning, we boarded a bus that took us to the Orford Centre for the Arts. The centre was beautiful - it was situated right in the middle of some mountains, including Mt. Orford, the mountain I climbed last week. We kicked off the day with some more ice breakers and then did some team building activities outside. Then we did some more work the MBTI results; specifically, we engaged in group discussions about how we use our different strengths and preferences in everyday life. I found this really useful as I often struggle with understanding why different people don't act the same way as me so this really opened my eyes to the way different people think and behave. 

Orford Centre for the Arts!

Challenge: Get every team member through a different hole in the web!

Challenge: I had to relay info about a lego tower from the Looker to the Builder!

After dinner, we made vision collages. The theme of the collage was how you see yourself as a leader now and in the future. We were given magazines and had to look through them for pictures and words that fit this theme and then glue them to our collage. After completing them, we all hung them up around the room and were able to see everyone's work. Mine is now hanging in my room so I that I am reminded of my vision every single day!

Matt and I with our vision collages!

My personal vision collage!

A wall of vision!

We closed the evening by watching the movie ALIVE! This is a movie based on the real story of the members of a Uruguayan rugby team from 1972 who were involved in a plane crash in the Andes mountains. The survivors of the crash were stranded in the middle of the mountains and began a fight for survival that would last for 72 days. Of the 35 people who were on the plane, 16 of them survived. The story was incredibly moving but I cannot even begin to imagine being in a similar situation. We were all given a copy of the book of this story and I can't wait to read it!

On Sunday, we started the day with a discussion of the movie and it was neat to hear everyone's opinions on different aspects of the film. We then had a workshop of the Stages of Group Development which I found interesting because I had never heard of this model before. The event concluded with presentations from two BU students talking about ways to get involved in campus and the ways in which they have personally gotten involved. This really inspired me to get more involved so I am keeping my eyes open to more opportunities on campus! 

To conclude, I want to extend a huge thank you to Diane, Sue, Charlene, Scott, Jeff and Lara for coordinating such an amazing weekend! Also thank you to my fellow retreat participants for such an eye opening weekend and I hope that we will all remain friends for the duration of our time here at school! Finally, thank you to my RA Maria for nominating me and giving me this fantastic opportunity! 

So that's all from me for now! It's hard to believe that there are only 25 days left until I am back in Ancaster and time only seems to fly by faster and faster every day! Every day here is filled with amazing new experiences and I so thankful for everything that I am able to do here! See you all soon!

All my love, Erica

PS Today in Dewie's I sat down beside a boy and his dad who were here on a tour and it brought back memories of when I came here in March with my dad. This time, I was the experienced student getting to explain why BU is the best! I hope that I was able to give him a glimpse of how amazing BU is and I wish him luck in the application process!

The Start of Movember!

Good morning everyone and Happy November! I hope your November has gotten off to a fabulous start - mine certainly has! With that being said, it is hard to believe that I have only 16 days of actual class left and less than one month until I head home for Christmas!

With the start of November, there is one main thing on everyone's mind - TERM PAPERS! I myself have two to write as well as one major assignment. Luckily, I am currently pretty on top of my work but I have to really focus on making sure I work on each assignment a little bit everyday so that I don't fall behind. So this is my word of advice to future freshman: start your term papers well in advance to the end of term. You will need lots of time to do a good job.

So backing up to last Friday, my Education class went on our fourth trip to Lennoxville Elementary in the morning. This time, I was in a Grade 2 classroom. The class was very different from any class I had ever seen - there were no traditional desks; instead there was a variety of different tables, including a small kitchen table and a picnic table with an umbrella. The room also had a little upstairs loft for playtime. Where was this classroom when I was in elementary school? Anyway, the kids were super cute and the morning was a lot of fun.

That afternoon, Hannah, Elizabeth and I went on a trip to Mount Orford, the mountain that I climbed with the Leadership Community back in August. It was a lot colder this time and there was snow at the top of the mountain! As well, the people we were climbing with thought that it would be fun to take the difficult route up the mountain so I came pretty close to sliding down the mountain a few times! Luckily, being the experienced mountaineer that I am, I made it successfully to the top along with my fellow climbers!

Elizabeth, Ellen and me taking a break during our climb.

Me, Hannah and Elizabeth at the top of the Mountain!

Mike, Elizabeth, Kevin, Hannah and me under the chairlift!

Saturday was a homework day for me, while Hannah and Elizabeth went to Sherbrooke to take their laptops to the MAC store. Unfortunately, they are both still without computers, so here's another lesson for all of you: back up all of your files on an external hard drive! I know it can be a nuisance, but trust me on this one. Sunday was a relaxing day and I picked the courses that I am going to take next semester. Now I just have to make sure that I am ready for the online sign up on the 19th! 

On Monday, the Education school had their annual wine and cheese. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the other people from my faculty as well as some of my profs outside of the classroom. I'd like to extend a big thank you to Alana, our senator and her assistants for hosting such a great event!

Myself with Jason and Noemie at the Wine and Cheese!

On Tuesday night, the Presidential Election was screened in the Gait so we all went over to watch it. I didn't think that people here would get so into the election, but people were booing and cheering all night and some were even dressed to support their party. I left after Obama was announced as the projected winner but my friends stayed until 2 am to hear his speech! Congratulations President Obama!

Last night, it was two of our friends' birthdays so we went to the Lion for Wing night! Since most people had class the next day, we didn't stay out too late. Jocelyn had a surprise for me when I got back to our room - she had gotten the photos from our photo shoot a couple of weeks ago. Here are a few shots courtesy of Ryan Millar:

So now I am off to go work on the mound of homework sitting beside me and to pack for the Leadership Retreat I am going on this weekend! I am also taking a walk into Lennoxville to visit the Borough Office for one of my projects!

All my love, Erica xoxoxo