life at eiu

Hello again all!
The past few weeks have pretty much been a blur in my life. I went on an Alternative Spring Break (ASB) this year to Maryville, TN. ASB is a program offered through our student volunteer center that gives students the opportunity to forgo their visits to Florida, Mexico, or just home in order to spend their week off in the service of others. I was a site leader for my trip this year, so I spent the few weeks before spring break preparing, making purchases and organizing my trip.
Then there was the trip itself. Don’t get me wrong. It was fantastic! Our site was in partnership with the local Blount County Habitat for Humanity group, and we were primarily working on a single house for the week. The house was for a handicapped individual and was actually the first handicapped designed house the group had ever worked on. Their blueprints might be used to build similar accessible homes in the future. The group was comprised of me and six girls. Needless to say, they certainly made it an interesting experience for me. With all the preparations, work, post project cleanup and reotganization after the trip, the week was gone before I knew it. It was back to school on Monday.
Unfortunately, There was no rest after the break. I was catching up on assignments I procrastinated on during break. Besides having two upcoming tests, the first weekend back marked the beginning of Greek Week on EIU’s campus. This is a weeklong series of performances and events that the fraternities and sororities participate in every year in order to celebrate the positive aspect of being involved in the Greek community. My fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, has teams for pretty much everything, so that week back was filled with final practices and rehearsals for events like airband, Greek sing, and tugs. Now after airband on Saturday and Greek sing just yesterday, it seems like the end is at least in sight and I can begin to remember what sleep feels like! Aside from the stress, Greek week events always end up being a lot of fun, and I am proud to say that this year is the last year that my fraternity, SAE, will be competing as a colony. We are currently set to obtain our charter from nationals and become a full fledged chapter of SAE on April 25th, 2009. The final application portion involved a comprehensive colony analysis presentation that we passed with flying colors. It is just a very exciting time for SAE, and we’ll soon be able to look back and see the significance of everything we have done.
In these last five weeks or so of school, I am beginning to look back and see how fast this year, and in fact all three of my years here at EIU, has flown by. I am looking forward to the summer when I will be participating in an undergraduate research internship at the University of Maryland, College Park in Physics. I am extremely excited to work at a different institution and see how their faculty compare with EIU’s faculty and really explore my field of study in a little more depth. I am also starting to look towards two years from now at my plans after graduating from EIU. Once again, I reiterate that I am starting to look at post-graduation plans. I guess I feel that I should enjoy the here and now and not get totally caught up in planning for the future, as I have a tendency to do. After all, what is it worth if I can’t look back and at least say that I enjoyed my college experience?
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I will probably be doing one last blog before the summer hits, so I won’t say goodbye to everyone just yet. Hopefully everyone reading this is having a little less excitement in their life, but if you are as busy as I have been, just remember to look back at why you started and why you do it all, and you will be sure to get the strength to continue on and get through the busy times. Have a good spring, and God bless!