life at eiu

Well, this is my first time blogging for good ol' Eastern Illinois University, and I'm pretty excited excited about it.

To start out, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Jake Schlich and I am a freshman here at EIU. I am a music education major with an emphasis in percussion. I am from Belleville, Illinois, and for those of you that don't know where that is, it's about 15 minutes west of St. Louis, just across the river. I enjoy listening to pretty much any kind of music. I love playing all kinds of music, playing basketball, and soccer, and having a good time with old friends and making new ones.

Now, that you know who I am, I think it's time for you to know a bit more about my experiences here at EIU. My college experience started a little less than a week before everyone else's. Since I am in the marching band, I was able to move in early.

My first week here was just band camp, and no, there were none of the "this one time, at band camp" stories. This is college, and we are above that here. But I will say that I am enjoying college marching band far more than I enjoyed high school marching band. Everybody likes being here and it is a really good time because of that. The music is really fun to play and the crowd really gets into it.

So far, I love everything here at Eastern. The teachers are all really awesome, and everyone seems really friendly. I don't know why, but everyone seems a lot cooler than they were in high school, just something I picked up on here in Charleston. Also, the food is way better than in high school, well my high school at least. But I will have to say, my single favorite thing about coming to EIU, is the one and only, Doudna Fine Arts Center. Coming from a moderately well taken care of music program, to Eastern's was such an upgrade.

But back to the whole class thing... All of my classes are going well, the teachers are all really good at what they do. I was really nervous at first about my classes because I wasn't sure if I would be able to deal with the whole college thing. But thus far it has been fairly easy, due to my teachers' ability to engage the students.

That's all for now.

-Jake