Christmas Break

Back at home.... ah how bittersweet it is. It's always nice to see the family again but back to the grind of working 40 hours a week isn't so great. I definitely miss all my friends back at school. Santa was great to me and now I'm ready to start ordering textbooks and prepping for my second to last semester of college! Eric Watt won the Gagliardi trophy, which is basically the Heisman of d3 football, and Coach Land is up for coach of the year again. Trine is blooming and what perfect timing it is! A huge plan was just approved by the Steuben County Commission that would bring us a new entrepreneurship center, technology commercialization lab, biomedical engineering center, and a biomechanics/movement sciences center. There will be something new for pretty much everyone. It's a great time to be part of the Thunder. Hope everyone has had a great Christmas. School will be here before you know it.

~til next time

Sarah

Thanksgiving Break/finals week

Well, here it is. Already the finals week! Thanksgiving break was fun, short but fun. It's always great to get back together with all your family over the holidays. This past week was the last week of regular classes, filled with lots of papers and final prep. It was also the last week of my internship at the Herald Republican newspaper in-town. It was a wonderful experience, but I can't wait to start my new internship as social media intern with Ashley Industrial Molding in Ashley, Ind., which is just a few minutes south of Angola. There are always great opportunities for internships in the area. This weekend will be chuck full of studying, which will overflow over into the week. I have a villa meeting tonight to go over what we have to do before leaving for Christmas break. Tomorrow Trine is hosting the midnight breakfast. Whitney Commons Cafe opens up at like 10 p.m. with a ton of breakfast food for students to eat a study break, which will be great fun. Everyone goes in their pjs and everything. There are also free 10 minute massages and other stress breaking study breaks hosted by the university. They do a great job of trying to ease all the insane stress of finals week. I'm off to get some last minute groceries before this snowstorm that's coming is gets crazy.
Until next time ~
Sarah

Shambaugh

The cool window/tower in Shambaugh

One of the many cool sayings on the benches scattered around campus

Fawick

The south end of Fawick

The north end of Fawick

A view of the west side of campus

A great example of the friendly Trine squirrels (no zoom required)

Me compared to the enormous Best Hall

in front of Best

all the little birds on campus

Ford Hall, home to the education and communication schools, and my home!

Forman Hall, the Welcome Center, home of the Registrar's office and financial aid

The end of Best Hall

The new Delti Chi fraternity house

A cute little squirrel (I did zoom in on this one, but not much!)

Taylor Hall of Humanities

Thanksgiving Break

Well, football playoffs started this week, and we won against DePauw yesterday. We're playing UW-Whitewater next week and I'm pretty sure they're ranked like... #1? So that should be an interesting game. This week we only have class up until Tuesday and then it's Thanksgiving Break. I've already started packing. Not going to lie, I am so excited to go home and have a nice home-cooked meal with my family. One of the downsides to living in the villas is that I have to cook my own meals... which doesn't happen very often.
I was just watching the VMAs working on an article for the newspaper and I saw that the Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block were doing this amazing mash-up of all their greatest hits... BSB NEVER GETS OLD! It's sad to see them on their as the best of our generation, and then see singers like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber winning VMAs... the poor younger generation can't know any better.
Anyway, my friend Ashley and I decided to give you a little tour of campus pre-snow. We were going to do it when the trees changed colors but that happened to coincide with the busiest time of the semester. Hope they give you a great look at campus!
Til next time~
Sarah

Gearing up for the week before Thanksgiving Break

Jeesh this semester has FLOWN by. Only one full week before Thanksgiving break, which starts Tuesday after classes are over. Then we only have two weeks left before finals. Unfortunately, this also means that it's the busiest time of the semester, and the time when everyone starts to get antsy. I don't remember Thanksgiving break ever being so close to finals, but that's probably just my imagination. Between my seven classes, I've got a concert (choir), paper, or project due in every single class within the next three weeks, not including finals, and on top of that, I had two due last week... everyone has big projects going on right now and it makes it hard to do quality work in every class. It seems dumb that every teacher does a big paper or project the last month of class. Don't they know that every other teacher is doing the same thing?!
Oh well, that is the bain of college... With finals in sight, it is hard to not get bitten by the procrastination bug, but keeping busy, and keeping a calendar with all my assignments due right next to my laptop, help me keep on top of my assignments.
The only problem with graduating early is that now I also have to do the normal assignments of a full class schedule on top of trying to finish both my senior capstone internship AND my honors senior project... life is hectic, but it will all be worth it in the end.
Til next time~
Sarah

Playoff Game #1- DePauw University

The brackets are in! Trine U. Thunder will play the DePauw U. Tigers, located in Greencastle, Ind. on Saturday, Nov. 20, at noon, at DePauw. The Tigers went 9-1 in regular season. This will be the second year for the Tigers to go to playoffs, after winning the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference. The Tigers lost their only playoff game last year. 

Trine is 1-2 in postseason. We beat Case Western last year in the first round.

While I will be unable to attend the game, I'm sure it will be a great one, and I plan to catch as much of it as I can on our radio broadcast, at http://88xradio.com/sports.php.

Til next time~

Sarah

MIAA CHAMPS AGAIN!

Yesterday was the last football game of the season... and we won again! It was the MIAA championship game vs. Albion, which we won 58-16, scoring the first touchdown just 73 seconds into the game. The Thunder never trailed. 
This has become our second undefeated regular season in three years (our record was 10-0, 6-0 MIAA), our third consecutive conference title, and our third NCAA playoff appearance in a row!
The game was also senior and veterans day. We honored our 26 seniors, and senior cheerleaders and band members. 
We'll learn in a few hours who we will play in the first round of playoffs, via ESPN news. Everyone will gather in Fabiani Theatre and watch highlights from the season and then gear up to see who we will play during the NCAA Division III playoffs. We will play, regardless of who and where, next Saturday at noon. 
Just another reason to be proud to be a Thunder!
Til next time (I'll post our opponent when we find out who it is)~
Sarah

Advising time!

Well, advising if finally over. It's a stressful but extremely exciting time on campus. Everyone huddles around the class schedule lists and tries to piece together next semesters schedule. For upperclassmen like myself, this is an EXTREMELY stressful time because we aren't only scheduling the coming semester, but also making sure that we can get all our classes done in the semesters we have left. I only have two semesters left after the current one, so I had to make sure that the classes I need to graduate that I'm not taking next semester are offered in the fall. I had one class that I wasn't going to be able to take before I graduate, but thanks to the great professors at Trine, we were able to come up with a logical class substitution so I can still graduate with my minor. That's the best thing about Trine by far. The professors know all their students by name and can tailor their classes to your specific needs. At a bigger university, my professors would have never taken the time to listen to my individual needs, and I would never have been able to graduate early at a larger university. Take it from me, I know. I transferred to Trine from a state school and I never even met my advisor, for my entire first semester. Moving to college is hard enough, it's nice to know that all the professors on campus have your back.
Til next time~
Sarah

Homecoming and Midterms

Hi guys!
This is my first post ever! So excited to get this blog started. Hopefully a lot of prospective students checked out campus last weekend during Homecoming. Campus always look beautiful and everyone shows off their school spirit. Plus, there are always lots of alumni on campus and this Homecoming debuted the new Fred Zollner Athletic Stadium. Boy is it beautiful! I got to do a tour for the newspaper and it is quite amazing how nice a really big locker room/weight room/offices can look. Everything still smells clean which is surprising with how big our football team is. Football team is still undefeated and hopes to stay that way after this weekends game against Alma. It's a great idea to come down for a football game sometime before deciding on what college you want to go to. I know I did and it was a blast, even before the new stadium was all nice and fancy looking. 
This week is the dreaded midterms week. While a lot of professors don't have official midterms (some try to put them the week before midterms to spread them out) I still ended up with four exams this week. Fortunately, I started studying for them last week so I'm at least mildly prepared, and a lot of my professors reviewed for them the class period before. 

Until my next post, keep on smiling!