Ruby Tuesday ... my college years at UD

Posted 1 week ago

Including today, there are 6 more days left of my second spring semester of college! I had three (non-cumulative, thankfully) exams this week, and now have a huge paper to crank out as well as a final exam on Monday. I am flying home on Tuesday and couldn’t be more excited! I haven’t been home since January, so I’m really looking forward to seeing my family and friends. Can’t believe half of college is almost over.

7 more days of classes…

Posted 2 weeks ago

And I’m not exaggerating when I say this semester - spring of sophomore year - has flown by so much quicker than all the rest (and I don’t know why that is).

UD for Me

Posted 3 weeks ago

In high school I kind of bought into the whole “where you go to college can decide your life” mantra. With the never-ending pressure to attend a prestigious school alongside pressure to find an affordable school that you know you will enjoy yourself at, deciding on a college can seem like a daunting task. However, while where do you attend matters, I now think your college experience definitely also depends on what you make of it. That being said, I’ve never regretted attending UD, whereas I know a few people from home who have either transferred / expressed “If I could do it all over again I wouldn’t have come to” the college they’re at. I can honestly say the overwhelming majority of people I’ve met here really enjoy being a UD student.

One of the things I like best about Delaware is that it’s balanced. By that I primarily mean, most of the students here strive for, and can usually find, a good balance between academics, extracurricular activities, and a social life. For example, I knew I wanted an academically challenging college experience, but I didn’t want to go a college where everyone was crazy competitive and spent a ridiculous amount of time studying. My experience in the Honors Program at UD has helped me mature in college, with a smaller-community feel and smaller, challenging classes.

While the balance of UD is probably the thing I like most about the school, here’s a few other things that are great: A beautiful campus. Close distance to Baltimore, D.C., Philly. Main Street, with its array of restaurants and shops. Talented professors who actually like teaching.

I’ve really enjoyed growing and learning here for almost 2 years (!), and I can’t wait to see what the next 2 years have in store for me.

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Spreading the Word

Posted 1 month ago

I enjoyed helping out at Decision Day with my fellow blogger Amaris at the “social media table” in Trabant! I was only there for about an hour and a half, but it was nice to see all the prospective students and their families, mostly directing them places and answering some of their questions. Also that day, I met up with a college friend of my mom’s and her daughter, who is a senior in high school and went to Decision Day. I gave her my insight on what she wanted to know about UD (as she was deciding between UD and a few other colleges around here) and later that day she emailed me telling me she was coming here next year! It really doesn’t seem like that long ago that I was in her position, choosing which college to attend, so I was glad I could help her out.

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Time to Decide 2012

Posted 1 month ago

The first Delaware Decision Day is this Saturday! I, along with a bunch of the other bloggers, will be volunteering at a table there. If you’re attending, feel free to ask any bloggers any questions you have, I know we all are eager to share our UD experiences. And I know I’ve said it before in some of my blogs, but the Decision Day I attended in the spring of my senior year definitely put me on the path to UD, as I really liked what I saw at the school. Keep an open mind and hopefully Decision Day will win you over, too.

Posted 1 month ago

Here’s three pictures from my spring break. The first is of Pittsburgh, and the other two are from the Flight 93 Memorial.

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Spring Breakin’

Posted 1 month ago

Spring break is over and it’s APRIL! It’s wild to think that half of my college career will be over in less than two months…

But off that somewhat depressing note, I’ll talk about my spring break. It wasn’t too extravagant, but really nice anyways. I drove with my boyfriend to Pittsburgh, PA. We wanted to take a little road trip, and we stayed there with some of his family. They were the sweetest people, and it was just nice to get away from school for a little bit and relax. While in Pittsburgh, we did a little bit of sightseeing, shopping…and a lot of eating!

We also went to two different national parks: the Flight 93 National Memorial, and the Gettysburg battlefield, which were both conveniently on our route back to Delaware. The Flight 93 Memorial, in a rural area near Shanksville, PA, marks the field where one of the 4 planes crashed on 9/11. You’ll remember it as the flight where the passengers got word from their family members that the other planes had been hijacked, and so as a group they fought back against the terrorists. Though everyone on board Flight 93 perished, their bravery saved countless lives, as intelligence suggests that the terrorists were heading for the Capitol Building. While it was very solemn, I am glad we went to the new Memorial. The volunteer there told us a ton of information that I had never heard about Flight 93, as well as the ongoing construction plans to expand the Memorial. It’s is kind of in the middle of nowhere, but I would definitely recommend visiting if you’re out that way. At Gettysburg, we mostly just visited the visitor center, drove around the battlefield, and had lunch in town.

I spent the last few days of break at my grandparents’ house in Delaware, spending time with family and doing homework. Overall, it was a great break, filled with the right amounts of activity, relaxation, and productivity, but I’m also glad to be back at school!

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Posted 2 months ago

Here are some pictures of campus this spring!

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Posted 2 months ago

Spring is definitely here in Delaware. Since the past week and a half or so, the temperatures are up, the sun is shining, and the flowers are blooming. It’s really nice to break out the sandals and sundresses, but it wasn’t playtime all day out on the Green (I wish…). Spring break is next week, which is very exciting, but that means that midterms are here! A few of my midterm exams came early, so thankfully I didn’t have the 4-midterm week that one of my friends does! I did, however, stay up till the early morning hours this morning to finish up two history midterm papers. I am so glad it’s done, and I am now really excited for spring break - details on this to come!

UD Acceptance!

Posted 2 months ago

Congratulations to any future Blue Hens reading this post! That is, if you got into UD, you should definitely go here! But I’m a little biased. I guess I don’t have a super-exciting story about getting my acceptance letter in the mail. That’s because I actually got a phone call from a professor in the Political Science department here telling me that I got in and telling me about all the great things the poli sci department has to offer and that I should go here. So that was pretty cool, to get a personalized call to find out I had been accepted. (I actually took a class with that professor last semester and loved it!) But he didn’t know if I had been accepted into the Honors Program, so for a few more days I was anxiously awaiting the big yellow packet from UD because I really wanted to be in the Honors Program. I was very excited when I actually got the packet and saw that I had.

To be completely honest, UD wasn’t my first choice college. But during April of my senior year, when I was evaluating where I wanted to go from the schools I had been accepted to, UD just grew on me a lot. I attended a “Decision Day” (I think UD holds two of these events, for accepted seniors, in April), and the campus really drew me in. It sounds corny, but I think UD looks like how an East Coast college campus should look like. That, and many other important factors, led me to attend UD, and I’ve never regretted it. I think some high school seniors feel like they have their heart set on one particular college and are devastated if they don’t get in there, but I believe that as long as you’ve done your work searching for schools and applied to places you could see yourself at, you’ll be very happy once you’re at college and enjoying your new life there.