Volunteer, Advocate, Trekker.

Well, the following is the legislation I hope to pursue by the end of the year. Now I just have to find the time to do it :( unfortunately between my Spring Break coming right before the end of the year, Student Teaching being all the time always, and my Honors Project and Education-y project thing being due very soon, I don't know if I'll have the time to finish all of these. ·          Reaffirm University’s Dedication to Recycling & Sustainable Culture o    Purpose: Establish that Recycling & Sustainability is important to the University, remind them of past efforts and suggestions that have not been followed up on. ·          Investigate Mishandling in the University’s Recycling Program o    Numerous reports by students, as well as the staff of Residence Life & Housing and the Student Union that Recycling has been thrown away when inconvenient o    If so, th...

Well not much content today, mainly "of the day" kind of things: woke up early; had lunch with a political consultant for Jimmy Carter and the Campaign Manager for Jesse Jackson;  ASG'ed for a few hours; class; attended an Honors Educators meeting, and LGBTU meeting (ASG has been trying to show a stronger solidarity with them since a recent unfortunate suicide), and finally of course the CKI meeting and dinner afterwards. It was nice to catch up with the CKI folk -- missed last week because of the campaign! Quote of the Day: The other day in the office the center of conversation surprisingly shifted over to me. Apparently I've been nicer lately or something? "You've been in a different mood these last few weeks. You're more expressive and happy, did you have like a life changing experience or something?" - Jackie S. Based on the time period, I suggested my break up as the cause -- but I would have guessed I'd be described as sadder or quie...

Baaah, crazy week. This has been a very ASG heavy week, weak on CKI and other things unfortunately. I think Monday alone I completed like, 8+ office hours -- while I am only paid for 4 a week. Got home from the Safety Walk tonight around 10:10 PM. On the bright side, the safety walk went were few others have gone before -- the Abandoned ΣΝ House on campus! It was nice to breathe in that moldy air, with bad lighting, I was completely in my element! Above is the last rubber tree in Akron - the primary reason (apparently) the University hasn't torn the building down yet. Haha, there's something strange about being able to explore an abandoned building on official business! :D Sigma Nu's logo on a wall inside. I found the minutes actually, where the Board of Trustee's bought the house for over $400,000. Shady bathroom. This is pretty awesome actually, the fireplaces in here were classy! I personally would like to see them convert the building into a residence h...

Ello, readers. Well, It's been kind of a hectic semester, filled with things I am not quite at liberty to blog about all the time - so you'll have to forgive the lack of postings. But stay tuned! Never know what adventures are just around the corner. Well, firstly: I finished that Magic School Bus/Pokemon drawing and even colored it in a way I was happy with. Submitted it on a DeviantArt contest . But for those who don't keep track of my life, in ASG I've been working on quite a number of projects. As chair of the Facilities and Services Committee, I've been responsible for coordinating the Safety Walk (and all future ones); I'm trying to turn all the campus bathrooms "touch free" that means sinks, soap and paper-towel dispensers so you don't have to touch anything; I'm looking into green-ifying the University's building policy, which I have to say has been lacking -- but the Vice President of Capital Planning has said he's just wa...

Haha, interesting experience-filled day to add to the memoir of my life. Today I got to learn how to handle a "rock star." As you may know, the ASG was charged (literally) with providing the bands for Springfest 2011: and while I made recommendations such as Bruno Mars , Travie McCoy , and the Far East Movement -- in the end we ended up with Shwayze, Cisco & Urban Crush . I wasn't too pleased, my main intention was to get someone with name recognition like Kent always manages to get (Bruno Mars, Drake, 3Oh!3...) but alas, we ended up having to go with someone approved by the University's student entertainment division or something? I dunno. He's disappointed he didn't get to meet Zippy. The story gets interesting when newly-appointed (for the last week) ASG Vice President Kenny was looking for someone to pick them up from the airport. Always eager to help, I volunteered. I had to find 5 pals (which ended up being 3 people from ASG, a housemate, ...

In student government, I have been called on occasion "Captain Planet." It's true, I love green things, and want the world to be as environmentally friendly as possible (though when I originally tried to join ASG, that wasn't particularly on my mind.) None the less, is this cool or is this cool! A solar-powered wireless keyboard ! It runs off of both solar and ambient lightbulb light! Fully charged, it can operate in complete darkness for 3 months! Less than a third of an inch thick, it doesn't even include paper instructions to be greener. (Not that I'd use them anyway.) At a wince-inducing cost of $79.99, it's not exactly the kind of fun extra spending I can do right now, but something to keep in mind next birthday/Christmas/lottery winning. Song of the Day: "Him" by Lily Allen . So a few weeks ago Sarah mentioned I didn't have any Lily Allen on my iPod, so I remedied that situation and gotta say - she has alot more good songs than ...

Well today has had it's ups and downs. At work, working midnight to 6 am trying desperately to stay awake even when I'm full of Redbull and bottled Starbucks. This is made out of Redbull cans! WOW! Lets see, stayed up til 2am last night somehow watching Star Wars IV with Sarah. (That was probably not so good a decision, but it was due today.) Woke up for class at like 6am this morning, had "Instructional Techniques" with the awesome bearded teacher; that class was boring. We're doing practice discussions so students can get experience leading a class discussion, even when it goes sour. We have to have 20 minutes of discussion. I talk a lot in that class, haha, sometimes I feel bad but no one else is talking and it's the point of the activity! I'm not going to leave the teacher-student hanging there. Especially when I have a valid opinion that hasn't been voiced yet. Anyway, one of the problems was that all three group-discussion leaders used the...

Well today was the first day of the new semester! I had to wake up at 6 AM!!! X_X let me remind the world that I am in no way a morning person, I am completely a night person, or like an afternoon person. But NOT a morning person. So waking up was kind of a pain, but eh. My first class was "Inst. Tech (Social Studies)" with Larry, who's AWESOME. He is really the coolest guy ever and I absolutely wish I could teach like him, but I feel like part of it is the years of experience and his retiree-esque nature. My favorite part about his class was he mentioned he plans to use the survey I put together with the College of Education's Student Success Task Force with the class as an example of student civic involvement! Next I had Freshmen-level Intro to Sociology x_x blah. That, was boring. The teacher was pretty entertaining for a professor, but it was all the kind of humor designed to keep a freshman's attention and to be honest I feel like I've advanced beyon...

Just got back from my ASG Winter retreat, where we went over what we did in Fall, what we hope to do in Spring, elections, and a bunch of other stuff. That was 10am - 3pm, so now I'm trying to figure out what I need to get done before school starts Monday. But first, Newsflash: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona has been shot in the head in a shooting at a constituent meeting in Tuscon. A Democrat representing Arizona's 8th district (which does not contain any major cities, but does border Mexico) in the U.S. House of Representative, she was narrowly named the winner in the 2010 election ahead of a uber-conservative Tea Partier named one of the Tea Bagger's top 10 people with a future or something (criticized Sarah Palin for not being conservative enough o.O) One of Rep. Giffords' notable efforts is to increase solar power-usage, here with some University of Arizona students. If it turns out the Tea Baggers did this, that is so inhuman and pathetic I...

So I'm researching something for ASG (as I often find myself doing): what is the best way to dry your hands in the bath room? I just read a 35 page research paper (okay, power skimmed alot of it) that compared several types of traditional paper towels, warm-air hand driers, and the new Dyson hand-slot jet driers. The results were shocking! My first instinct when someone from ASG suggested I look into this, was wow -- the Dyson hand driers (such as at Canton/Belden Village Mall ) definitely have cool factor! I like'm. They actually shoot cool air in a jet to "scrape" the water off your hands. They advertise themselves as the fastest hand driers around, and the study pretty much confirmed that. Bacteria grow on wet hands -- and in heat. So you want dry, not hot hands. And the study actually revealed that all paper towels pretty much dry your hands the same (~96%) after about 10 seconds. The Dyson Blade awesome thing also dries your hands to about 96% in 10 seco...

Well, it's been a busy month. And to be honest, I've just been too exhausted in my free time to blog! Even my Desk Manager at Honors has commented on how I haven't been as bubbly as I used to be this semester. But I'm enjoying the business, and the productivity it has spawned. In ASG this past week, I got my second piece of legislation on the agenda (where most senators have yet to get their first.) My first one was Wind Turbines, the second: free parking on weekends. This was an easy thing, rather than weeks of research like with the wind turbines - this was just changing the policy to reflect what is enforced, and what most other Universities around do as well. We don't ticket for not showing a parking pass on weekends at the University of Akron, but out policy says we ticket 24/7 and visitors must pay 6$ to get into an unmanned lot. That's ridiculous, because no body uses the lot - everyone parks in the deck - but if someone did Want to follow the rules, t...

Mmm, smell that rainy air! I LOVE IT! >D Well, getting ready to go to the Circle K Open House tonight -- leaving part way through to drop in on the EnviormentalAkron meeting at 8, a stuttering group that has been falling on its face every semester since I've been here. With my Green work with the University, I hope to see them become much much more active and I'm going to go baring suggestions. But lets talk about my day! Got up early to go to Geography class (boring as always; test put off til Thursday though!) Gotta memorize all the former-Soviet states, and where they are. Went to International Institutions class... and this guy is odd. First of all, he only seems to own white dress pants. On the DAY AFTER LABOR DAY? tsk tsk tsk. He looks like someone's agent, like he belongs in California. From there, went to meet with the Springboard Tech staff about incorporating TK20 into Springboard. They were slow to answer my questions, and seemed to incorporate alot o...

Well, it has been a busy first two weeks of classes I'll tell ya x_x alot of my time has gone to ASG, Associated Student Government here at Akron. And I feel like I have heard more plans and interesting tidbits about the University in the past two weeks than I have in the last two years! Obviously it would be an abuse of my position to reveal and truely secret behind-closed-door details, but it's safe to say I can share with ya what is publically available - people just don't know where to look. Soon to be AHAP Building, Mill Street. Lets start with a simple question I didn't know the answer to: the building on Mill St. and College Street (if you follow the Honors Complex street up by the payroll building) there is a corner building by the bread factory that they recently tore most of the front of the building apart, and it's being rebuilt. I did not know the University owned that - but since it's under construction at the end of a national economic downtu...

New York = Soon! Not that I have seriously loyal followers that are dying to see these pictures, lol. But here's a sneak peak I suppose: Weird statue adjacent to World Trade Center site. Whatever they are trying to sell, their message is interesting. Me and Sarah atop the Empire State Building! So I'm going to rant about some current events, large scale and local. Firstly, yay! Thursday - 04/08/2010 (today) - is a don't-wear-shoes day. There is a popular Facebook event on the U of A's campus promoting not wearing shoes all day to spread word of the plight faced by millions of children every day, the infections, diseases, and dangers of being raised in poverty without shoes. "Always having to focus on your step, rather than other things." I'm totally participating in this, and think it's a good idea! But at the same time, spreading the word of causes and contributing to them are two different things. Next time you or I go shoe shopping, perhaps we'l...