First Year of School

wrap up

2008-05-07T07:44:00.001-07:00

wrap up of school

Been A while

2008-04-03T08:10:00.001-07:00

Yeah here is an update

12- week happenings

2008-01-26T08:10:00.001-08:00

3 weeks into the 12 week

New Semester

2008-01-08T08:09:00.001-08:00

New semester, and people

cubing and winter break

2008-01-02T20:11:00.001-08:00

YAY Cubing

Finals

2007-12-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

I am home from Finals woot

Holiday dinner

2007-12-13T13:44:00.000-08:00

This was an awesome dinner we had for all of the students.

Three-week and Madrigals

2007-12-06T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here is some info on the Three-week and the Yuletide Revels

Week of Thanksgiving

2007-11-26T14:06:00.000-08:00

After thanksgiving, I realized I needed to blog again

Band Concert

2007-11-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

So I went to the band concert a couple of days ago, and surprisingly enough it was really good. I suppose I am really just used to my high school band, and how terrible we were. The reason I went to the concert was because my girlfriend is in the concert band, but I am glad I went anyways. I feel like if I were going to miss the concert because I just didn't want to walk over to hayden, I would have missed a lot. They played a lot of good music and I am really glad I went. I know there are many more opportunities on campus like this, and I hope that in the future I can take advantage of them. More to come soon. Finals are coming soon!!!!!!!!!

Happy Halloween

2007-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

This was a gingerbread house that Meghen's mother made and gave to the floor. We ate it and it was good. (You don't use glue when making these things do you?)

Halloween was a big success . There were lots of little kids that came through to trick or treat. I would say we probably had about 200 kids come through 3rd miller alone. This was pretty tough to deal with considering many of us did not buy enough candy for that many kids. At the end I ended up passing out spare change because I ran out of candy and I felt bad for the kiddies who didn't get anything. Lot of students dressed up too as you can see below.
Anna is dressed up as Patrick, Claire as snow white, in the back Meghen as a princess and Donna a steelers player.

Finally is me in my costume.
Yes I dressed up as a boy scout. HAHA..

Meeting the President

2007-10-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

I had some concerns with the food that we are served here. It, unfortunately, does not taste so great. Unlike in high school where I felt that things were not that important to change, in college now, I feel like I can make a change. Since I was unhappy with the food I decided to attend the President's open office hour. This was an opportunity for me to get to not only meet with the President, but get to voice my concerns about the food and several other opportunities. I arrived about 5 minutes before it was scheduled to begin and sat on a nice comfy couch on the third floor of Hinsdale. There were several other people that were going to meet with the president, so I knew that I would not have all of the time in the world, but I did not let this discourage me. About 15 minutes after the time was set for it to start, the president invited me in to talk about my concerns and comments. I had a very intelligent conversation with the President of the college about my opinions on the food service and several other things. I would have liked to have gotten a picture with the President, but unfortunately I was unable to get that.

I expressed how I was unhappy with the quality of the food that the current dining service is offering. He told me that we actually outsourced our food service in order to make it better, and unfortunately it did not work. I was surprised that the food service cost more than doing it in house, but I realized that it made sense that the food service would be hired to make the college look better. I then also voiced my concerns that some the maintenance around campus was not getting done, and that I was frustrated with that. President Chema said he would look into it and he wrote something down to look at later.

As I parted ways with the President, I realized that I would not have had this opportunity if I had attended a big state school, or even a bigger private school. Even though students pay a lot of money for college, many of them cannot talk with the administrations about how the school is being run, and I feel that this opportunity at Hiram is a great one.

Tribe time!!!!

2007-10-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't gotten back to everyone!!

The nice thing about going to a school near Cleveland is the fact that there are so many tribe fans here. Even the president sent out an email saying go tribe. We have had several parties at night where we watch the baseball game in a friend's room. It is so awesome to be able to watch the games with my friends. I think that I am more inclined to be better fan as well because there are so many people watching it. A couple of nights ago we ordered pizza and watched the game together. It was really nice not to have to eat at the dining hall for once.

Tonight we are going to watch what will hopefully be the last game of the Indians vs. Red Sox American League Championship Series. It should be a kicking time. I look forward to hanging out with my friends again. GO TRIBE!

Other happenings include fall break which we had last week, and midterms. Now that those are over we are starting to look into what classes to register for next semester. I am looking forward to taking more classes to do with my major.

That's it for now. I should be getting a camera soon to add some pictures into this blog.

Birthday!! Turned 20

2007-10-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

So, last Saturday was my birthday. There was a whole week or so worth of festivities. It started out when I left Tuesday night to go home to visit. This of course means that I did in fact skip Campus day. We left around 8:30 making it to my friend David's house at around 9:15 to watch him get his hair cut, after driving into Ohio City on the west side of Cleveland. Driving past my high school with my best friend and girlfriend brought back memories of days of high school football games and scantron tests. As I reminisce , we get to his house and unload everything. We still had to go to my house but we were going to be taking the other car. When we got to my house my parents had made hamburgers and salad to eat because at that point we all wanted to eat something besides miller dining hall food. The burgers were delicious. I then got to open some birthday gifts even though it was before my birthday because I was at home and they were available. I got some sweet jackets and a new blanket for my bed. I was pretty excited about all of these gifts. When we got back to school the next night I really hadn't missed much besides a pulled fire alarm. I suppose I did miss campus day, but from what I heard it was a pretty good time.

The next birthday activity was that of my friends taking me out to dinner and bowling on Friday. We went to Ruby Tuesday in Aurora. This was one of the most disappointing experiences at a retaurant ever. The service was not only bad, but the food was mediocre as well. I was disappointed at the experience there, but the experience at bowling was great. We went over to Garrettsville to go bowling. We decided to play 2 games and I did pretty well in the first game. The second game I decided to just screw around, but my girlfriend's roommate, Karen, Bowled a 210! The guy in the lane a couple down from us who was a league bowler came down as she bowled her last frame. He exclaimed, "I just got beaten by a girl in open bowling!" This was pretty exciting for everyone. After that we went to Dairy Queen and had some delicious Blizzards.

The day of my birthday was pretty great. Not only did I get to wake up late, but my girlfriend took me out to breakfast. During the whole day I just kind of lounged around. In the afternoon we had ice cream cake and invited practically my whole floor to come and eat it with us. The ice cream cake was delicious and it was nice to have so many people to celebrate my birthday with. That night we drove up to see my high school's football game and enjoyed watching that. To top the birthday celebrations off we went to Chipotle and ate some tasty burritos.

The next afternoon, on Sunday, my family came out at took me to dinner in Aurora to Cafe Tandoor. It is delicious and flavorful Indian food that is pretty close to Hiram. We had a good time and it was nice to get to see my family again.

Overall my birthday experience at Hiram was awesome. I would say in comparison to what you get when you are at home it is a lot better. I feel like it was better because I really got to spend it with people I care about. It wasn't the typical birthday where you might get to see several friends, but it was a birthday that I got to celebrate with a lot of people on campus. It was also better because when you are away from home it seems like your parents try to make your birthday extra special by copming to visit you and also getting you thoughtful gifts that you will need to survive at school. I feel like this is a birthday experience that I will remember for a long time to come.

Sick and other things

2007-09-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

I have already become sick after only several weeks of school. It is really quite nasty to get sick at this point. I really don't have all of the medicines and such that you would have at home. This is the first time in my life I really don't have my mother to take care of me. I am doing perfectly alright without my mother, but it is an interesting experience being away from home. I did go to the health center and they were very helpful in terms of giving me medicine and some other symptom relievers. It was very easy to get them to help me.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to leave campus. I realized after I got back that I had missed quite a bit that had gone on. I went to buffalo, but when I got back I had realised that there were several parties and get-together's that I missed. This was unfortunate, but I realize that there is more things to do on Campus now.

Coming up on Wednesday is Campus day which is supposed to be pretty cool. It involves not only community service but no classes. I will write an update about campus day and how it went. Sorry for the short update, but things have been busy.

Settling in

2007-09-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! My name is Philip Williams and I am a first-year student at Hiram College. I wanted to first tell everyone a little bit about myself and the reason I chose to come to Hiram College. I also want to talk about the first several weeks retrospective.

I am 19 years old and from Bay Village, OH; a suburb of Cleveland. I graduated from Saint Ignatius High School in 2006. The reason I am a freshman this year is because I took a year off to do an Americorps service program. This program was a good experience for me, and it definitely prepared me for college. I chose to Hiram because it is a small school with personalized attention for the students. I also chose Hiram because I had the opportunity to visit here a lot last year being that my best friend David goes here. I did not chose it because he goes here, but since I got to visit so much and see how awesome it is. I really enjoy meeting all of the new people. I have met quite a few people so far. A lot of my floor mates and I have become good friends.

When we first got here, they made us go through this thing called institute week. It actually just consisted of 3 colloquium meetings and several activities encouraging us to get to know each other including: a square dance, a mentalist, a block party, and a beach party. Some of these activities were actually amusing, while others were downright lame. I met most of the friends I have made, by meeting them on my floor

This year I signed up to take the Mathematics of Gambling, Calculus 3 and Philosophy of Religion. These classes have been going well so far and I am enjoying for the most part. The classes are much more interesting than high school classes. I have found so far that the focus of each of these classes has made them more enjoyable for me. I am still in the mode of getting all of my homework done, but we will see if that methodology stays true through out the semester.

I know this is a short first post, but that is all I had time for today. I will hopefully get back into the swing of things coming up with a topic for each post. I will be posting at least once a week. Peace out