London Here I Come!

In less than two and a half months I will begin my journey oversees in the United Kingdom for five months. This past weekend I officially received my acceptance letter to study at the University College of London for the spring semester 2013. UCL is based in the Bloomsbury area in central London with over 25,000 students (a tad bit bigger than Lehigh!) While I am still unaware of the specific but very important details none the less (e.g. the classes I will be taking and where exactly I will be living) I am so excited to emerge myself in a completely new and foreign culture… At least everyone speaks English in the UK so I hopefully I won't get too lost!

University College of London

I have only been to London once in my life and it was with my mom so something tells me I will be having a completely different experience. Our mother daughter trip took place about a week following the Royal Wedding so it was a pretty exciting time in the UK but we mostly stuck to sight seeing and other tourist activities. This time around I have a different plan on action. While I can’t wait to explore the local pub and night life in London, I also plan on traveling all throughout Europe and taking the entire experience of studying abroad in. I have already started planning my weekend trips and the cities I want to visit but the only problem I have at this point is funding these expensive voyages. Hopefully my Christmas and Birthday money will carry me over (yes I will be turning 21 while I am abroad so I won’t be able to celebrate in the US with my friends so hopefully I will make new friends quickly to celebrate with!) I also be more than happy to eat beans and toast for dinner! Some of the cities I plan on visiting include Florence, Paris, Prague, Rome, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Athens, and Dublin. My logical thinking is I should be taking advantage of my time abroad because I will only be able to live and study abroad once so I should not let this opportunity pass by….Now I have to convince my parents that!

My first trip to the UK

While I am SO excited to embark on my journey, I can’t help to be a little bit nervous about leaving the country for such a long period of time. At the same time I know I will learn so much from my experience, not only about these various European cultures but about myself as a person. Not only will I learn to be more independent, I will hopefully have a greater appreciation for my life back home. Who knows? Maybe I will end up falling in love and NEVER return home... Prince Harry perhaps ;)

My future husband- Prince Harry

Don't worry I plan on blogging my journey next semester to keep my love ones updated on my exciting and crazy adventures abroad so make sure to check back in January! 

A True NYJets Experience Come True

Being a loyal New York Jets fan is not an easy thing to be. Honestly most years the Jets are absolutely terrible and never live to make it to the post-season. Occasionally the Jets will completely shock you and have a successful season and somehow find their way into the playoffs….2009 season anyone when the Jets were 9-7 in the regular season and  lost in the AFC Conference Championship to the Colts? But the thing is you never know what’s going to happen next and can’t be disappointed when they return to their old habits and get pounded on and can’t score a single touchdown the entire game. The Jets have not made it to the Superbowl since 1968 when Joe Namath led the team and every year loyal Jets fans pray that this will be the year we make it but know in their hearts it is a long-shot. My father swears by his life that if the Jets ever make it back to the Superbowl he will be there but claims he is not bringing the rest of our family…we well see about that.

Maybe it was the way I was brought up but being anything but a New York Jets fan was not an option. Not only is my entire dad’s family huge fans but growing up with two brothers and no sisters I had no other choice but to sit down and “cheer” but more like yell and scream while watching the Jets play on TV. This season has been no exception to the typical Jets seasons in the past.  The Jet’s pre-season was a complete fail and couldn’t even score a single touchdown but now they have picked up their momentum and are 3-3 with still a chance to make it to the playoffs.

Yesterday I found myself sitting in the 14^th row from the end-zone at the Jets Colts game. Every other time I’ve been to a football game I’ve sat in the upper deck and could barely see the game and was more entertained by the drunk screaming men yelling in my ear but sitting so close to the field I was amazed at what I could actually see. Discussing our predictions with surrounding fans before the start of the game everyone just assumed the Jets were going to lose but miraculously they pulled it together and come out with a win. That the thing being a Jets fan- you rather expect the worst and get excited when it turns out well instead of constantly being disappointed all the time. Walking to our seats proudly wearing my Tim Tebow jersey fans were telling me how much they hated him and how awful of a quarterback he was but when he went in and had a nice play those same fans started high-fiving me and cheering him on. Overall I could not have asked for a better game. 70 degrees and sunny with the Jets coming out with a win and spending the day with my friends is a great day in my book. Hopefully the Jets will survive against the New England Patriots next week!

Our view from our seats!

Tribute to @Euan

I can only imagine how Euan Semple felt at the end of our live tweeting session yesterday. As Silagh put it, it was complete chaos but somehow it turned out to be a great experience. Our class was able to have a fully engaged conservation with Euan, the author of  “Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do” who was physically over 3,000 miles away in London. Looking back in retrospect, it was amazing of what Twitter was enabling us to do at that moment. Our class of about 25 students was throwing questions left and right at the author and receiving almost instantaneous responses in return. Since each student was operating under his or her own Twitter handle, we were able to demonstrate the individual power that each of us so-called own dispute using the common hashtag #ENT195 to share and form a community within our class. Overall I would consider our live-tweeting session with Euan Semple a success from my perspective.

After reading the first twenty chapters of Semple’s “Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do” a few chapters really stuck out to me. I found Chapter 13 titled “Ooh, That’s Interesting” particularly fascinating because I felt a connection to what he was discussing regarding blogging and being much more perceptive and thoughtful about what is happening to you and around you. This phenomenon he explains helps us filter out the sea of information around us and adds layers of context to the meaning of information. For me personally I’ve realized to blog for the sake of blogging when I have absolutely nothing to say is not only a waste of my time but also a waste of my reader’s valuable time. Instead I should be blogging when I am very passionate or interested in a topic and feel as though I have something valuable to say so that not only will my readers enjoy reading my posts but that they will return back consistently in the future to check up on my blog.

In this same chapter, Semple expresses “Who follows you back is also important in this world of networks. Who follows you matters more than how many.”  That made me feel better about my Twitter and Blogger accounts being particularly new to both tools and in the process of trying to acquire more followers. At the same time I recognized that I need to “add more signal than noise” to add value to my accounts in order to encourage the “right” people to follow me... It's a work in process. During our live-tweet session with Euan, I asked him who he thought were some of the most influential individuals who followed him. I was a little disappointed in his vague response of “wouldn’t want to name drop- but a surprisingly high number of smart folks”. Obviously he must have been referring to the highly intelligent students in  #ENT195  ;)