Hello everyone! I am the new Student Blogger and I am excited about this semester! My name is Serena and I am graduating and transferring (as long as I get in to a college somewhere!) in May!

I will be blogging as I finish up my time here at FC. For me its bitter sweet. I feel like I have made lots of friends, know a lot of the professors, and quite frankly I am a little intimidated about going to the big and scary university! But sometimes we have to face our fears.

About my blog, some of it will be inspirational, some of it informational, and sometimes I am completely random but I hope you will journey through with me for my last semester here! 


So tomorrow is a big event! Its Leap Year! Which happens every four years. I have always thought to myself, that kind of stinks for those born on the 29th because does that mean they only get a birthday every 4 years? But that also means they don't get any older right? Haha wouldn't that be nice? I realize this is not the case but thats the fun way I like to look at Leap Year. I also loved the movie Leap Year, yes I know its not an academy award type of a film, but I am a hopeless Romantic and enjoy a good comedy. So tomorrow I hope everyone enjoys this one in four year phenomenon., I plan on enjoying it at school, eating the chili and cornbread in the quad that they will have for us tomorrow! 

On that note though, HAPPY LEAP YEAR!

 

Happy Holidays!

Hello my fellow students. My how the time flies when you're having fun. The semester is over and now we can all breathe! Do you feel that? It's the sweet feeling of freedom raining down on us.

The holidays are approaching quickly... too quick for my taste (you guessed it, my Christmas shopping is not finished). This is my favorite time of year. I'm a sucker for bright and shiny objects, so when I see a house light up like a Christmas tree...let's just say I'm worse than a kid in a candy store. My eyes light up and my smile is so big I think it swallows my face. Oh and I giggle - Yeah it's that bad.

But I also love all the food, the cozy sweaters and gift buying for loved ones.

Now that I think about it, this is my favorite time because of the traditions my mom and I shared. I come from a single-parent-only-child household. For us money was ALWAYS scarce but my mom never failed to make Christmas a magical time for me.

One of my favorite memories is from when I was about eight or nine years old. See my mother used to torture me with Christmas music. I suffered through Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole (although I liked him), Christmas with the Judds (country xmas music), and some other random mixed CDs she came across at Target.

So of course to get back I would sing to each and every song as though I were Snow White... anyone remember what her voice sounds like? If not, here's a short clip. Can you hear that slight annoying shutter in her voice? Yeah imagine that but ten times louder, more annoying and to xmas music. I would also make up dances but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, for years I put up with the music and for years she put up with my singing. Until one year our CD player broke. Naturally you'd think I'd be rejoicing, shouting from the roof tops and thanking the heavens for sparing me the never ending torture of Christmas music. It was quite the opposite, I was more upset than my mother. I believe my exact words were, "what do you mean there's no music!" So I demanded that we buy a cheap little player cause despite hating the music it wasn't Christmas without the torture.

We didn't have music that year and we survived. But the following year I was so excited to have the music back I started playing the CDs at Thanksgiving. Needless to say I tortured my mother that year.

I guess the moral of story is regardless if I hated hearing the music, it still became a tradition. A tradition, unknown to even myself, was not willing to see go. So every year I listen to the same CDs that were around when I was young. We still laugh to this day about it, and yes she still makes me do the dances.

I hope that you all have a tradition that will last a lifetime. And may you all have a wonderful holiday season.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! See you in the Spring.

Stay classy FC,

Janet

Stressus Procrastinatus

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I just finished reading an article on my favorite website, www.cracked.com. I immediately thought of writing about it because I feel there is something we can lean from it.

But first let me just say these guys are my heroes... for real. They always cheer up my day, make me laugh until I'm blue in the face and inform me of the most random useless knowledge (yeah it's worse than a commercial about an asthma drug). Needless to say I'm hooked - in three different ways to be exact; their website, Facebook page and my favorite on-the-go tool, their Android App.

Hi everyone, my name is Janet and I'm a cracked.com junkie! I read at least five articles every day. If I ever get fired from my job it would because of them.

The reason for mentioning them is not just to give them an awesome plug, BUT because they covered the issue of studying for exams in college. Just in time for finals. (Yep, it's all coming together now.) This is their cleanest article I've read so far (these guys are not for the sensitive types, they cuss, a lot!), so I feel comfortable sharing this one with you.

The article is called, "The 7 Dumbest Things Students Do When Cramming for Exams". Sounds intriguing right? I know, it grabbed my attention right away. I said to myself, "Please cracked.com tell ME what I do wrong!" 

It touches on everything from complaining about the exam to highlighting our books until it looks like a hippee got a hold of it. Which  I have to admit I am guilty of doing on occasion. Somehow I truly believe highlighting will help me remember the information, well that and I just really love bright orange highlighters. So dumb... Anyway, as the writer (Luke McKinney) states,

"If you notice yourself lighting a textbook up like TRON fanfic, drop the highlighter. Instead, try writing out the key points of your reading material on a separate page you can study easily and anywhere. If that sounds like too much work, well done, you've just found out why people highlight instead."
 And he's 100 percent right! It's so important to write it out instead of using the pretty colored marker for two reasons. For one you're forcing yourself to actually use your brain and two it's proven that if you use a pencil to write it out your brain is more likely to remember the information. Why? Because of the vibrations it sends up to your brain. Think I'm nuts? Well it's true! Using a pen is too smooth and doesn't allow for vibrations to travel. I dare you to try it.

Another excellent point McKinney makes is to never re-read your notes and texts. Here is his logic...

"If you're in English lit, put down the play you already read, and write a one page essay discussing how Hamlet was the greatest pansy of all time. Do something, anything, which tests your knowledge or makes you actually think, then use your notes to find out what you'd forgotten. Then do the problem again. Instead of sitting and reconfirming, "Yep, I sure can read this language all right!"

Once again he's got a point. I love to believe re-reading my notes is actually helping me studying. But the cold hard fact is that it's not. Really it's just helping me to be even more lazy about studying.

OH! Another thing is nesting... how many of us need to have everything just so before we can even begin to think about studying? I am one of those people. Seriously I have a check list... Coffee, check. Studying materials, check. Classical music, check. The list goes on and I just recently learned that by doing this I'm wasting precious studying time.

I'm infamous for cramming for tests. It's what I do and I do it well. And depending on the subject I have aced many tests using my crazy unorthodox methods. I'm not saying it's a good idea to cram but hey we're college students it's expected of us, right?

So to end this rant of mine, I highly recommend reading this article before you cram for your exam. It will help you loosen up a bit, maybe even laugh.  And who knows you might learn something.

Stay Classy FC,
Janet
  

Halloween - Over but not forgotten

So I'm back for a second time today! I promised you Halloween photos. I'm terribly sorry they are late - It took me a while to hunt them down.

I do wish there were more photos of the decorations. My house looked like Halloween threw up on it. (Like that visual? You're welcome.) We had all the rooms decked out with horrifying scenes of murder and blood. Ouija boards and tarot cards lay out on tables for people to use if they dared. Floating crosses and images of death laid around every corner. We also streamed a montage of clips from about a million horror films. I heard some people got sick and had to leave the room.

On the morning of the big day my husband and I woke up at 7am and worked until 3:30pm on decorating the house. But it was worth it! The party was a smash hit with about 40 or so people. You know it was a great party when you have run out of all the alcohol and order 70 bucks worth of pizza by the end of the night. At 3am I bid our last guest farewell and safe travels. I was thankful for Sunday and the enormous amount of rest I got after working and partying hard.

For our first party in the new house I'd say I'm very happy with the turn out. I can't wait until next years.

I did not take them and I apologize for the blurry slide show you're about to see. By the way, I'm the one in the red wig stand next to Chuckie.

Stay Classy FC,
Janet