The Beginning of the End

It is Day 14 of my last semester at Stonehill, and I am in disbelief that I have already been back on campus for that long! Out of all my semesters at Stonehill, the transition back to campus this semester has been easier for me than any other transition back to school. Unfortunately, it's a little too late since it's the last one! But in any case, I seem to have been able to jump right in on all my reading, which I have plenty of with three English classes, one of which is my Senior Capstone! Although, it's a little early for papers, so I will get back to you on how the transition from writing lesson plans to writing papers for college goes!

I have already been doing a lot of work, but I've had some good times with friends too! Last weekend was the Welcome Back Weekend for the spring semester, so we had a comedian in The Hill on Friday night, and then on Saturday there was the Whiteout Ball - which was the annual campus-wide semi-formal dance in the Sports Complex. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to this dance because I had previous plans, but I heard from a lot of friends that it was a great time...complete with balloons!


So what did I do if I didn't go to the dance? Well, at the end of last semester, the girls in my suite planned a night out in Boston for our friend Alexia's 22nd birthday, which we were all so excited for! But unfortunately it ended up coinciding with the dance, nonetheless, we had a really fun girls' night out! Here are a couple pictures of us all dressed up before our big night out!

From left to right we have Alexia's friend from home Maria, and my suite-mates Kari-Ann, Carrie, Alexia, me, and Melissa. Don't we all look classy? :)

As of this Christmas break, I am also dating someone new! He is actually a really close friend from high school, in fact, we have known each other practically forever! We were even in the same third and fourth grade classes! It was quite a surprise to me to come home for Christmas break and to recognize this for the first time. But we are both very happy and have a lot to look forward to over the next several months!

I then spent a hectic week settling into the semester. I had lots of reading for my classes. This semester I am taking: Postcolonial London Literature, The City in American Literature, Fallen Women and Typewriter Girls (which is my senior seminar and looks at the constructs of the female gender in mostly Victorian literature), Mathematical Reasoning for Educators, and Honors Environmental Science. It is quite a course load because every one of these classes are fulfilling my last five requirements for graduation! I'm just so happy I was able to fit all the requirements in nicely...and with some very interesting topics!

This week I also settled into some of the extra activities I do on campus, such as my role with the Student Ambassador/Tour Guide program, Kappa Delta Pi (which is the Education Honor Society), and I have also set up a work study job in the Office of Student Activities, which I have done a lot of work with in my four years at Stonehill and just generally love to be a part of! :)

For now there's more reading calling my name, but I am looking forward to blogging to all of you about all of the exciting, scary, emotional, happy, sad, intimidating, thrilling, and just plain fun things that will be going on during my last semester!

Final Round at the Hill

I am currently in a state of disbelief and denial that I am beginning my final semester at Stonehill. Not only have I absolutely loved my four years at Stonehill and I am not ready for them to be over, I am not sure I am ready for everything "extra" - applying for jobs and preparing for the real world - that comes with the final semester of college. Part of me is looking forward to the next stage in my life; I think that I will like the working world and being able to settle down. I hate packing and moving, so while it is nice to have two homes, I will like being settled in one place again for a while!

My plan right now is to apply this semester for teaching jobs close to home so I can live at home, save money, and dedicate myself to my first classroom! Then after a year, maybe two, I plan to go back to school for my Master's, somewhere in the field of education. I need some more time before I decide what I will want to get my Master's in! As of now, for this semester, my goal is to find a teaching job! I have done some things over this Christmas break to start that process, but a lot of my time this semester will be dedicated to the job search! There's a long way to go, and I won't feel relaxed until I have a job!

This semester I have my final five classes needed for my two majors and general education requirements. I will be taking three English classes, one of which is my senior capstone seminar. Those classes are Postcolonial London, The City in American Literature, and my seminar is The Fallen Women. My other two classes are Honors Principles of Environmental Science and Mathematical Reasoning for Educators. I am looking forward to these classes, and it will be nice to have a change with the science and math classes since I haven't had any of either yet at Stonehill!

As of now, I am all packed...despite the fact that I am, as always, over-packed! It always seems that my things seem to multiply each time I move back to school. I hope when I am unpacking tomorrow I will be able to fit everything in my room!

Right now, I can't wait to get back to campus and catch up with all of my friends! It will be an exciting semester, with lots of senior activities and job searching - I am sure I will taking advantage of everything Stonehill has to offer one last time!

Home for the Holidays

I love Christmas, and I love getting to be home for Christmas! Putting up the Christmas tree, playing Christmas music, seeing Christmas lights everywhere, and baking Christmas cookies are some of my favorite sights, sounds, and smells of the season that I don't think I could live without! But one of the very best things about Christmas, especially after being away from home for a semester, is getting to spend lots of time with family and friends! The house pictured here is just down the street from my own house. Every year they cover their house and front yard with Christmas lights and decorations and they put on a light show with the lights coordinated to Christmas music that passersby can tune their stations to as they drive by! It is a popular sight to visit in my hometown during the Christmas season!

Every year, for ten years now, my friend, Kate, from high school has been hosting an annual Christmas party! At first, in middle school, it was just the girls. But then, once we discovered boys, it became co-ed. Now, I am so glad that we continue the tradition because it is the best way to get ALL of our high school friends together again! I do still see a lot of my hometown friends, and I have been able to spend a lot of time with them all this break. But we are all so busy and have such very different schedules that it is hard to get everyone together often. Some of my friends are working full-time, some are taking college classes still, and one of my friends is even engaged and getting married Labor Day weekend this year!!! (I am still adjusting to this getting older thing!) But for this year's Christmas party most of us all had a great time playing board games and eating all of our favorite junk food snacks! Especially, Kate's famous calzone and my brownies - favorites since high school!

My friend Brandon (aka "Dobes" - my friends have a lot of nicknames!) and I at Kate's Christmas party.

My friends and I also celebrated together on New Year's Eve at my friend Brennan's house. Here I am with girlfriends Tessa and Kate.

Then, when Christmas rolled around, I celebrated with not one, but FOUR Christmases! My immediate family and I celebrated Christmas Eve with some of my dad's side of the family with dinner at our house. Then on Christmas Day, after opening presents from Santa of course, we went to my gramma's house to celebrate with my mom's side of the family. But now that I have had cousins who have gotten married, and we don't get to see my mom's cousins often, we always hold more Christmas gatherings so we get to see all of the family who we didn't get to see on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! I always enjoy these parties because they are more casual than Christmas and we get to play with new Christmas presents!

My family at our house on Christmas Eve.

My sister, Lindsay, and cousins Liz and Emily at my gramma's house on Christmas Day.

The day after Christmas, all the siblings and cousins on my dad's side got together over my aunt's house. It was exciting because we got to see Cameron, my cousin's 7 month old baby, and the newest addition to our family! We ordered Chinese food and did a Yankee Swap (re-gifting encouraged!) I ended up with a great number, and the gift I received was a bottle of wine! We also played Telestrations, a game that my sister received for Christmas from my aunt. It is basically telephone but with pictures.

Cameron is an excellent gift-unwrapper! And of course his puppy, Simon, wanted to help!

Playing Telestrations!

Then just this past weekend, we finally had our fourth Christmas, which had been postponed because of last weekend's snowstorm. We went out to Methuen, MA to my mom's cousin's house to see the second cousins on my mom's side of the family who we don't get to see too often. It was another fun day...although very disappointing because the Patriots lost badly.

I really enjoyed this year's holiday season with my family and friends. It was enjoyable and relaxing. I was reflecting during the holiday that it was just one Christmas ago that I returned from my semester abroad. Last Christmas I was jet-lagged and going through re-entry, and this year I was resting up from a very busy semester of student teaching! Both Christmas breaks were very welcome vacations!

Mr. Stonehill Opening Dance Video!!!!

Here's the video of the opening dance number from Mr. Stonehill 2009!

I owe a HUGE thank you to my friend Nick from high school, who spent a couple hours helping me figure out how to get this video on the blog to all of you! It took many attempts at changing the type, size, and location of this video, but at long last - here it is! Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!

Final Days of Student Teaching

It is hard to believe that I have spent much of the past four years preparing for my student teaching practicum - and now it has come and gone! I am now prepared to have my own classroom! It is both an exciting and scary thought that soon I will be starting a brand new application process - that of applying for teaching jobs!

Student teaching was a great experience. I learned so much from my cooperating practitioner, and as I assess myself as a teacher, I can see the progress I have made since September. My classroom management techniques have grown, I have learned many ideas for how to set up my own classroom, and I have prepared numerous lessons. I feel so much more confident about starting my own classroom now after student teaching than I did before. I have heard many current teachers say that student teaching is what prepares you best for your own classroom - and although I still do not yet have my own classroom, I would have to agree!

The last week of the semester was more low-key for me since my cooperating practitioner once again took over a majority of the teaching. But in addition to some teaching, I stayed busy observing other teachers and also making two new bulletin boards to leave my students with. Here are my final projects:

The most exciting part of my final week, however, is when my kids surprised me with a small party and going away gift. A mom volunteered to bake a cake for us to have during our small party, and together the class presented me with a gift. During art class, all of the kids decorated a big L.L. Bean bag monogramed with Ms. Charest with their hand prints. Then they filled the bag with gifts they donated to me to begin my own classroom library with. It was the best gift I have ever gotten! I will definitely use it during my first few years of teaching!

Now I am excited to have a long winter break for Christmas! It was a challenging, busy, exciting, nerve-wracking, and exhausting semester, so I am certainly excited to relax with family and friends, re-organize, and re-charge for my final semester at Stonehill! (I'm still not used to saying that by the way :/ ) I'll be blogging again soon about my holiday!

Mr. Stonehill 2009

At the end of each fall semester is the ever-popular and long-awaited Mr. Stonehill "beauty pageant." It is one of the most popular events that the senior class traditionally hosts each year - and it is a TON of fun! Boys from all class years participate in the competition - which includes the swimwear, talent, and formal wear/Q&A categories. The weekend of Mr. Stonehill was very exciting for me besides the fact that it was that time of year again for Mr. Stonehill! My group of friends that has grown closer and closer over the past 4 years was reunited again! We all have been doing some exciting and important things - like studying abroad, internships, student teaching, and senior thesises - but this weekend, my friend Kathleen who was in D.C. for the semester, came to Stonehill to visit. Plus, none of us would miss Mr. Stonehill for the world, so we all got together before going to the show! Here's a picture of the girls reunited!

The first category is swimwear. Here are a couple highlights from this year's swimwear competition:

Tim Cushing, Student Government Association Executive Board Treasurer by day, body builder by night!

Real-life lifeguard, Travis Kumph, also dressed as one during Mr. Stonehill '09!

This year my friends and I were very impressed with all of the 14 guys' talents! They worked so hard to prepare their acts, and they all did really well! There was singing, dancing, magic, and more! We also had many "celebrities" participate in the talent portion of the show. We had Clenny Kravitz (Clenton McArthur), Beyonce (aka Conor Nordengren) doing "her" Single Ladies dance, and even a special guest appearance from hubby Jay-Z (Randall Stalworth). But the winner of the talent portion of the competition was Randy Jose for his dance tribute to Michael Jackson. It was fabulous!

"Clenny Kravitz"

Beyonce and Jay-Z

Some of the guys singing background while contestant Nate Illsley performed "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies.

The final category the guys compete in is formal wear and a question and answer session. Here are a couple pictures of the guys with their escorts on stage to answer their question.

Jay Ardizonni with his little sister as his escort.

Senior Pat Higgins with girlfriend Erin Rozwat.

In addition to each category that the guys compete in, they also spend countless hours perfecting their dance moves for the opening and closing numbers, this year choreographed by senior Jill Eid, and also videotaping sketches for the opening and other intermissions during the show. This year's theme was Vegas, and they did a re-make of The Hangover as the opening video. It was pretty funny, they had everything from the beginning of the movie covered - even the baby and tiger! Right after the opening video, the guys entered with strobe lights and music and went right into the opening dance number. I loved the opening dance! Stonehill students love to dance, and I must say, we have some of the best dancers around! I took a video of the opening dance that I have been trying to upload all week - without success! I will continue to try to get the video uploaded, so check back to see what great dancers our guys are!

From Thanksgiving to Christmas

It was so nice to be home at the end of last week for Thanksgiving break. Thanksgiving fell in the middle of my 15 consecutive days of take-over, so it came as a much needed long weekend to write my lessons for this week, and also to catch up on some R&R! In fact, the first thing I did when I got home on Wednesday afternoon after our half day of school, was to take a 3 hour long nap!

School was fun on Wednesday though, because we had a morning of Thanksgiving arts and crafts. We had lots of family volunteers come in to assist with the activities, while I ran the cornucopia water-color activity! We had 10 crafts in all that students in my class and the second grade class next door rotated through. Here are pictures of my favorite crafts:

Isn't the pineapple turkey cute?! My favorite thing about Thanksgiving break was being able to spend time with friends and family. I saw New Moon with my cousins, went out with a couple high school friends, had lunch with my gramma, and of course had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at my other grandma's home. Here are a couple pictures of me and my family on Thanksgiving:

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, Stonehill is already gearing up for Christmas! Last night we had the annual tree lighting event on the quad. Two of Stonehill's a capella groups performed Christmas carols and the lights on the trees on the quad were lit up for the first time! :) My friends and I tried to get some pictures, but it's never easy to get good night photos! Here's what we ended up with! But you can notice our cups of hot apple cider and hot chocolate that we got in the Chapel after the tree lighting - YUM!

Over the next week and a half (the last week of classes before finals), there will be many events, all part of Finals Countdown, planned and run by students with the guidance of the Student Activities office. I am pleased to announce that part of Finals Countdown will be arguably the most popular annual Stonehill event - Mr. Stonehill! I wouldn't miss the male "beauty" pageant for the world, so I'll try to get some good pictures to share next week!