Not only is this the last week of classes before exams, but this is also the last blog that I will post. That’s right, I am going to be retiring! Haha just kidding! No I am just graduating from college. It has been an excellent experience for me being able to share with all of you information and stories about the Mount. I have participated in student blogging for the past two years, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I have discussed with everyone all that the Mount has to offer, from academics to athletics events, social events, and also living on campus. I have also discussed the various features that make the Mount unique, one in particular being the underground tunnel. When I first started blogging, my goal was to provide potential students with information about the Mount, and why it would be a good choice for them to choose the Mount, because of the success that I experience here. The Mount was the only college that I applied to, however I don’t think I could have gone anywhere else. The Mount was the perfect college for me, and I gained a lot of excellent friendships that will last a life time. I also wanted to help incoming freshmen with information so that their first year here is stress free. My first couple of weeks here at the Mount was very scary, because it was a new experience for me and I hardly knew anybody. However, once I began to open up, I started to really enjoy it, and I now love it! So because of my experiences, I wanted to make sure that incoming freshmen didn’t go through the hardships that I experiences at the beginning. So in closing, I want to tell everybody Good-bye, and that I hope everyone has success in the future, and for incoming freshmen, I hope you have the time of your life in college. I know I did!

At the end of every semester, during the last week, it is Exam week. It can be one of the most stressful times of the year, however if you know the tricks of the trade, a lot of that stress can be eliminated. Being a senior, I have gone through Exams a lot and there are ways that you can eliminate some of the stress that is normally going on during exams. My first semester of college, I can honestly admit that I was extremely stressful and didn’t know what to expect. It was very nerve racking, (this is why I want to help the incoming students). The biggest thing to do is to just relax and take a deep breath. Getting all worked up over exams is not the best thing to do. You want to just take one thing at a time and trust me it will be for the best. Working for hours straight can also be stressful. Now I know the thing to do is get work done and then relax, but something that can be harmful. The second semester of college, I worked it out that I would relax after I had the stuff done for the next day. I wouldn’t jump too far ahead and work on stuff that was due at the end of the week, because I knew that would become too much. My opinion is to get stuff done for the next day that night and after you are finish, watch a movie, or listen to some music. Just take a break! Too many friends of mine over the years would try and work for hours on in and it would eventually make them go crazy. Your brain is just like the muscles in your body they do need breaks and time to relax. Overall, exams can be a extremely stressful week, but if you space out your work, make a schedules of what needs to be finished by a certain day, and take time to cool down and relax, it is really easy to get through exam week.

Now that the weather has finally started to get nicer and warmer out, it’s time for me to tell you about another great place to just relax for a few hours or maybe to do homework. Another great place to do these things during the nice weather is outside in the Quad. The Quad is a social area out in the middle of the campus, where people are always walking by when going to class. It has a lot of space to lie down and get a tan or to just relax. There are many trees that are located out in the quad which makes there a lot of shady area to stay cool. People also like to go outside on nice days and toss baseball or football and to even toss Frisbee. My freshman year at the Mount, people use to play Ultimate Frisbee which is a really fun game to play with a lot of people.

Even some professors will adjust to the weather for classes. When the weather is really nice outside, professors will give their lectures outside in the Quad sitting on the picnic tables, or on the grass. This is because of the hot temperatures in the classrooms when the weather gets warmer. This month, I have had a lot of my Technology, Crime and Deviance classes outside because of the nice weather. It is really nice having classes outside, because even though it is hard to hear the professor outside, it’s nice to lay down and relax during class time.

 

This coming week is the annual Celebration of Teaching and Learning which is held every year in April, where professors and students present projects that they have been researching and studying the past few months. It is a really nice event to attend because you get to hear really good presentations and learn a lot about what the Mount has to offer. As a senior you present either your Senior Thesis or your Capstone at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning. You create a poster of your research and present the information you collected from the project. This year, I will be presenting both my Senior Thesis and Capstone presentations because I took the classes this semester, so I will have two posters at the event. It has been a lot of hard work but at the end I will be very happy to know that I have completed these projects and on my way to graduation. It has been a long and hard road for me to get to graduation but it has been a great experience for me going to the Mount and meeting all the great people here at the Mount.

            With graduation being a few weeks away, I am really starting to get my life together for after graduation. I have begun looking for jobs and researching many employers to see what is exactly out there for a job in the Criminology/Sociology degree. Hopefully before I actually graduate though, I will have a job lined up for me so that I am not rushing to find a job.

Rapidly approaching here in the next week or so is the Mount’s Spring Formal. It is one of the most fun and exciting events here at the Mount. The Spring Formal is basically a dance and a Monte Carlo together. The tickets to attend are very reasonable in price.  Ladies will wear nice dresses and men will wear shirts and tie, so basically the attire to wear is equivalent to what you wore to your homecoming dances in high school. At the Spring Formal you are also served dinner, which is always really good. A few years ago we had the Spring Formal at the Montgomery Inn Banquet Hall downtown, which is actually torn down now. That year it was the best food ever! We had ribs and everything! Last year and this year, the formal will be held at Music Hall downtown. The banquet hall that we had last year was really big and very nice. It was big enough that we were able to have plenty of room for the Monte Carlo, dinner, as well as dancing. The room was enormous.

            For anyone who is unfamiliar with a Monte Carlo, it is basically a casino atmosphere. At the Spring Formal, everyone is given the same amount of play money that they can use to play poker games in which they can win more play money and then that is use at the end to purchase tickets for the prize drawings which each year they have very good prizes. My girlfriend and I have had a lot of luck the past two years at the Formal winning prizes. Two years ago my girlfriend won a drawing that gave her two passes to the Beach Waterpark which we were able to use that summer, which was awesome. And last year I got lucky and won two drawings in which I won Coupons to Larosas, Steak n Shake, Showcase Cinemas, as well as to many other places. The Spring Formal is a lot of fun, and if you decide to enroll here at the Mount, it is one event that you should definitely be at!

Before I got to the Mount, I was always use to going to church on Sunday Mornings. Back home, I always went to St. Clement church, and since I live at the Mount now, it is really a pain to get up early in the morning and race down to St. Bernard. However one of the good things about going to the Mount is that they have a Sunday Night Mass. Mass is held here on campus in the 6^th floor chapel at 9pm. It is a very nice and casual mass for the students. It is a really neat mass because a lot of people come and dress in casual clothes such as sweatpants and sweatshirts which most people don’t wear to their parish services. The music is really neat and upbeat and it is just a great time. I haven’t gone in a while because of being busy on Sunday nights and instead just go to my girlfriend's church for mass, but it is a really big advantage to going to the Mount. Instead of people coming out of state and looking around town for a place to go to church, they can just go to church here on campus.

            The Campus Ministry here on campus is a very popular and well known group on campus here at the Mount. They are very active in providing many fun activities such as night hikes, retreats, as well as many other activities throughout the semester. One of the more popular events that they do on campus is the Metanoia retreat which is actually coming up this weekend. Overall we have a lot of great clubs and organizations here on campus, but if you want to join one that is really active and does a ton for the campus, Campus Ministry would be a good choice.  

 
When applying for a job, there are many things that employers will look at when considering you for the job. They will look at your past employments, as well as your schooling. However one of the most important things that employers will look at is your computer skills. With everything changing in technology today, it is really important that people have good technology and computer skills.

           

The one computer skill that is the most important, especially in the business field is Excel. Excel is computer software that allows you track down financials as well as create charts and graph. It is a very easy to learn program, and here at the Mount, they have classes that will teach you how to use Excel.

           

Spreadsheets is a business class here at the Mount that teaches you how to use Excel. It will go through all the steps on how to start a worksheet as well as how to use the many features that Excel has. There are two different types of Spreadsheets classes that are offered here at the Mount. The one is a regular Spreadsheets class that will go into depth on everything that there is to know about Excel, as well as show you how to do absolutely everything in Excel, which is a 3 credit hour class. The other is Spreadsheets Basic which is a 1 credit hour class, which doesn’t go into depth as the regular spreadsheets class, but teaches you all the basic functions of Excel. If you come to the Mount, I strongly suggest that you take one of these two spreadsheets courses. They can be extremely helpful for you in the future.

This semester has been the hardest for me in college, but it is now finally time to relax with Spring Break here in a few days. I like Spring break because it’s a chance to take a week off before the end of the year and catch up on homework, or for most people sleep! I really don’t have exciting plans for over the break, mainly because I need to make some money so I will be working everyday.

            For Spring Break I will be working at my Cincinnati Reds job, working in the Retail Warehouse. It is a fun job because of the fact that I get to work down at Great American Ball Park. The atmosphere working down there, especially during a game is awesome. Baseball is one of my favorite sports, and to be able to have a job around a sports team is a dream come true. Of course, I will relax as well. Next Thursday starts the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament where there will be games all day long on both Thursday and Friday, which of course is extremely exciting. Overall, I am ready for a laid back spring break. It has been long awaited, because of the tough semester I have been going through. It felt like I had homework every night, and to have a whole week of no homework sounds really good right now! However, once spring break is over, it will be down to crunch time with about a month and a half to go before graduation. But for now, all I am thinking about is Spring break!

This is the time of the year for college students to talk about nothing but Spring break. However it’s not just time for spring break. It’s also time for March Madness!! March Madness is when the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament is going on and everyone begins to fill out their brackets to guess as to who will win the National Championship. I especially love this time of year because basketball is on all day long, as well as on the big screen T.V. near the Computer Learning Center at the Mount. The big screen not only has all the NCAA Basketball games on it, during other months it will be on  ESPN Sportscenter continously. I notice it all the time when I go to work at the CLC and walk past the big screen to see ESPN on. It’s nice because while I work, I can open the door and catch the sports scores of the various games.

Also when the National Championship game comes, the Resident Life and Hall Council will have a Championship game party, which is always full of food and snacks. It always fun being able to watch a sporting event with a lot of people instead of just yourself, because it can be rather boring watching it yourself in your dorm room. I consider this to be the greatest time of the year because I am huge sports fan and especially a college basketball fan. The games get so intense, and when there is an upset, it just adds to the excitement of March Madness!

One of the really neat things here on campus is that it is all run by technology. When coming here to the Mount, you are required to have a laptop, where you use for homework, as well as for communication around campus. The #1 way of communication on campus is email. When your professor cancels class, if you need to get a hold of them, or to hear about important events on campus, the best thing to use is your Mount Email. However, like any type of technology, you can have problems with it. This is where the ISS Helpdesk here at the College of Mount St. Joseph can help.
    The ISS Helpdesk is a group of people who are available to help you with any kind of problem to your laptop. It can range anywhere from a hardware problem, like a broken key, to problems inside your computer, such as getting rid of a virus. If you bought your computer from the ISS Helpdesk and order a warranty, they can have your computer shipped for repairs if there is something that they can not fix themselves. If you have your own laptop however, they can assist you with getting set up on the network, as well as help with some problems, however many problems they will not be able to assist you with and you would have to go to the place where you bought the laptop or contact the company that made it. The ISS Helpdesk is a really helpful place on campus. I have had to go down there and have my computer reimaged or fixed many times. Every time I get my laptop back I get it quickly and the problem is always resolved.