It's Not Goodbye, Only See You Later

I am officially an alumni of Dean College. Saturday, May 9th, 2009 was my graduation. I graduated summa cum laude (graduating with an overall GPA of 3.8 or higher) and won the "Outstanding Student-Leader Award" as well. The ceremony was beautiful and emotional seeing all my friends, family, professors and staff members there to support and congratulate all of the graduates.
Dean has made an immense impact on my life and the relationships and friendships I made while here will forever be in my heart. Without Dean I would not be on my way to Alvin Ailey's Independent Study Program in Manhattan, New York this Fall feeling ready to face the world. I am grateful to everyone I have met here and everyone that has helped me achieve everything I was able to achieve on campus. I will miss everyone and everything about Dean and look forward to being an active alumni. It's not goodbye, only see you later. For now, it's New York or bust! : )

Study Study Study

Tomorrow are my two, and only, finals. Today was spent finishing up on notes, reading and preparing for tomorrow. At 7pm, we had the CA/Staff Social at a new cafe that is located on the bottom floor of the condos, Cafe Dolce. It was delicious! We had tons of great food and were given individual superlatives...I got "Most Likely to be...Enthusiastic About EVERYthing"...hooray! I was also given an award for "Best Passive Program of the Year", which was in recognition of my bulletin boards I had done throughout my building. Everyone also received a Residence Life sweatshirt.
Now I am writing my final paper at Dean College...a 2-3 page paper for my Literature of Baseball class about the book "The Natural". I will definitely let you know how finals go, but for now, I have to get back to work. : )

Dance Finals Complete

So my dance finals were this week and they all went well. I know I could have done a little bit better on my ballet final this past Friday, but I was up until 4am Thursday due to being on duty in the condos until 2am and having to document some situations that happened in the building. Hey, it happens.
I have decided to take Dean's Summer Intensive before I move to NYC in August so that I can stay active and continue dancing over break. It goes from July 7th to July 31st, Tuesday through Friday 9am to 11am and is just ballet. So I will have a couple more weeks with my ballet teacher, Jill Silverman, before I have to say goodbye.
This weekend I am preparing for my two finals on Monday (Literature of Baseball and Algebra Essentials) and trying to destress a little. Hooray for sleep and TV. : )

So sad...

So I thought I would be ok about leaving Dean, just sad, but happy to be moving on and moving forward...not even a little bit. In Dance Composition class today I lost it...we were watching the last couple pieces and I could not stop crying. First off, many of the pieces my classmates choreographed were beyond beautiful. I knew my friends and fellow dancers were creative people, but some of the stuff I saw today looked like it was from professional dance companies, I was shocked and amazed at what came out of people; both the dancers and choreographers. A couple others started to cry and within a few minutes most of the class was in tears. About seven of us are graduating and most of the girls in this class I consider my sisters. It is amazing the relationships you will form in college and throughout life. I was surprised at how upset I got because you never realize what you have until its gone. Going to Alvin Ailey is the best decision for my career at this point, but leaving Dean and all my friends is emotionally difficult. I will definitely miss this place. : (

Final week of classes

I honestly can't believe the school year went by so fast here at Dean. So much has happened this year, and although it felt like the year took forever to end, the time really flew. There is one good word that a dancer here at Dean can use to describe finals week. Busy! On top of getting ready for normal finals, dancers have finals in their dance classes as well.

The good thing about dance finals is that they are held the week before normal finals, so everything is spread out. The thing that has been keeping everyone going the last couple days has definitely been the weather. It has been gorgeous and every chance I get I try to get outside and enjoy some of it. Dean had a BBQ out on the sports teams practice field this weekend. Good food and nice weather, it all made me so excited for summer to begin. The end of school brings a bitter sweet feeling though. I'm glad that the year is over and summer is about to begin, but its going to be weird leaving all of my friends who I see on a daily basis. I'm definitely going to miss a lot of people.

Annual Student/Staff Softball Game

So this week is Spring Week at Dean (as I mentioned in another blog) and tomorrow is the Annual Student/Staff Softball Game. The staff team has beat the students for the past four years so, needless to say, we have a lot of pressure going into this game. I will be playing and I have to say, I am really nervous. I have never been that good at sports but everyone is just out to have a good time and I know it will definitely be fun. Our team got together the other night, in my condo, and made our team shirts. We are the "Diamond Cutters" and I'm number 8. I am also pumped because there is going to be an ice cream truck there for the game as well, hooray! Go Spring Week! : )

Housing Selection

Tonight was the beginning of housing selection and was specifically for the Juniors and Seniors and students that wanted a single as well.
Like most colleges, Dean does housing selection based on a number lottery. Each student is given a number based on the number of credits they have completed (naturally the juniors and seniors have lower numbers than the freshmen and sophomores) and the lower the number the better. Many students have the same number of completed credits, when that happens those students are given that set of numbers randomly.
The CAs signed up to help with this process, so I worked the check-in table. Fortunately, tonight was seemless and everything went smoothly. Students came to the check-in table with their student id, they were checked off of the master list (first making sure their housing deposit for next year was paid and they were pre-registered for classes-if either of these things were not done yet, they were not able to participate in housing selection), then they were put in line based on their number.
Thursday may be a little crazier because that is when the remaining students choose their housing (this includes the sophomores and freshmen and everyone else that did not come tonight). I just wanted to explain the system of housing selection because whether you go to Dean or not, you will definitely take part it in. Just remember, things always work out. : )