It's Late-ish & I'm Sick-ish

I am ready for bed, but wanted to post since it has been awhile. I am hoping a full nights sleep will help me get over my head cold.

I acquired this cold during a very long trip back to Coe. I was in North Carolina the past few days at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Conference (AASHE) with a fellow member of the Environmental Club, Johanna. We went to look at what other colleges around the nation are doing to be more sustainable. In case you are unaware, Merriam Webster defines sustainability as: relating to a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.

The conference was great!! Johanna and I would sit up late every night in our hotel room typing up ideas we came across throughout the day. We are hoping to start some big changes here at Coe. We would particularly like to move along the progress of the American Colleges and Universities Presidential Climate Commitment. President Phifer signed this commitment a year and a half ago meaning that Coe has to come up with a plan to become carbon neutral by next year.

Anyways, I am sick because we were up at 6 am to go to the last day of the conference, left at 5 pm and returned to Coe at 1:00 am. I woke up at 7 the next morning to study for a test I had at 9 and then prepared a presentation for my 2 o'clock Spanish class. It was intense! I spent tonight relaxing in my room. I finished a few projects and made snowflakes with some of the women on my floor. We decided we only have a few weeks left of class before Winter Break, so we started winter decorations today. Our floor will slowly accumulate snowflakes up to Winter Break--it should be fun!

Looking ahead, I have much work to do. Like I said, only a few more weeks left of the semester. This leaves me with 2 advertising projects, a Spanish paper and presentation, a rhetorical theory paper, a research methods project, and 4 finals in the next few weeks. Oh the joy, lol. We are also working hard on dance team to prepare for the State Competition on December 5---come cheer us on!

Halloween :)

It has been an entire week of Halloween celebrations!

Last weekend we had Haunted Hallways on campus. This is a tradition where a number of floors in the residence halls decorate and haunt their hallways as other members of campus walk through. My floor rocked!! We covered the ceiling and walls with black trash bags, had "bloody" sheets hanging from the ceiling, and spider webs everywhere! Our theme was originally IT but we ended up playing up the Coe story of Helen the ghost, too.

Way, way back in the day Voorhees (the all women's residence hall) was also home to the infirmary. Helen was the only Coe student to die in the infirmary and supposedly haunts Voorhees. She does things like clicking the heater or printer, or other random electronics on and off. There are also stories about how she does not like boys---this one boy was badmouthing Helen while he was in his girlfriends room. She walked him down to his car and came back to find all of the pictures of him on the ground. Spooky...

So in our hallway we had Helen in the bathroom and down at the end of the hall. It was pretty scary. We tied for first in the contest. We ended up leaving our decorations up all week.

Katie being scary!

Vanessa as Helen

A look down our hallway...

For Halloween I decided to be a pumpkin! I found this sweet costume at Good Will. I didn't do too much as far as celebrating Halloween. Last night I was the designated driver for some of my (21-year-old) friends who went to the bars in Iowa City. I had a lot of fun getting dressed up. Tonight I am on duty which means I'm stuck in the building all night...but as a pumpkin!