Well, my first year of graduate school is finally over. While in the moment, the year seemed to drag by, but in retrospect everything went by very quickly. Less than a year from now I'll have a Masters of Education and be on my way (hopefully) to a new job. This past semester was a very difficult one, but from what I understand, the next two semesters are much easier to handle.

I'm spending my summer interning at Baylor University. I'm working in the New Student Programs office with the Baylor Bound orientation program. I started here on Monday the 21st, and while I've only been here two days but I'm really enjoying my time here. The individuals that I work with are a funny and makes it fun to go to work. Monday we begin training for the Baylor Bound Leaders (orientation leaders) and will do that for two weeks. Throughout the month of June we have orientation sessions everyday, which will make for a minimum of 12 hour days. Should be fun!

I'm going to try to keep updates up here. But, feel free to e-mail me (sgmudd@gmail.com). My address here is: 300 Cottonwood #1301, Waco, TX 76706.

This weekend I'm heading back to College Station to celebrate my birthday with some of my friends there. I am sure that we will have a great time. I will be working on my actual birthday, so this weekend is about relaxing before the craziness of summer begins!

For now, I'm going to get back to reading. We have a common reading book that all freshman students are asked to read. During Baylor Bound Leader training we will be leading discussions on each chapter. I will be facilitating one of them, and need to refresh on the book. We are reading Parker Palmer's "Let Your Life Speak", which I read in one of my classes at Belmont. I strongly suggest that everyone read this book at some point in life. It's so good!

Yesterday was the first day in a 6 day appeal process for American native Eric Volz. Eric Volz, the son of one of the deans who I worked for at Belmont, was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend. However, evidence, witnesses, phone records, etc indicate that he was in another city, 2 hours away the entire day.

Please make your friends, family, neighbors, media outlets aware of this situation. You can find all the details and facts of the whole ordeal on the following pages:
www.friendsofericvolz.com
www.myspace.com/freeericvolz and this week's People Magazine.

Most of all, please pray for Eric and his family.

Yesterday one of the most horrible massacres in the history of our country happened on a university campus. I have been enthralled with the news reports from the small town surrounding the VT campus. Virginia Tech is a very comparable institution to Texas A&M. The two are entrenched in tradition that can often be linked to being a campus that a city was built around, and the presence of a Corps of Cadets. My heart is just broken over this whole thing.


As a hall director I have found myself wondering how I would have responded had the first shooting happened in my residence hall. How would I have handled things, and what it must be like to feel completely powerless to protect your students. This could have happened at any university, and honestly, there isn't much that you can do to prevent this type of thing. That's a terrifying thought.

My heart of course goes out to the students, friends and families of the community. But my heart is broken for the things that the administrators will have to do over the next several days, weeks, months and for the way that they will constantly be questioning themselves and the decisions that they have made. In retrospect- maybe they should have closed the campus after the first shooting. But based on the information they had at the time- that would have been a drastic measure for what appeared to simply be an angry boyfriend. Regardless of the facts at the time- they will no doubt be under fire for their actions, and possible even be sued by a grieving family. (Texas A&M is still in court over the bonfire collapse which happened in 1999.)

It scares me to think about how this type of incident happens, and how easily it could have been anywhere else. I know that I will have to deal with some sort of crisis management and I have no idea what that will be like, and hope that when those decisions are made, right or wrong, I will have the necessary support to deal with the aftermath. Just as I hope the administrators at VT will have.

So today, as I try to finish my last two 20 page papers (which are supposed to help me be prepared to be a student affairs administrator), I will listen to CNN, and through my tears remind myself that life goes on. I will pray for all of those affected by this horrible act of violence. And try to remember that everything is ok in the end, if it's not ok, it's not the end.

This week has been crazy. I experienced for the first time what Texans call winter. We had the lighter end of the large winter front that moved through the country this week. It was very cold, and there was some ice on cars, trees, etc. It wasn't much compared to what I am used to when an "ice storm" occurs. To many people here, however, this was a major winter storm that constituted the university being closed for two days. I am still amazed that my second and third snow days ever happened in Texas!

Our classes were supposed to start on Tuesday, however they are starting today. Having class cancelled was a bittersweet thing. I was excited at the thought of a snow day, but also sad for a couple of reasons. The first is that not having school gets relatively boring pretty quickly. I have learned that there are only so many hours you can spend in front of the t.v., or napping. I am in desperate need for a consistent routine! Secondly, having the entire state of Texas virtually shut down, made check in for Hobby a pain. Even though the hall reopened a week ago, I still have quite a few students who have not yet checked, for various reasons. I guess a sign that you are becoming an adult is when you would prefer staying open in winter weather over the headache that being closed causes.

Another crazy thing happened this past weekend. My friend, Ana, and I went to Houston for the morning on Saturday. We were going to order a bridesmaid dress for one of her friend’s wedding and to have lunch at some local joint. On the way home, a small rock or piece of gravel hit my windshield and broke it! There is a small star shaped place where the rock hit and then on either side of that star, the window cracked. It's probably on about 6 inches in length, but is still cause to have the windshield replaced. I could not believe that a tiny rock that wasn't even visible could do that much damage to my poor Rav4.

If the rest of this semester is anything like the rest of it, it should certainly be filled with many interesting stories and experiences. I love and miss you all!

Happy 2007! I can't believe that it's already time to start up a new semester. It literally seems as thought it was just yesterday that I left for Christmas break. Now I'm back in College Station starting my second semester. Classes start in about a week and a half, but right now work is taking up a lot of time. The halls open for the spring semester next week and RAs return this weekend. Therefore, myself and other hall directors are busy preparing for these students’ arrivals. I've been back less than 24 hours and I already have a lot of work to do.

Christmas break was a much-needed time to relax, however by the end of it I was anxious to return. It seems that I have grown more attached to this place and the people here than I had originally thought was possible. Although I had always expected that I would grow to love my classmates (cohort members) that respect and admiration came much sooner than I would have thought. We are single handedly the most rambunctious and funny cohort. I have so much fun with those folks, so I'm ready to get back to rousing Dr. Mario Tournaments when we should be writing papers, as well as what other distractions may develop along the way.

I am also excited about the classes I'll be taking this semester. One of them is a practicum class, which is essentially an internship. This consists of me working 10 hours a week in another office on campus and going to class for 2 hours during the week. I will be working in the Adult, Graduate, and Off-Campus Student Services office. My duties will entail putting together a childcare guide, planning a block party for graduate students, and shadowing the planning of Graduate Student Research week. It will be a great experience to learn how to program for such a large, diverse group of non-traditional students. It will also be very beneficial to have practice in publishing a brochure such as the childcare guide.

A couple of my classmates and myself will be taking one of our electives this spring as well; therefore I'll have a total of 15 hours. The elective class that we're taking is about social justice in a global society. I am looking forward to learning more about social justice issues and theory, which is a developing interest for me.

I hope to be more diligent about posting updates in the future. I can't promise anything, however. My job, class work and cohort are often unpredictable and there is no telling what the rest of the semester holds. Keep your fingers crossed!!

This week the office of Graduate Student Services hosted a wine tasting event. It was free of charge to grad students here, needless to say myself and several of my classmates took part in that.

A professional wine taster came and gave us a lesson on tasting wine. We also learned what types of wines pair well with what types of foods. We were able to taste four different kinds of wine with different types of food.

It was a nice way to ease some of the stress of school. This past week we had a midterm in my Student Affairs functions class. This week we have a paper due and several "reading cards" in another class. It is getting to be that point in the semester where we have a lot of work to do, both academically but also with our assistantships. I don't mind the busyness so much, since it means that the end of the semester is quickly approaching. I need Christmas break!!! With that said it's back to school work for me.

This weekend was the first huge home game of the football season. A&M played in-state rival Texas Tech and from what I read on ESPN it was a pretty decent game. Myself and my fellow cohort members had ambitious plans to tailgate and attend the game. Those of us who participated in at least part of it had a really interesting time.

Tailgating in Texas is different than in KY/TN (or really anywhere else in the country). Here most folks tailgate after the game, but those of us who were from places where you wear sweatshirts and coats to football games wanted a taste of home- therefore, we tailgated before the game. Bad idea. Well, maybe the part where we parked on the top level of a parking garage was the bad idea. Either way, I've got one heck of a bad sunburn on one arm to show for it.

I am not totally sure why people seem to tailgate after the game here. I do think, however, it has to do with one of two things- first, it's so freaking hot that you have to do it after the game otherwise you'll be too exhausted to make it through the entire game; secondly, you get drunk after the game to forget how bad your team is. I'm not sure which it is. My dad tells me it must be the heat, because at KY games they don't tailgate aftewards and the Wildcats are worse than the Aggies. He makes a good point.

The game was ok. My friend Kate and I left with like 10 minutes left in the first half. Here folks who are like us are considered 2%ers, however, I don't think we qualify for 2%. I feel like 2%ers at least watch the band before they leave the game. Maybe we are like 1.5%ers. After watching about 7 girls being carried up from the stands to the EMS units because they had passed out from the heat, we opted to leave before we became a statistic. It was hot! And, standing for three hours is not the most pleasant thing in the world. So, we left, went home and took a nap. That's the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

That evening my friend and fellow grad student, Katie, took me country dancing with some of her friends from Dallas. That's right folks, I learned how to two-step. It was rather fun, but I can't say that I'm any good at it. I had thought that country dancing was the similar to line dancing, but I quickly learned that it is not the same. Although I am not a very good dancer, I really enjoyed myself and had a great time. Hopefully we'll be going again soon.

These two photos are from my first Aggie Football game. The one on the left is the Fighting Aggie Marching band- they are freaking amazing! The stuff they do while playing is pretty unbelievable. The one on the right is me and my friend Ana during the game. My face is all funny looking because I was hot and trying to figure out how to take the picture on my new phone.














Here's a photo from the painting adventure- you can kinda see the color we painted it.

Well friends, I am finally all moved in and have everything set up. Just for fun I thought you might like to see pictures of my apartment pre-settle in.

This is me standing in my kitchen talking to Grace on the phone. That lovely thing that all the boxes are stacked on is the bar. You can also see my bathroom to the left.

These two are of my bedroom and you can see in the distance my three closets. I am blessed with more closet space than I can fill. I'm sure I can remedy that over the next two years!This is my spacious living room. I have a huge built in entertainment center that has much more shelf space than I currently have books to fill out. However, I'm sure that grad school will take care of that whether I like it or not!

These photos are from the day Dad and I moved all of my stuff in, so as you can imagine it looks much different now. My friend Nicole came to visit me over Labor Day Weekend and she and I painted the living room to a lovely shade of sage green. Eventually the large kitchen wall will be that same shade of green and the bedroom will have a chocolate brown accent wall with a lighter khaki on the others that is in that same brown family. I have the paint and the supplies to do these, I just haven't had the time!

As you might imagine, I've been really busy since I arrived here. It's been about a month and a half of non-stop activity. I started my first week in TX with Hall Director Training and after two weeks of that the exhaustive work began. RA training started and we began preparing the hall for opening. Opening day went really well. We weren't ever really busy and I only had to handle one parent issue the whole week. It was such a blessing because life in Hobby hasn't been that peaceful since! I have to admit, however, that I missed the chaotic energy of good ol' Wright/Maddox move in days- it doesn't quite seem like move in day when you get to spend the entire day on the couch in an air conditioned room.

My residents are great and so are my RAs- spontaneity seems to be the hallmark of our building this year. I've only had a few issues with residents, a staffing issue and some off-the-wall maintenance problems. The oddest thing I've had to handle so far was a room flooding from a sprinkler outside it's window- the window was closed too, figure that one out! My RAs and I couldn't help but laugh at the situation (of course this happened at 12:30 a.m. when no landscapers are around) but the poor resident didn't think it was so funny. Maybe he will soon. The other oddity has been rumors going around campus about me firing RAs with post-it notes- even though A&M is a huge campus it certainly has some of the same characteristics of smaller schools!

I am enjoying my classes for the most part. It is much more fun to study something that you are actually interested in rather than something you have to study to graduate. Granted, that doesn't mean that I actually study any more than I used to- some habits seem to be hard to break! I told myself that I would stay on top of reading and other assignments, but like always that hasn't happened yet- maybe by the time I graduate from A&M I'll have that "skill" under my belt. Don't count on it though.

Texas is pretty cool so far and by that I am not referring to the temperature. There are some decent restaurants here and we (my Cohort and I) have had fun getting to know the town. College Station really isn't as small as everyone says that it is- there are more stores and things here than my hometown so I think I can handle the "smallness". It's definitely not Nashville though. Things here are really different than back home- for example people here drive trucks just for the sake of driving trucks. And when I say trucks- I mean the huge ones you can't see around in traffic. I would say that more of my residents drive massive trucks than know the appropriate uses of 4-wheel drive. I suppose it's true that everything really is bigger in Texas.

The heat here isn’t unbearable- by the way. It is much hotter here however it is also much less humid. I would take the heat over the humidity any day.

When my friend Nicole came to visit I picked her up at the airport in Houston and she and I spent the day in the city. Most of our day consisted of being stuck in Ikea (which was pleasurable) or being stuck in traffic (which was not). If we were actually moving in traffic it's pretty safe to say that we were lost. There were moments when we thought we might actually die in Houston. But, we finally made it out, but not without some good laughs and some good Ikea purchases. I'm going to have to go back there again (mainly to Ikea), but next time with someone who actually knows how to navigate the city.

To all my Nashville friends, I miss you a lot. I have still not found a suitable replacement for Bongo or Pancake Pantry, but I have found a great SATCO like establishment that has some great tortillas. Also, Freebirds definitely lives up to it's reputation. I have to admit, though, that there aren't any BBQ places here quite as good as Judge Beans, (if their are I haven't found them) but I suppose Rudy's will suffice. Anyway, I am planning to come visit in October Fall Follies weekend, so make sure you have time to see me!

FYI- I had to get a new cell phone- long, long story (no worries, flushing was not involved this time around). So It's a new number and I just haven't gotten around to calling everyone yet. If you haven't talked to me recently, send me an e-mail and I'll give you the new number.

Much love my friends. I must return to writing my first grad school paper (it’s due Wednesday so I guess I’m getting better- normally I wouldn’t have started until Tuesday night). I hope not to take so long to update you next time, I'm sure you were going crazy waiting!

Miss ya'll let me know what's going on in your lives!

Hi friends! This blog will be my way of keeping up with my friends and family during my graduate studies adventures at Texas A&M! Gig Em' Aggies!!

I'll be moving to College Station Wednesday, so be praying for safe travels!