A few weeks ago they had their end-of-the-year show, and boy, was it impressive!

A couple of my friends were in the performance below. Nifty, huh?

So, if you’re looking for something fun to do on campus, try out DubH!

Are you ready for orientation!? It starts next week!

During orientation you’ll be able to do very exciting things like sign up for classes, get your ISUCard, tour residence halls, eat in the dining center, and talk to your adviser! There are a lot of sessions that are going to be going on during the day and some of them overlap, so when you get your orientation packet in the mail make sure to select the sessions you want to attend and plan out your day!

For those of you that didn’t know, orientation is a two-day thing, so make sure to make arrangements to stay somewhere in Ames that night, unless you live super close. Remember that for $37 or $47 dollars per person, you can stay in the Maple Residence Hall for the night. Your orientation confirmation guarantees space for you and your family in Maple Hall for overnight housing on Day One. There is no need to call ahead for reservations.

Things you should be bringing with you to orientation:

• Your college orientation confirmation
• Your photo ID and university ID number (so you can get your ISUCard!)
• Comfortable clothing and shoes. You’ll do a lot of walking!
• Umbrella (hopefully it doesn’t rain, but just in case!)
• Blanket, robe, pillow
• Recreational attire (if you wish to participate in evening recreation activities)
• Phone charger
• Alarm clock
• Change of clothes for the next day

If you are staying in Maple Hall, soap, towels, pillow, and bed linens are provided. Telephones, televisions, and reading lamps are not provided.

Now this is really important – before you head to campus for orientation, make sure that you sign up for your Net-ID. I made a video earlier this year to show you how easy it is to create.

And now? Time to get excited!

I am working for Ag Partners as an agronomy intern in Calumet, IA. Calumet is a tiny little town about 45 minutes south of my hometown, Spencer. I’ll be living off my parents for a one more summer and I’m not at all upset about that! Ha! Have to save money when you can! For my job I will be scouting corn and soybean fields, working on a summer project and gathering information for the project, and helping collect information from our test plots among other things.

Along with working I’ll also be doing fun stuff throughout the summer, and I’ll be sharing some of those things here! So stay tuned and keep your eyes peeled for what I am up to! To all the graduating seniors: congratulations and good luck with you future! To the incoming freshman or transfer students: Have a great summer and get excited!! You are going to be starting a fun and exciting new life at Iowa State! Have fun at orientation and see you in August! To everyone: HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!!!!!!

Graduation was last Saturday at 1:30pm in Hilton Coliseum.  This was the first time that I went because I had a lot of friends graduating this time around. The place was packed, of course! And all the smiley faces were a contagious thing. Although, I couldn’t help but feel bittersweet emotions…just because I realize how fast time flies in college, and that I don’t really want to graduate yet. I don’t think I feel prepared to leave this phase behind. And just seeing everybody with their families, the proud faces of all the parents, the smell of new adventures lingering in the air just made it all too salient!

Here are some pictures I took with a couple of friends!

This is my friend Heather whom I met my freshman year because we lived next to each other, and we bonded with each other more than with our own roommates.

These are my friends Tania and Yee Lung whom I met last summer when I stayed here in Ames working and rock-climbing a lot!

By extension, I met this wonderful group of Malaysian students, and most of them graduated this year!

My good friends Santiago and MJ!

And these girls…I don’t know them, but the moment was too nice to let it pass

Iowa State University is home to one of the largest campus public art programs in the United States! During the tour we stopped in Morrill Hall and man, I didn’t realize how much cool stuff there is in there! They have this really cool timeline in there with pictures and facts, which is pretty sweet!

Morrill Hall is home to a lot of Christian Petersen’s artwork. You may have seen his work around campus. Iowa State is where he decided to make the base of his professional art career.

The other cool thing about Morrill Hall is that they have a small museum inside, and the items in the museum get rotated in and out so the displays aren’t always the same! If you get bored sometime or just have some time in between classes I highly suggest checking it out!

So maybe it’s not nearly as romantic as that other Paris in France, but it has an Eiffel Tower too. It’s arguably a lot cooler considering the Texas version has a cowboy hat. Makes the France one seem kind of goofy. Did no one think to put a beret on that thing?

So here’s what’s happening. Very soon I will be starting my journey south to Texas for a summer internship with the Campbell Soup Company. I’m all kinds of anxious, nervous, and excited. Not only have I never been to Texas, I’ve also never been this far away from home. This whole experience will be very new to me.

I’ve never had the opportunity to work in the food industry before, so I will certainly be learning a lot over the next 3 months! I’m excited to work for a great and trusted brand name in the industry. Rest assured I will have some Texas sized adventures while I’m in the Lone Star State, so I am gearing up to explore all of these places that I’ve never been before. If you have any suggestions for places to see or things to do, please let me know!

For those of you who are worried out of your minds, stop! I am in California at an internship.

For everyone else (which is probably everyone besides my mother). You don’t really care anyway. So here is a dancing cat picture.

http://www.addcode.net/image/funny-images/funny-gifs-003.gif

Anyway, yeah! I’m in Silicon Valley enjoying sunny weather and interning at Intuit!

For those who don’t know what the heck Intuit is, you might recognize their products: Turbo Tax, Mint.com, Quicken Loans, Quickbooks, etc.

I’m going to be working on Apple products (a BRAND new experience in my life) for them, but I can’t really give you more details than that. Wink wink.

Some other fun plans of mine include traveling to Arizona next week to speak at the National Center for Women & IT, and in June I’ll be headed to *LONDON* for a “hackathon in the sky“!

I’m super pumped for this summer, I’ll be sure to keep updating y’all on jazz.

I hope you guys have a great summer, and that ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE. The good ones.

Byyyeeeee!

(Cue “Freedom ’90″ by George Michael)

I say hello after foreverrrrrrrr! I was super MIA (that’s missing in action, guys!) because…well, I don’t have a better excuse than that I was handling finals. I had a ton of things due those last two week of class. Like three papers to write, four finals to study for, a class presentation to give, etc.

I’ll confess I ended up doing everything last minute. There I was…like EVERYDAY of dead week and finals week crammed in a corner of the fourth floor of the library with three of my friends, head phones plugged in, jammin’ to a fine tune (something like the new album of One Republic, which you gotta go listen to, or Damien Rice, or Snow Patrol) and typing away on my computer. Naturally, with interjected breaks of 5 minutes of chit-chat for every 30 minutes of hard-work. I think. Or maybe more.

Point is…these days were quite the odyssey. All of them. Those days when the library closed at 2am, we stayed until then and later walked to the Design building to keep working! One of these occasions was quite legendary. I’ve never really pulled a real all-nighter before, at least not one where I’ve stayed up the full 48 hours, but to me this time it came close enough! One night my friends and I made our home in the Design building auditorium for the night and studied all the way until 6am, and when we went out it was SNOWING! Nope, none of us were prepared since the day before it had been at the 60 degree weather. To top it off, no bus was running then, I had my bicycle and wanted to get home but couldn’t, and when I tried to take my bike off the rail where I had left it, the tire fell. Yup, it just fell.

Insert poker face.

Somehow Jesus high above heard my cry for mercy because right then a friend of ours happened to be walking out of Design as well as offered us a ride home. Sweet heaven! I got home that morning, showered, and slept until 8:30am. HAHA. You can imagine how much like crap I felt the next day.

But hey! On a happier note! Finals are over! My days right after finals consisted of celebrating my 21st birthday (yay!), helping my friends move out of the residence halls, running errands around, and finally getting to sleep an uninterrupted 9 hours a night. Lately, I’ve been preparing for my upcoming study abroad program in Italy this upcoming June, and getting back into the swing of things with this blog. I’ll be sharing more details really soon!

Thanks for being patient!

Xoxox,
Mellanie

Freshmen year with then President Geoffroy

Senior year