Decorating!

Hello everyone!  Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are now safely back at home, school, or wherever your destination was!  I had an absolutely wonderful time at home and now I am back on campus, ready for the final weeks of the semester.  We only have two more weeks of classes, one week of finals, then it will be Christmas break.  I think most students here at SMC are feeling a combination of stress and excitement for the coming weeks.  As a way to help ease our transition back to school, my roommate Emma and I decided to spend some time decorating our room.  We did this last year and decided we must do it again this year!  Emma spent some quality time over break making some of the best paper snowflakes I have ever seen!  I also got a mini wreath when I was home.  Since our windows are pretty high, we had to move my bed and dresser around in order to hang up the wreath.  It was quite an adventure but definitely worth it!
 

Emma and I were very excited to finally be able to
put up our Let it Snow jellies that we bought a few weeks ago!



 We were very happy with our windows, but that wasn't the end of our decorating.  While going through decorations last year over Christmas break I found a huge stocking and have been saving it for our room ever since!

As part of our decorations last year, Emma and I bought mini stockings to go on our door:


Even though Emma's birthday was a few weeks ago, we're apparently still celebrating :)
 

Last but not least, every set of Christmas decorations has to have some bells!

As small as they may seem, these decorations definitely help to make our room feel even more like a home away from home.  Emma and I are so excited for Christmas and I hope you are too!

As always, thanks for reading my blog and have a great week!

Being Thankful

Hi everyone!  I hope that by now you are all safely at home or wherever you are spending the holiday.  Seeing as tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to take some time to think about everything I'm grateful for this year.  There are so many things, but here are some of what I think are the most important:

1. My family - As with many things, being away at college makes me appreciate my family on a whole new level.  For me, being home all summer made it easy to take for granted the fact that I lived with my family and could therefore see them whenever I wanted.  It also made it easier to get annoyed with them about trivial things that didn't really matter.  However being back at school for a few months has helped me to regain my appreciation for my family and everything they give me.  Those of you who know me know that I have an extremely close relationship with my mom.  I always keep in contact with her when I'm at school, but there is something special about actually seeing her face, being able to give her a huge hug, have sporadic talks, or just watch our TV shows together.  I've been home for a little more than 24 hours and already I'm loving it and am so appreciative of the blessing that my mother (and my family) is in my life.

2. My house - I'm pretty sure anyone who's ever spent a significant amount of time away from home can attest to the fact that there are simple comforts of home that cannot be found anywhere else.  Since I never moved growing up, I am thankful for my house in general and all its little quirks.  Being home again reminds me of all the things I love about it - my goats, doing as many loads of laundry as I want, the sound of my mom working in the kitchen (and preparing wonderful home cooked food), emptying the dishwasher (my favorite household chore, weird, I know), having a room to myself, and countless other things which are all unique my house, town, and the wonderful state of New Hampshire!

2. My friends - I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have such wonderful friends, both at home and at SMC.  Not much more to say except that I love them all and I'm so happy that I've been able to stay in touch with friends from NH as well as meet some absolutely amazing people at Saint Mike's!



Hiking Mt. Philo this past weekend...check out Alex's post about this!



Surprising my best friend Paige at the airport last year :)

3. My health/safety- As my mom always says, "If you have your health, you have everything."  I am so happy that I am healthy and can always go to Health Services if I ever need them.  And of course when I'm home my mom can take care of me!  I'm also so grateful that I feel safe both at home and at SMC.  At Saint Mike's, I know that Public Safety is always there if I ever need them for anything, even if it's as small as locking myself out of my room (which I have yet to do, knock on wood!).

4. Opportunities - I am thankful every day for the opportunities I have been blessed with, specifically in the form of higher education.  I know not everyone has this privilege, and going to school at Saint Mike's is more than I could've asked for.  There isn't anywhere else I would rather be.  I absolutely love it there and can't wait to go back on Sunday!


Oldie but goodie :) Getting ready to send in my deposit!

5. Last but not least, I am forever grateful to everyone who reads my blog!  After all, I wouldn't have it if there was no one to read it!

So there you have it.  These are just some of the countless things I am grateful for this year.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and gets to spend some quality time with family and friends, and eat delicious food of course!

As always, thanks for reading my blog!
-Merrill

Birthday Surprises

Happy Tuesday everyone!  Hope you're all having a great week.  As some of you may know, I had a hard time transitioning to life away from home when I first came to Saint Mike's, but my group of friends has helped me immensely and I now refer to them as my family away from home, or my SMC family.

As everyone knows, birthdays can be very special days.  Last week was my roommate Emma's birthday, so my SMC family decided to go all out to celebrate Emma and make her feel as special as we could.  The original plan was to go to dinner at Sloane, which is the cafeteria on North Campus, where we live.  Sloane is great because it's like a real restaurant - you have to make reservations, and once you get there you are served an appetizer, entree, and dessert!  On Emma's birthday morning (my friends and I have now decided that Emma's birthday is a holiday because the celebration never ends), my friend Cait secretly asked me at breakfast if I wanted to run to Shaw's with her after lunch to get a cake and some balloons to decorate Emma's and my room.  I of course said yes!  After we got out of class, we had the fastest lunch possible and then took the shuttle back up North to get Cait's car, then went to Shaw's.  We got Emma a cake and had one of the Shaw's employees decorate it (she was so nice!) as well as some balloons, apple cider (a drink we all love, especially in the fall), and flowers.  Once we got back, Cait and I raced to decorate my room with the balloons and some streamers.  We wanted to be finished before Emma got back from class so it was both stressful and exciting!

Fortunately, we were successful.  Emma was completely surprised by the decorations!  We had a great time at Sloane, and when we got back we had cake and spent some time together as a family.  Amanda, our wonderful RA, took some pictures for us:

Emma being all excited about our decorated room!

 

The fam :)

Fortunately, the fun didn't end there.  One of our friends, Vick, who transferred to Keene State, came to visit us this weekend, so on Sunday we all went out to breakfast at one of our favorite spots in Burlington, The Skinny Pancake.

Cait, Alex, Vick, Emma, me, Lindy

Today, Emma's dad was able to come up to see her and he was kind enough to take us all out for dinner at another restaurant in Burlington called Leunig's.  I had steak (my favorite food) which was absolutely delicious!!

Unfortunately Emma's birthday present from her SMC family still hasn't come in the mail yet, but that's okay because it gives us an excuse to keep celebrating until it does!  Emma has been so grateful for everything we've done for her, and it makes us feel so special that we got to spend her birthday with her and make it extra special.  Special events like these remind me how lucky I am to have found such a wonderful group of friends at SMC - I couldn't be luckier!

Best of luck to everyone with all their work this week - I know students at SMC are looking forward to our much needed Thanksgiving break next week!

As always, thanks for reading and have a lovely day!

Class Registration

Hello everyone! If you've been following other SMC blogs, I'm sure you've heard lots about class registration that went on this past week (shout out to my fellow blogger and friend Alex!).  It seems that everyone has their own personal story about registration, so I wanted to share mine with you! 

My process, like everyone else's, began with meeting with my academic advisor to dicuss what classes I might want to take next semester.  I was able to decide this by figuring out what LSRs (Liberal Studies Requirements) I still need to complete as well as what other classes I need to take for my psychology major.  After I got my classes and a list of alternatives together, all I could do was wait for registration day.  For me, this was on Tuesday.  Registration opens at 7am to make sure no one is in class when they're supposed to be registering, so everyone wakes up bright and early, and if they're lucky, they get to go back to sleep when the process is over!

Anyway, I have chem lab at 8:15 on Tuesday mornings, so I had to get up super early to register.  Around 6:50am I logged onto SMC's registration website called Knightvision to get my list of classes together.  When 7:00 came around, I made a huge mistake.  There was a button at the top of the screen that allows you to select the same option for all the classes in your list (register, withdraw, etc.) and I accidentally pressed register for all, which means that I was attempting to register for all of the classes I wanted, as well as my alternatives.  In other words, I was trying (accidentally of course) to make a schedule for myself that was completely impossible!  So after sitting at my computer for 12 agonizingly long minutes staring at the loading screen, I wasn't sure what to do.  I opened Knightvision up in a new tab and was only able to register for two classes (ideally you're supposed to register for four/semester), one of them being an alternative that I would rather take during a different semester.  I wasn't sure what to do, so my roommate Emma and my friend Cait tried to calm me down and tell me that everything would work out.  I had to continue getting ready for chem lab, but first I sat down and e-mailed all the professors who are teaching the classes I wanted to get into next semester and explained that I had trouble registering and asked to be put on a waiting list.

Thankfully I got out of chem lab earlier than expected, so I rushed to a computer in the library to check my e-mail.  I had responses from a few of the professors.  One of them, who I have this semester for Research Methods I, told me that a certain number of spots are set aside for majors/minors and that he would call the Registrar and have me added to his class.  Two other professors responded and said that putting me on a waiting list was the best they could do.  Although it was good to know I was on a waiting list, I was still a bit worried about my schedule.  Fortunately, next semester doesn't start until the middle of January, so I have some time to figure it out!  Also, you may have seen my tweet about my second chance to register.  Because of the way St. Mike's sets up the registration process, half of the sophomores are assigned to Group 1, and half are assigned to Group 2.  Since I was in Group 2, I registered on Tuesday, but registration was open to all sophomores on Wednesday.  Thankfully for me, a select number of additional spots opened up in some of the classes I wanted to take.  So on Wednesday morning, I was able to register for two of the classes which I hadn't been able to get into on Tuesday morning.  I was SO relieved!  As of now, I have four classes for next semester.  I want to be in three of them, and even though I'd rather take the fourth one later (just because I don't particularly want to have an 8am class), if I end up having to take it, it will count towards my psychology major.  Once my schedule for next semester is official, I will let you know!

The point of me telling you all this is just to let everyone know that although the registration process can be stressful and you may not get into all the classes you want, there is hope!  All the professors I e-mailed were extremely nice to me and I could've ask for anything more.  Plus, if I do take an 8am class next semester, it won't be the end of the world and who knows, maybe it will end up being my favorite class!

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and as always, thanks for reading my blog!  Look out for another blog soon about some of my friends and our birthday mischief :)