Andi

Weekends in Iowa City can be hectic. Taking the bus at night on the weekend? You might as well forget about it! But this weekend I beg to differ. Taking the bus was entertainment all on its own. How often will you get to ride on a bus filled to the rim with people in costumes? Probably once a year. It was so much fun to see everyone all dressed up and see some creative costumes, and then some not so creative costumes.

I’ve never been a big Halloween person. I believe the last time I dressed up was in 8th grade. Its just never been my thing. But this year I decided to dress up as a Crayola Crayon and it was always fun when I ran into a different color crayon downtown.

In high school you may have thought you were “too cool” to dress up for Halloween. Believe me, I was one of them. But now that I’m at Iowa, I figured why not! It’s the one weekend I can get away with wearing something a little ‘out of the box’. (Get it? I was a crayon??) Well that was my lame attempt at a joke.

Sure, you’re going to college for academics, which should always stay your top priority, but why not at least let loose a little bit why you’re here? Live it up Iowa City Style! Step out of your comfort zone a little bit, and just be yourself.  Halloween is a great time to try on different personalities and meet new people. Let’s face it, costumes are always a great conversation starter! So just have fun, and be safe my fellow Hawkeyes!

Me and some of my friends all dressed up! A crayon, 3-hole punch (missing one punch), a Pilot, and Mr. T!

So after browsing through all of my posts I realized I talk about the Hawkeye Marching Band A LOT. Something I also realized… I have yet to share many photos of my experience with the HMB! So this post is pretty much going to be strictly pictures. I just want to share my perspective of a game day experience!

This past week has been a time crunch. I feel like time is slipping through my fingers, from school work to band rehearsal to Homecoming dance practice, I feel like I don’t even have time to shower!

School work is a priority of course, but with so many things going on I feel like I don’t want to do my homework and just take a breather instead. Then marching band practice rolls around and that’s unavoidable. I love it, but it definitely takes up a good chunk of my day. Then finally I’m participating in Iowa Shout which includes my sorority, paired with a fraternity and there is a girl’s dance, a boy’s dance, and a boy/girl dance which I’ll be participating. The practices are held later in the night so I don’t get back to my dorm until very late, leaving me little to no time to take a shower. I have 8:30 classes so unless I want to wake up extra early, night time showers are my only option. Then last, but not least, I’m catching a good old cold. I feel sick all the time which just adds to my stress.

I’m loving my time here at Iowa, but this week I’ve just been a ball of stress. I feel like I’m being pulled in every single direction. I honestly can’t wait for this week to be over and get back to my normal schedule, which is something I find very important because for the most part it keeps me sane. It might sound crazy, but a routine schedule is what I need.

This weekend was the first weekend I’ve seen my parents since they dropped me off for move-in 2 months ago. Since I haven’t been very homesick it wasn’t as emotional as I was expecting it to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing my parents, but I also REALLY love being at Iowa. I was ecstatic to see them nonetheless. Instead of staying in hotel room they brought our family RV, which is just like my second home. It was nice to have my home away from home. I got to stay near Iowa City, which I love, but I still got the comforts of home.

It was tough saying goodbye, but I was happy my parents came for the weekend. I’m just happy to be back on my normal schedule! I just need to find that balance between my school life, and my home life.

There is no game this week, and honestly I may have a heart attack come Saturday. Every week since I’ve gotten here I’ve woken up at 5am every Saturday to rehearse with the Hawkeye Marching Band before the games. This Saturday however, there will be no game, and I’m not sure what to do with myself.

Unlike many college students I have yet to experience the luxury of sleeping in on Saturday morning. Instead I’m out and about carrying a huge tenor saxophone and marching around a field. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE being a member of the marching band, I’ve just never had a free Saturday.

The one thing I’m excited for is our next home game against Northwestern. Their band will be visiting us, and we will have an awesome show prepared. I won’t say what it is, but if you’re in the crowd expect to be participating! A really fun halftime show is headed your way!

Whenever I write a post about the marching band I feel like such a “band geek” but it’s a very large part of my life here at Iowa and I love every minute of it. I can’t wait for what’s coming in these next couple weeks!

Today was a typical day. I’m just sun-bathing on the Pentacrest like every Monday and Wednesday, when I look over and see a Victoria’s Secret PINK truck in Hubbard Park…wait…what?!

I am personally a big fan of the PINK line at Victoria’s Secret. Cute and comfy, can’t get much better than that! I remember hearing about the truck coming, but I obviously forgot. I was so excited to see it, as soon as I got out of my class I marched right over and started shopping!

I ended up purchasing a couple items, and spent way too much money. I’m supposed to be a poor college student…what was I thinking?! After today’s purchases I’m definitely cutting myself off from buying anymore Hawkeye gear. I can’t walk into a bookstore anymore without buying SOME kind of t-shirt. It’s a bad habit that needs to be broken…

This is the time of year where the sickness sets in. Whether it be homesickness, or just being sick in general. This is the time of year when it hits, and hits HARD. I personally was hit with a lovely cold. Hello cold season!

About Wednesday this week I started to feel a little groggy, but I thought I just needed some more sleep. The next day I discovered I had a good old fashioned cold. I was all congested, severe headaches, I just didn’t want to move period. Going to class was the last thing I wanted to do. I live on the west side of the river and I personally prefer to walk to class. The buses are always over-crowed and the last thing I wanted to be was claustrophobic, so walking to class in pretty chilly weather was not appealing. The class I had that morning doesn’t take attendance, so it was BEYOND tempting to just skip it and call it a day. Although very tempting I still dragged myself to class, but one incentive was that on my walk back CVS would be right there so I could pick up some cold medicine.

Getting sick without having your parents there, for lack of a better term, sucks! Crawling out of a lofted bed is no fun when you’re spacing out, and there is no one there to tell you exactly what type of cold medicine you should take. Being sick, I’m usually pretty out of it. At one point I even saw one of my friends in the pentacrest on my way to class, but I was so out of it I barely recognized them. But it was worth getting to class because my TA explained a paper that would be due in a week or two. So if anyone out there is thinking about missing class because of a mere cold, don’t do it. I promise you that whatever your professor or TA has to talk about that day is still very important. Sickness isn’t fun, but class is more important than maybe an extra hour of sleep or sitting on the couch. So if you’re not sick to the point where you can’t function, go to class. It will be worth it in the long run.

This post is about a week late, but I still wanted to share my experience with formal sorority recruitment!

Going through formal recruitment was probably more stressful than my classes were. You go from house to house, and I’m going to just be honest here, but I knew they were judging me and I was judging them, and a large portion of that was on appearance. In each round you want to put your best foot forward, and wear your best outfit. You have the same conversation a hundred times, but you still need to be personable and be able to hold that conversation. Eventually I came up with a kind of speech. I knew exactly what to say for each question and where I would go with it in order to kinda of lead them towards another question I had a good answer to.

The first round was pretty simple. You wear some (cute) casual clothes and visit all 14 chapters on campus. You answer the same questions over and over again.

1. Name
2. Major
3. Hometown
4. Dorm
5. Hobby

Take that times 14 houses, and again by 3-4 girls at each house. It got pretty redundant. I was still enjoying myself and I was excited to start the process, but having the same conversation gets really old.

Round 2 you dress just a tad bit nicer, and you stay at each house a little bit longer. This round you could only visit a max of 11 houses. Some girls got all their top choices, while others only got their bottoms. But I encourage anyone who gets their bottom to visit the houses again and give them a second chance rather than dropping out of recruitment all together.

Round 3 girls typically wear sundresses and wedges. This round you could only be asked back to a max of 7 houses, and you stayed at the house even longer than round 2. So about 45 minutes. This time it wasn’t the same old conversation. Instead of them drilling you with questions you got learn a little bit more about them as a sorority and ask some questions yourself.

In the last and final round you could be asked back to a max of 3 houses. You dresses in cocktail/church attire and stayed outside their house for an hour. This is when you really bonded with the girl talking to you, and instead of talking to 2-4 girls, you only really talked to one. Each chapter typically performs one of their rituals for you to demonstrate what being in that chapter would be like. After that you rank your top and bottom choices, it’s on to BID DAY!

Bid Day is the day you discover which chapter you will become a new member and/or pledge to. Its so nerve-racking! All you want is your top choice, and you couldn’t imagine yourself in another house. I was lucky enough to receive my top choice! I’m going to withhold all my opinions of other houses and what chapter I’m in, but that’s just to prevent stereotyping. Anyone looking to join a sorority, I highly encourage it. If you’re not sure, give recruitment a shot, and if you still don’t like it a round or two later you can easily drop out and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Sorry for such a long post, but a lot goes on with formal sorority recruitment!

Today was my first official performance as a member of the Hawkeye Marching Band! Football kicked off the season with a game against Tennessee Tech. We all know it was going to rain at the game but we didn’t expect THAT much rain! All the band members had empty cups for water, and with the rain pouring so hard it refilled all of our cups! The rain just wouldn’t stop, and then out of nowhere it decided to let up. So we all ripped off our ponchos and put on our baseball hats. But only a few minutes later the pouring rain returned! We all squealed and grabbed our ponchos! The drumline was stuck in its own little lake at the very bottom of the bleachers! Then lightening was sighted.

That was our cue to head to the tunnel. Over 250 of us crammed into a little tunnel? Not so fun….or was it? Iowa football was DOMINATING! The game was just a slaughter, so we were very quickly losing interest. The tunnel ended up to be quite the blast. We had a group ‘sing-a-long’. We all sang out to songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody” “Spongebob Squarepants” “I Want it That Way – by the Backstreet Boys”, and you can’t forget all those Disney favorites! We had a blast, even though we were crammed into a tunnel for about an hour!

We eventually “swarmed” out of the tunnel, mimicking the football team, and headed back to our seats in the bleachers. It rained on and off for the rest of the game, but nothing was like the first 2 quarters, where it rained so hard the water was literally rushing down the stands!

I’ll never forget my first game as a member of the Hawkeye Marching Band!

Yesterday Mike Posner was in town! He gave a FREE concert right in Hubbard Park right next to the IMU! It was a lot a fun, and it was a big bonus that it was FREE for both students and the public! Dance Marathon, the Cheer Squad, and I-Club (select members of the Hawkeye Marching Band) all performed leading up to Mike Posner! Enjoy a video I compiled showing you what my experience was like at Hawkapalooza with my friends!

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