Category: Events

campus events

Thanksgiving break 2017!

Hello! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron! I hope you all had a nice break!

Thanksgiving break was amazing. I managed to divide it so I got done with all my homework by Wednesday and had some days to enjoy and relax a little from school life. After all it’s not called a “break” for nothing.

Just like last year, I stayed in my dorm during the break. I wasn’t alone, as my roommate is also a international student and stayed here. Until Thursday nothing much happened in the city, but that’s ok because I was working on homework, so I had very few distractions to procrastinate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the whole city and university shut down because everyone is on break. Usually some staff that stay here during break provide us with events related to thanksgiving, like a special lunch/dinner or even the ISSS bus trip to Tangler outlet on black Friday, (Which I signed up but didn’t went). What I’m trying to say is that usually these events occur towards the end of break. As an example, I went to the barbershop to get a haircut the Friday before break and the place was closed. I guess the owner didn’t expect a lot of clients with most of the students going back home.

My Thursday was very funny. Last year I went to the house of a friend’s grandparents and this year they invited me and my roommate to go again.  They were very kind and friendly to us and we all had a great time and ate tons of foods. By the night, a friend of mine said she wanted to go to the Coral Ridge mall because she herd stores would be open by midnight for black Friday. So I, my roommate, another friend and she, went to the mall. When it was nine something we decided to go to the movies to wait until midnight. So all four of us got to see Thor: Ragnarok. The movie was great, but, when it was over, at midnight something, the mall was closed. So our friend was mistaken that the stores were going to open at midnight. So we called a day and went back to our places.

Friday I went back to the mall to search something for my brother but I didn’t find what I was looking for. The mall was very crowded, I never saw it like that before. I guess everyone was after a good black Friday deal. It was just like I see on movies and news. Crowds of people going from store to store full of bags and some stores announcing their deals through a speaker. Thankfully I didn’t saw anyone fighting over a product like they show on the media. For the rest of the day and the weekend I just relaxed and enjoyed my time. Although on Sunday I studied for an Calculus exam that I had yesterday.

So, this was my break, I hope you all had a great time too and had some time to restore your selves for this last couple of weeks and finals. I know I did.

See you soon!

Exams, papers and fun.

Hey there! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you all had a great week.

Last week I was super busy as I had to prepare myself and face three Midterms, which were for my Calculus, Philosophy and Microeconomics classes. I think I did fairly well on the first two, but I really have no idea how I did on my microeconomics exam. But what would be the fun in life is if everything was easy, right? Still, the thing with exams is that I always feel super nervous before, during, and after them.

Before, because I don’t know what it is going to be like and don’t know if I studied everything that is going to be covered on the test. Fortunately some of my professors relieve the pressure by either posting some practice or old exams on ICON, which really helps a lot, but this semester only my Calculus professor was kind enough to do that, (he posted all previous exams since 2012). During the exam I feel nervous because I am the master of getting a question wrong by making a detailed mistake. For example, in this exam I was reviewing my answers before giving it to my T.A, and I saw that in one of the problems I wrote that the square root of four was four, (And that’s not even one of the dumbest mistakes I’ve made in my life). The problem is time is never on my side, I’m always one of the last to finish the exam, so I try to rush and make those ridiculous mistakes. Finally, after the exam I feel nervous while waiting for my grade.

What is funny is that all my classes that I have midterms had midterms on the same week. However, there’s only one thing that gets me more tense than exams, papers. It appears that all the classes I have to write papers, decided to give them all for the same week too. Until today I never believed in, (or I just wasn’t capable of), multitasking. But now I have hope that I will be able to simultaneously write three different papers, do all my required readings and stay mentally sane.

Now, of course not everything is tense. I have my moments of relaxation and if it wasn’t for them I don’t think I would survive the college experience. Breaks from study are very important, never forget them. I just recently started watching “Parks and Rec” so whenever I feel like I have too much homework, or did a lot of study; I watch one episode just to refresh my mind. Last Saturday I went to the mall to buy groceries and just do some window shopping. Of course I also kept the tradition of going to the movies at Film Scene (a local independent theater) every Saturday night. This coming weekend we will have the SCOPE Battle of the Bands, and it seems it’s going to be amazing. Unfortunately I won’t be able to go, but if you can, I totally recommend you go. The Local things we have here in Iowa, like the farmers market, and Film Scene are pretty awesome, and it’s a unique experience to see them. I’m pretty sure the bands playing there will be amazing too.

Well, that’s all I had for today, thank you and see you next week!

ΣΝΖΟ’s thanksgiving special edition (Part 1)

Hello and welcome back to ΣΝΖΟ’s (Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron) thanksgiving special edition, (part 1).

I’m writing in the beginning of the holiday week to register my plans and expectations. For starters I would like to say that we don’t have thanksgiving in Brazil, by that we can conclude two things. This is my first thanksgiving and I have no idea why people celebrate thanksgiving. To solve this mystery I asked my American friends. Their answers were basically: “to celebrate that we are grateful for everything that happened to us this year and for the things we have”, “Back in the day, the first settlers to come to America were starving and near their death, so the natives helped them by giving them food and showing how to survive here, and we are celebrate this day because we are thankful for their action”, “It’s a special holiday where you can eat a lot of food”. Of course I went to the famous Dr.Google, but he gave me a lot of different versions and so I decided to come with this conclusion: “In the past everyone had their reasons to be glad something happened and that’s no different today. So let us take a week to appreciate all things that make us happy and eat a lot while doing it”.

Where I come from we also have a holiday that last a whole week. I would translate its name to “pissed of week” (semana do saco cheio- in Portuguese), as the name say; it is a week that you just don’t do anything because you are pissed of everything. But not many people “celebrate it”. I never was able to miss school because of it, for example.

Let us come back to the U.S. For international students, like me, the name of this holiday is: “go on a trip somewhere or stay at the dorm alone”. My original plan was to go to Chicago with my Indian friend. But we still haven’t got the money to do so, Hence we decided to stay at our dorm. I think my floor only have 5 or 7 people left, including me and my friend, still some of them are going to Chicago today (lucky b@$!@#%$). So it will be the two of us against a whole week on the dorm. But we made our plans too. They are not as good as going to Chicago but at least it’s something.

The plan is: MONDAY- do homework and find out where Hyvee is (it’s about time); TUESDAY- go to some exhibitions for my first year seminar; WEDNESDAY- go to a job fair(because my friend want to find a new job, I’m perfectly fine with the one I have, but that’s story for another post); THURSDAY- go to a thanksgiving dinner with one of our friend’s family (she had to insist a lot for us to go, because we don’t want to be a burden to anyone, neither we want to interfere with family meetings); FRIDAY- go to the mall, grab a chair and a popcorn and see the madness that the black Friday is (where I come from we have a fake black Friday, where the owners of shops rise the price of the products before putting them on sale, so their price stay the same while the say it is on sale. Also, I want to see if all the crazy stories I heard about black Friday on the U.S are true); WEEKEND- procrastinate on life and finish any pending homework.

We can say that the climax of my week will be Thursday and Friday, I think I will be able to have a good time. Next Monday I will write about the outcome of this week,(If I survive the black Friday). See you next week!

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Hello! And welcome back again to more paragraphs of Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you all are doing well.

Last week was pretty good. The good things started on Tuesday, that was the day that I took the third midterm and final exam for my math class (this is the course that I finished earlier). And so, after Tuesday I don’t have to attend any math classes until the end of the semester. I had to do some extra work in order to achieve this, but it was worth every minute, because now I basically only have my chemistry course to worry about,(the others are ESL and Arts, so they are not a big deal). You might be wondering what I do, now that I have more free space on my schedule. Part of me wish I could answer: “I’m sleeping more”. But the other part of me is proudly answering: “I’m having breakfast at Burge Marketplace,  because they have omelet!”. In fact , sometimes I sleep more. I used to wake up at 6a.m, now I wake up at 8a.m, but sometimes I also go to bed a little bit later than usual, so I sleep the same amount. (But don’t worry, I still get my 6-8 hours of sleep every night).

Tuesday was also the elections day.(I won’t say may opinion about American politics and their parties because it’s not my country for me to know who is better and to decide anything). But I found it very cool that all my American friends were with their eyes fixed on their computer screen following the results the whole night. I never saw anyone so worried about elections before. On my country we care about them, but we don’t follow the results that with all that conviction, we just wait for the final word on the tv.

We can now jump to the weekend. Saturday night something very interesting happened, I was on one of my friend’s room and he just decided that he wanted to go to Starbucks(at 9p.m). I said, “why not” and so we gathered two more friends and went there. It was a home game night, so there was a lot of people on downtown. I never saw that much movement before. The nightlife on Iowa is normal, but on Saturday was too much. It was cool to see that we have that much of movement here too.

On Sunday I went Ice skating with my friends at the mall. I have only ice skated once in my life, but I was very little and couldn’t remember anything. So I consider that as my first-time ice skating. And I will let you know that I only fell 7 times.(yes, you have permission to laugh, I laughed every time I fell too). It was a funny experience, but I still have a lot to learn. I could walk a little bit and somehow I managed to make turns even without knowing what I was doing. It was a funny experience. The worst part was seeing small children ice skating like fish swimming. They were even playing tag and racing against each other and not a single one of them fell. I guess some are born to ice skate and others to polish the ice with their bodies.

Now entering this week. They are going to repeat the pick one event tomorrow and Wednesday. This time I hope that the men’s volleyball club are there, I really want to join them and at the pick one event on the beginning of the semester they weren’t there. The woman’s volleyball club were generous enough to get my e-mail to give to them. But I guess that never happened, only God knows what was made of the piece of paper where my e-mail was.

I believe that is all for today. Have a good week everybody. See you later.

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