Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Adios Amigos!

Hello once again my dear readers. The time has come for me to put an end to my blogging. It was been a great journey while it lasted, and I am so grateful for the opportunity I was given to be able to share my life with everyone for the past 3-4 years. I hope some people took away some good advice, learned from my mistakes, and laughed at some quirky or silly things I have done.

In the past few months a lot of different changes have come my way and I could not be happier. I have gotten engaged, getting married in October, buying a house in November and life could not be any busier than it already is.

If I could give everyone one more piece of advice it would be to take advantages of all opportunities that come your way because you never know where those opportunities will lead you. Sometimes the world can be scary, sometimes it can be challenging but it’s not about the final destination, it’s about the journey. You will meet good people, bad people, and people who just waste space but hopefully you learn from each person and take away as much as you can.

Best of luck Berkeley students, potential students and everyone else who reads this!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Metro Cards

I woke up pretty early this morning, and I had a chance to put on the news. Normally I don’t watch the news since I have to be at work pretty early but today I don’t have to go into work until 11 am. I also usually don’t watch the news because it’s always something depressing that they are reporting on and today was no different. I heard about the metro cards that they want to take away from students and it really upset me.

Currently in New York local students get free or discounted MTA cards which allow them to go to school and back home. Part of the budget cut ideas that are on the table includes taking away those free cards so that students can start paying for their cards and the MTA makes more money. If this was to happen many students would lose out on different opportunities as they would not have a way of attending school, work, and events.

It really upsets me that people that are appointed high positions such as councelmen, governors, CEO’s etc consider making decisions that could be so detrimental to our local students who at one point will be ruling this country as well. Many schools especially colleges depend on students being able to use free of discounted transportation in order to attend their classes. There are plenty of students in high schools and elementary schools that have parents with low income and their parents can’t provide transit fare for them but almost every college student is broke!

Luckily I had a car when I attended college but many of my friends did not. Berkeley has 3 campuses in New York, 4 in New Jersey and many times students had to go between the different campuses in order to complete their education requirements. I saw many of those students struggle every day because New Jersey does not offer free public transportation to students and it was hard finding money but bus tickets.

I am totally against taking free and discounted metro cards from students and I hope that you agree with me. Stand up for your thoughts and beliefs and give your opinion as well. Every little opinion and vote counts so if you can please go to the www.CW11.com website and stand up for students like yourself to keep your free of discounted tickets.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Who Would Have Thought

Ugh, I have to say I feel like such a blogger slacker. I have been slacking majorly in contributing to my blogging community here at Berkeley. Sometimes life just happens and you lose track of all your responsibilities. About a month has passed since I have blogged but not much has really changed in my life.

Recently I have taken an outlet in reading different books, mostly biographies. I have never thought that I would like reading biographies but after reading one I got stuck on them. Why are they so interesting to me? After reading my first biography from cover to cover I have come to realize that reading biographies is like getting to meet all sorts of people, learning from their experience and actually feeling like a friend to that person.

I am a strong believer that the best way to learn life lessons is to learn it the hard way, on your own. Many times we are told certain things but for some reason things just don’t click until we experience something on our own. By reading peoples stories I feel like I get the best of both. I can read a lesson that someone else has learned but also be able to visualize and feel the feelings that a character in the book has felt where I almost feel like I am the character in the book.

I recently even started listening to the Easy Listening station on my Verison Fios music stations. They always play music that sounds like movie soundtracks so it adds a little background music to your book. Biography books are something I have never thought I would be interested in. I always thought they were dry, boring and uneventful. My lesson learned here is that don’t judge a book by its cover, literally. Sometimes it’s important to try things out of your comfort zone because you just never know what might strike your cord and make you want to play.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Leaders

These past few weeks have been very positive for me. At my job we now have a new Executive Director who took charge the second she got in the door. I have to give credit to our Regional Director for making a good pick for our school and choosing the right person for the job. The lesson learned in this for me in major.
After spending a few days with Jennifer, who is the new Executive Director I have learned how important and hard it is to find the right management for companies. There are many things that have to be considered when finding the right person for the job. From what I was able to observe you have to make sure the individual matches the personality of other co workers, has great team building skills and knows how to be firm but respectful to people.

Another important thing that I have observed is how one person in an organization can change the atmosphere of the workplace. When your employees are happy, they become a lot more productive and they take pride in what it is that they do. Once we got a new leader I could see a total change in the atmosphere in the school. I feel like the educators are a lot more willing to collaborate with each other, students feel proud of their school and our image is slowly changing in the community for even better.

The best thing though is that everyone can now focus better on their job. I am very excited to get back into doing activities for students and getting more involved. Every year students have an annual competition they attend in Hersey Park where they compete nationally with other students in different hairstyling categories. If they win, they can get certain trips, money prizes and other incentives to become great cosmetologists. Due to the hefty cost of the trip we are looking to have some fundraising done for the students so that the whole trip does not have to come out of their pockets. In February we are planning on having a hair show where the students show off their skills and present a hair fashion show for the public. Our last show was very successful and I am very excited to run another one!