Share Your Work!

Posted on May 4, 2017 by USG

Hello everyone,

We are almost done with the semester! That means final exams and projects. For many of you, these next few weeks will be entirely stressful. Make sure you stop by the destress lounge, from Monday May 8 until Thursday May 11 for some rest & relaxation.

Today, I want to talk to you guys about Student Research Day that happened yesterday, May 3rd. Students got to present some projects they have created or research they conducted. I took part of Research Day, and I want to share what the experience was like.

Opening Presentation

To kick off the event, students from the criminal justice program shared a presentation that talked about the poverty in Montgomery County. They raised awareness of the causes of poverty, and ways Montgomery County is taking action.

Poster Presentations

After the opening presentation, attendees walked around the room, and checked out the various posters. I saw a wide variety of posters, ranging from historical events to computer gaming.

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Normandy RememberedIMG_0737

These students’ presentation discussed the historical events in Normandy. Their presentation informed viewers about some background information. They also included videos, and discussed the differences between them. For example, some directors focused their videos on the invasion while other directors focused on the journey American soldiers went through.

While some presentations focused on the past, other presentations focused on the present. Some of my fellow classmates presented their capstone projects. They brought laptops so people could play test their games.

Eden

While I am not entirely sure what kind of game it is, I can say it looks pretty interesting.

Although this video doesn’t show you much of the gameplay, it hints at what the game offers. From what I could tell, it is a first person explorer game, located in a library. The goal is to explore the area to pick up hints. These hints eventually get you pass codes that can open up doors.

Since I also took part of the event, I wanted to share with you what I presented.

Interior Environment

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During this semester, I am taking a 3D modeling course. One of the projects I made in this course was a group project. It was an interior environment that showed remnants of a struggle. I was proud to present it with my group members (who are not in this picture), and people were interested to hear about it.

 

I had a really good time seeing different projects from various students. I even met some students from Montgomery College who had great presentations. If any of you are looking for an outlet to share your work, start planning for the Research Day during the fall semester! I am looking forward to seeing you there.

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Stay Healthy 

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Elizabeth

Finals are just around the corner and we all know what that means:

  • Stress
  • Lack of sleep
  • Questionable eating habits and
  • Illness

We have all been there, these last few weeks where all the papers seem to be due at the same time. Exams to cram for, I mean study for and on top of that some are already stressing about what to do over the summer (internship), while others are trying to plan out life after graduation.

This is a lot to ask of our body and brain to keep up especially if we are not giving our body what it needs. Believe me, I do my fair share of procrastination and in turn end up doing last minute cramming sessions. However, we all know that it is during these stressful times that we seem to start getting sick and have even less energy to complete our tasks.

So today I wanted to share a few tips to survive the next few weeks:

  1. Stay hydrated and eat healthy: fueling our bodies with caffeinated drinks and sugary foods only causes your body to crash. Usually we tend to drink these drinks and eat these foods because we are exhausted, so give your body what it needs.
  2. Sleep: taking the time to let your body recover is vital to the learning process as well as staying healthy. I know it’s hard to break that habit of staying up all night to study for the exam or to finish a paper but when your body is tired it is in your best interest to give your body what it needs. Even a 15 minute power nap can go a long way.
  3. Find ways to de-stress: Everyone handles stress in different ways. Some people tend to over eat, others don’t eat. Some people become very tired others cannot sleep. Since there is no specific form that stress manifest itself, it is important to identify ways that relax you. It could be taking a yoga class at the Rec center or using the machines. Maybe a Zumba class helps you clear your head or a nice walk around campus. 

Remember we are almost at the finish line for this semester! Also please take advantage Pause for Paws. It’s a nice time to mingle with cute puppies and take your mind off of exams and papers. 

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Writings are Souvenirs Too

Posted on May 2, 2017 by M

USG
I posted my first blog post on the Around the Grove blog on September 29th, 2015 – and now today, May 2nd, 2017, marks my last blog post on the Around the Grove blog.

I think back to my first ever semester at the Universities at Shady Grove. I remember seeing the email calling for students to become USG bloggers, and being excited about the prospect of writing meaningful posts and sharing them with a new community. I remember nervously walking into the conference room to meet with the interviewers for the blogging position, and coming out of the room wondering if I had made a good enough case for why I would be a worthy blogger. Luckily, I was given the chance, and it has been an incredible two academic years of blogging for the USG blog.

I think back to who I was as an individual my first semester at USG and contrast it with the person I am today. I have certainly grown (though not in height!), and a part of that includes my growth as a writer. As I scroll through my page on the blog, I find myself reliving all of the events from these past 2 years. While I certainly have captured memories through photos from my time here, I believe my writings serve as souvenirs as well.

From USG events such as Student Leadership Bistros, Open Houses, Scholarship and Donor Recognition Luncheons, Etiquette Dinners, Leadership Bashes, USGFest, Octoberfest, International Night, and more

to

personal events with my Smith community such as our Spring Break at Deep Creek, summer internships, study abroad programs, and more

to

simple posts with encouraging messages with the desire to make even the smallest impact on someone who happens to stumble across them.

It’s been an incredible honor to have been given the opportunity to publish posts for the USG blog. I encourage anyone else who is considering applying to take a leap of faith and do so! A quick story to conclude with: last semester, when I was interviewing for jobs, the partner I was interviewing with Googled my name prior to the interview and read some of the posts I had published on the blog. It initiated a great conversation that led to one of the best interviews I ever had. So in addition to everything else, sometimes you never know where something simple as writing can take you!

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anaïs Nin

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Losers, We Were!

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Christine

A few months ago, I wrote a blog called “Let’s all be Losers” to talk about my struggles with weight loss and my recent diagnoses of diabetes and hypertension. I really wanted to transition to a healthier living so I’ve decided to participate in USG’s Biggest Loser Challenge, a 10-weeks weight loss contest hosted by the USG Campus Rec Center.

It really helped me. For the most part, I was more physically active each week. I also started being more conscious of the type of food and the portions I was consuming. I somehow internally feel better. I was no longer panting climbing up 3 flights of stairs. I felt sluggish when I wasn’t moving so it motivated me to move even more as well.

However, the last two weeks of the challenge has been very difficult for me. While I had lost over 20lbs and 5% of fat during the challenge, I had gain half of it back due to my stress-eating in that two weeks. I think my lack of sleep and physical activities contributed to that too. Even though I wasn’t on track with my diet plan anymore, I still tried to think of my food choices to an extent.

Our last weigh-in date was April 26, and that was when the USG Campus Rec Center announced the Biggest Losers.

… and guess what?!?!?  I won!

Christine & Gary - Biggest Losers

USG Biggest Loser Contest Winners: Christine & Gary

There was one female winner (me) and one male winner (Gary). USG awarded our efforts with a very nice Fitbit!

Even though I was in a slump and gained some weight back, it felt really nice to know that my 8 weeks worth of efforts weren’t in vain.

This is why I have become more encouraged and even more motivated to live a healthier lifestyle. This can’t be rushed, and it can be easily reversed. This is why it’s very important to lose weight slow and steadily. Baby steps.

Losers, we were!

And losers, we will continue to be!

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Can you learn to deal with rejection?

Posted on April 29, 2017 by andrewstinton

 

How do you handle rejection? If you knew how many people swiped left on your tinder, would it bother you? How many jobs or colleges have you applied to and been turned down? Or how about asking someone on a date? We all experience these at some time in our life. For some people, rejection can cause feelings of anger, disappointment, stress, or even depression. Yet like all things in our life, you can control how this affects you.

Have you noticed that some people are less deterred by rejection? There are a few characteristics that can help a person handle rejection. And most importantly, anyone can develop these characteristics. Being self-confident, self-reliant, and having strong self-esteem can prepare you to deal with rejection. Oddly enough, dealing with rejection can develop these characteristics.

People who have worked in retail sales and telemarketing deal with high rates of rejection. Any activity or job that puts you in a position to deal with strangers on a routine basis will develop this for you. The more ‘meaningless’ rejection you experience, the more likely you are to develop a “tough skin”. So, go out there. Ask that cute guy or girl for a date. Volunteer with a non-profit that needs staff to get people to take surveys. Try a part time job in retail sales.

Being rejected is okay. It doesn’t mean that you’re not an awesome person. It may just mean that your proposal wasn’t a good fit for the person you were approaching.

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Making History Happen: UMBC @ USG’s Public History Minor

Posted on April 28, 2017 by Rebecca Gale

The highlight of my time attending the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s undergraduate program at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) has been completing a minor in Public History. Many people have never heard of public history before, but it essentially means any work people or organizations do to make historical information more available to ordinary people instead of just academic historians. This could be anything from designing a museum exhibit to creating interactive websites about history to leading history-themed summer camps for kids.

The neat thing about public history is that it allows you to combine other interests or skill sets you might have – theater, writing, designing, programming, working with kids, music, cooking, etc. – with history. There are so many creative avenues to use to study and share history with other people. Public history is also great in that it aims to bring more diversity and depth to the study of history, and a big focus of our program is trying to represent more people in the history we tell.

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Students investigating a house dating back to 1797 on a field trip in Baltimore. (Photo: Rebecca Gale)

The public history minor is open to anyone who is enrolled in UMBC’s program at USG. It’s only 18 credits, so it’s really easy to complete in addition to your major. The professor in charge of the public history minor, Dr. Melissa Blair, is not only a great teacher who is extremely knowledgeable, but also so helpful and approachable when it comes to getting advice about your future career. The classes I’ve taken for public history have been my favorite – really interesting, thought-provoking, and helpful in planning what I want to do after I leave Shady Grove.

Something I often hear when I tell people I’m a history major is, “You’re going to have a hard time getting a job with that!” The Public History minor allows you to explore the different career options available to people who are interested in doing work related to history. A major element of the Introduction to Public History course is learning about the huge variety of careers related to history, which can intersect with other areas of interest too. I like to think of public history as a chance to get your hands dirty and think about how you would use the things you read in your textbooks in other classes in the real world. If you’re a person like me who likes to get out and do projects, not just study things, this is a great program.

One really exciting opportunity the public history minor provides in this regard is the Service Learning in Public History course, which is offered every spring to people who have taken Intro to Public History. Each year, the class works with a local African American historic site, Pleasant View, about ten minutes from campus, which has a church, school, and cemetery that was crucial to the African American community in the Gaithersburg area after the Civil War and into the Civil Rights era. Each class has a central project they work on to help preserve the site and educate the public about its history.

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Pleasant View Methodist Church, part of the historic site public history students help work to preserve. One exciting part of public history is taking field trips, and we visit this fascinating site many times! (Photo: Rebecca Gale)

This semester, we have been working on researching more about Pleasant View’s history and nominating it to be on the National Register of historic places. We also created designs for signs telling about the site that will hopefully be put up in the future to raise awareness about the site. With schoolwork, we don’t often get to make an impact on the community around us, so it’s been exciting to do work that is so meaningful.

One last major element of the public history minor is doing an internship. I completed mine last summer and fall and learned so much from it. It also gave me inspiration for my senior thesis paper topic, a requirement for all of us history majors. You can read about the internships UMBC public history students have done on our blog Retrieving the Past.

IMG_20160731_003311The historic Japanese pagoda at National Park Seminary historic district, where I completed my internship. (Photo: Rebecca Gale)

If you’re interested in the public history minor, consider signing up for Intro to Public History (History 300) this fall and seeing what this is all about! It’s a fun class (and includes field trips!) and is open to any major.

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After Math and Next

Posted on April 28, 2017 by Samuel

If you are from the Shady Grove campus then surely you would have heard of this:

 

But if you did not or by some mysterious reasons you were not able to come, trust me I can only tell you one thing, you have missed out on a crazy, amazing, and fun experience in your life at USG. I choose my words carefully by saying that yesterday was one the most fun afternoons I have ever had at USG. The lituation was on point and the ambiance was kept live from the dope music, to the food, and the competition on the obstacle course. Trust me if I tell you there’s no place that ain’t no fun like at USG.

The cook out started started on time, I was there thirty minutes early like I always do when I know there is going to be food. I got my tickets first and went straight to serving myself some food. The line behind me was huge both by the food and by the ticket stand.

Food was not the only part of the night of course. At USG we always know how to combine education with fun and above all we recognize hard work. In the mixed of all that was going, the Office of Student Services recognized leaders on campus, leaders that had not just marked the school by their pro activeness but also leaders that both on campus and in the community proudly represented the school. They were shown in front of all other student as model to follow and outstanding students.

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This was not the end of the cook out, oh no, this was its climax. Next was the obstacle course that took the fame, the competition was lit. I beat the record twice with a record of 2.50 and 2.32. Then got beaten by a better record of 2.25. The record was held by the guy on the very left in the left picture below.

 

Me in the video attempting to cheat the obstacle. Learned a valuable lesson, obstacles are made to be surmounted, not jumped over.

I really enjoyed the day and know from people facial expressions that there are people who enjoyed it as well. For all this, we have the Office of Student Services to thank. They have done an amazing job getting everyone together as a family under one name, USG.

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PLAN B

Posted on April 27, 2017 by USG

After an exhausting 2 weeks of the campaign, the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) Student Council Election came to an end on Tuesday 25th April. Most people on the campus remark that the 2017-2018 Student Council Election campaign has produced some of the most memorable moments in USG history. There were a significant number of candidates, 14 total, which consisted of students from all 8 institutions on our 1 campus. And most notably, there was a substantial increase in voter turnout. The winners will be announced on May 1stand-the-winner-is

As most of my readers may know by now, I am a candidate in the election for the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s institutional representative position. The careers of some of the country’s leading politicians began at University, however, while student politics is not as serious as “real-life” politics, there are lessons to be learned. So for this blog, I would like to share what I learned, as I believe others may also be able to learn a great deal.

 

So what can you learn from campaigning?shutterstock_246253099-750x501

  1. Disengagement is a problem- for a variety of reasons many students are disengaged with student affairs. To combat this, passion and enthusiasm need to be applied. As a candidate, I had to use passion and enthusiasm to make the election more interesting and motivate students to vote.
  2. Accessibility of information- while many efforts were made to make the election more accessible to students, such as the use of social media, tabling in the halls, and posting of flyers on campus, as a candidate one still needed to make their campaign more accessible. I was able to do this by meeting with students in the cafeteria, in their classrooms, and in the courtyard. This allowed me to get my point across in a way that was not only engaging to the students but was enjoyable and done at their convenience.
  3. Strategy is needed- although the campaign and election process are well thought out, as a candidate you have to be continuously monitoring it and have backup plans to respond to changes if needed. The intended voting process for my institution was not executed, but I was ready to adapt my strategy to achieve my goals. My strategy, aka “Plan B” was to build a strong team that would help by using word of mouth to spread the word and to use communication tools to my advantage. I am somewhat of a power email user for communication and for the USG Student Council Election it was an efficient way to deliver messages.

Overall running a student election campaign I found was an excellent way to build confidence, experience, and skills. So if you are ever looking for a way to challenge yourself, learn new skills and have fun in the process, the 3 lessons I learned are useful to consider. Take any of these lessons to boost your own endeavors, and you will find that it is effective.

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Congrats Grads!!

Posted on April 26, 2017 by lindavel

I would just like to take this time to congratulate all of the graduating seniors of 2017. I am also graduating and boy does it feel good!
This is a huge accomplishment and we should all feel very proud to have completed a program here at USG.

I hope to see all of the fellow graduates at the May 11th Graduation Celebration!!!

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Ditch your workout routine for this

Posted on April 25, 2017 by USG

There was a time a few months ago when I would hop on the treadmill for 30min-40min just to burn enough calories to eat some more in the day. This is not necessary. I noticed even though I spent so much time jogging, I was losing no weight. I wasn’t even pigging out after or recuperating the calories I burned by eating so I was really just convinced that my body wanted to stay the weight it currently was.

I decided to try something new. I had done it a few times here and there, but never consistently. It’s called HIIT or high intensity interval training. This stuff works! I spend about 20 minutes on the treadmill, eat the same as before (I track all my foods for the most part in MyFitnessPal) and started seeing changes unlike before.

Another awesome side effect of this exercise is that I feel faster. All my life I have never been the fast person on the team. I was almost always among the last few when we’d do races or sprints at practice. With this HIIT exercise, I feel faster. I used to sprint at speed 9, but I’ve now been able to do as fast as speed 10.5-11 on the treadmill. Give it a try! It really does work and you will sweat.

My regimen:

0-3 min: warm up (walking on speed 3.5, then take up to a slow jog on speed 6)

3-13 min: 40 seconds sprinting (choose your own speed and take your time building up to faster speeds – if you are new to this start out at speed 8.5 or 9), then 20 seconds completely off (I usually let the treadmill run while I take this break). You’ll do this for 10 minutes straight and the time will fly by.

13-16min: cool down and walk or jog at low speed.

This is all I started out with (alongside my weight lifting exercise) and I saw a huge difference and saved time. The best part is USG has the equipment you need to get this quick workout in.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!

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