Emotions of a Graduating Senior

So here it is, the final couple of days left living at St. Mike's.  It has definitely become my home over the past four years.  I will definitely miss being at this place everyday.  Anyways here is a photo shoot my friend did one night when my emotions were all over the place.

My friends calls this:

The Woes of Maura

In the wilds of the Upper Room of the Chapel, the subject in question, Maura Grogan, age 22, expresses different stages of emotions in the span of an hour.

Disheveled seniors at the end of a long four years - and we match!! (unplanned)

Saying a goodbye

Not believing people are leaving

KATE AND I CAN'T HANDLE THIS!!!

"Don't worry, Maura, You'll be fine."

"We still love you!"

A Final P-Day

For those who don't know, P-Day is short for Preparation Day.  It is designed to give students one last fun weekend to celebrate a successful year with friends and relieve some stress before finals start.  It normally kicks off with the Senior Symposium on Friday followed by the MLK Talent Show.  Saturday is a long day with a trike race, bouncy houses, lots of food, and a comedian.  This year they spread out the symposium over both Friday and Saturday and just pushed back the events on Saturday.

It was still a good weekend.  I presented my senior research on Friday afternoon at the symposium.  I was very relieved when it was over.  However, I ran straight to the Celtic Knights performance at the talent show.  But I made it through!!  It goes without saying I went to bed right after because it was the first night I could sleep without my mind racing in twenty different directions.

I got up fairly early on Saturday to see my roommate present her senior research.  She did amazing!  I was so proud of her!  After hearing speak, I of course went home to go back to bed so I was well rested for everything later that day.

When we finally all got together for some fun, it was a blast!  My roommates and I went to check out the bouncy houses and got some food.  Let me just say - I ate a lot!  There was Papa Franks, Ben and Jerry's, Skinny Pancake, and many more!  I had to try it all!  Afterwards my roommate, Buttface and I challenged each other on the bouncy houses.  She beat me through the obstacle course but in the bungee cord race I won.  I can't really explain it so here is a picture of my friends doing it:

After those festivities we went to see Senior Kit Rivers perform at the comedy show.  She is amazing and her show is so relatable to campus life.  After the comedian (about 11pm at night) there was a BBQ and dance party thrown by St. Mike's on the 300s field.  Goes without saying I slept well that night (and the next as well).

Anyways, here are some selfies with friends throughout the afternoon:

Buttface, myself, and Ariel
(Buttface is my roommate, she calls me Butthead - it is a loving relationship)

Alex, Me, and Buttface

My roomies

TH 402

Going to miss this place

Love my friends <3

Carly and I

It is sad to think it was my last P-Day but life keeps moving and I have to try and keep up with it!

One Last Time: Celtic Knights

Last Friday night was the MLK Talent Show at St. Mike's.  It was also my last performance as a Celtic Knight.  It is really sad to think about and I almost cried during my last pep talk to them.  It has been a great honor being their president and working with a group of such talented ladies.  From all the laughs, to stressful nights, to amazing performances - it has been great time!!  I know my senior year would not have been as memorable without them.

Throughout March and April, we worked very hard to choreograph a routine to blow people away at the talent show.  Our first goal was to pick a theme.  It was quite difficult because there were some good ones.  We ended up on deciding on a 20s theme.  The next step was to choreograph the actual routine.  This year we consisted of girls with past dance talent and we were able to incorporate some Swing and Charleston into our dance.  It was definitely quite interesting to learn.  Here are some pictures of us during practice.  We definitely all worked hard.

Yes, it looks like we are standing around a lot, but we would stop and discuss different sections, talk about the count, and remind people to smile.  I know I have to be reminded to smile a lot because I'll tend to stick my tongue out when I concentrate - don't worry they took no hesitation in calling me out on it!

Here is what the final performance looked like:

I'm so proud of all them and the hard work they put into this performance!

Jeanmarie Hall, my second home

Some majors have one building where many of your classes are held.  After my four years, I have to say mine would be Jeanmarie.  Jeanmarie is one of the three main academic buildings that are connected on main campus.  It has three floors with many different classroom styles and computer labs.

One room which I have become acquainted with fairly well is the Linux lab.  I've had three Computer Science classes in that room and have spent a fair amount of time there for my other Computer Science classes as well.  I'll say we have a love hate relationship for that reason as well.  I really love my major but occasionally, there were those assignments that I wanted nothing to do with again after that semester.

Some the department offices which are housed in Jeanmarie are the Computer Science, Mathematics, and Business departments.  There are some other professors scattered in there as well but for the most part if you are in any of these three majors, you will frequently visit Jeanmarie for advising meetings, to hand in papers, and for extra help during office hours.

If you stop by campus, be sure to check out the place I've come to love and know!  And to help you out here are some pictures of this place as well:

Jeanmaire Hall

A Windows Computer Lab

The Linux Lab - generally only computer science majors
only have access to this room 

One style room for lectures

Another type of classroom, I really like this one because
it is easier to spread out!

A setup for a more discussion based classes

We knew it was trouble...

This semester I'm taking an Artificial Intelligence course.  It is an interesting course because unlike the past courses I've taken where we knew our programs would work in our controlled environment, there wasn't a controlled environment.  We still used a set of test variables but a lot had to do with our external environment.

Team Trouble

Our big project we did was right before spring break.  We broke off into teams to create a robot to remove toxic waste, or soda bottles which is what we used to represent the waste.  Our professor set up an obstacle course which consisted of us going down a ramp to remove a door before entering a ring.  Then we entered the ring and had to find the three soda bottles and remove them.  Once our robot removed the bottles, it had to head back up the ramp and shut off at the end.

Trouble, the robot

It was a tiring process.  We built our robot out of a LEGO Mindstorms kit.  It was slightly exciting for me since my brother used to make anything I wanted out LEGOs and I had no real skill for it.  We spent a lot of hours on this project because one thing this taught us was how difficult it would be to factor in external environments.  For example, if the color sensor missed the red dot on the floor, our robot would drive off the course.  Or if the touch sensor didn't registrar the bottle was in its grasp, then the robot would keep pushing the bottle around.  It was a bit frustrating but I learned a very important lesson during the process.

Trouble removing the door.  We built a lever to hold the door
until it was outside the circle and dropped it.

Trouble had a touch sensor and bars on the side to remove
a bottle from the field.

 We did fairly well during our presentation.  Our main problem was the search field was so big that it took awhile to find all the bottles.  Anyways take a look at this video one of my teammates made that shows Trouble completing the required tasks:

NYC MOVE Trip

In my last post (Birthday Shenanigans), I mentioned that I went on a MOVE Extended Service Trip to NYC for Spring Break.  It was an exhausting but well worth it trip.  I had an amazing group and met some really great people while helping them out in anyway we could.

My Group <3

All our days were long but it was well worth it.  We traveled mostly by subway and foot since it is the most convenient in the city.  For the most part we mastered it, only after we lost two people on a platform on the first night.  We all made it in the end and we laugh about it now.

Our mornings normally started out working with God's Love, We Deliver.  It is similar to Meals on Wheels but at a much larger scale.  3 out of the 4 days we worked there, we help package food.  Me and 4 others in the group chopped 200 hundred pounds of onions while there.  We helped prepare other food and also organize the bags to be delivered.  On the last day, we each got paired up with a van driver to deliver food to the people.  It was quite an experience to meet the people in need and I think that affected me the most in the end.

On the odd morning (my birthday actually) we went to help sort inventory at Handcrafting Justice.  It was a different experience since we only interacted with the people who handled shipping.  We had fun anyways.

Sorting backpacks

For three of the afternoons we worked at The Mercy Center hosting some after school games for the kids who went there for homework help.  It was a lot of fun because the kids were great and entertaining on their own!  Our last stop of the day was the Covenant House.  We all really enjoyed going there because we got to hang out with people our age.  We played pool, air hockey, basketball, and a lot of cards.  It was interesting since a lot of us were from different areas (including the people there), we all had different games and such to teach each other.

One of the coolest things we did was on the vernal equinox.  There is the old tale where you can stand up an egg.  We actually did it!

By the time we got home at the end of the night, it was probably about 10pm.  After the second day we decided to nap anywhere we could, if we had time:

I wouldn't go back and change the schedule even though I was running on fumes by the end of the day.  I really enjoyed meeting new people and getting to know more about the different types of people in the area.  It was definitely a rewarding experience.

Birthday Shenanigans

About a week and a half ago I turned 22.  The sad thing about my birthday is it has fallen during spring break.  On one hand it means, "NO SCHOOL!!!"  but on the other hand it means, "no friends."  Yes, I have visited with friends in the past, but there is nothing like walking around campus getting "Happy Birthday!!" shouts from everyone.

This year, because my birthday was on spring break, my roommates decided to throw me an early birthday celebration.  My mom brought up some presents for me and hid them with my roommates so I couldn't touch them until a determined time.  I have to say they were pretty good about hiding them.  For me to find these gifts, they set up a scavenger hunt.  I was so excited and couldn't contain my excitement!!  Most clues were in our townhouse but they sent one to a campus printer which caused for a mini-field trip to Alliot (that's where they made me go to print).  Anyway it was a fun time and I couldn't ask for better townhouse-mates!

For spring break I had gotten accepted on a MOVE service trip.  I was excited to be doing service this year for my birthday.  It was just something I wanted to do.  Our trip was based in NYC.  It was a great experience and I'll blog more about it later!  My birthday was a pretty good day.  We spent the day pretty much doing our usual service.  However, a few people on my trip took to making fun of me or calling me, "Birthday Girl."

When we got home, I was kind of tired but still pumped up.  We dispersed to our rooms for a couple a minutes to throw our coats or change if we choose.  Every time I walked out of my room to go to the bathroom or give someone something, people would stop running down the hall and give me a stupid grin and say, "Hi, Maura."  I was really confused.  When I finally made my way upstairs, I realized half way up the walls were decorated with present pictures.  I stopped and called out if it was alright for me to proceed.  I was given the okay and when I got to the kitchen, the door was completely covered with happy birthday in large letters:

When I opened the door, balloons fell on me.  It was quite unreal.  Then everyone sang me Happy Birthday and they had cupcakes as well.  I asked them when they had time to pull all this off and they said they didn't.  They Faith Community we were staying with decorated everything and rigged the balloons.  It was so nice of them.

It was definitely one of my top birthdays.  And I'm really thankful they did all that for me.  I couldn't have asked for better people to go on the trip with!