Hey all,

As I traveled in the last month, to my sister’s college graduation two weeks ago and listened to her commencement speakers, I listened to what they were discussing and talking about fear. The fear of unknown, not knowing what is going to happen, and yet there should be some fear to drive us to be successful. As I was listening to that, I reflect upon my last five years here at RIT from when I came as a freshman and to where I am now. Even the changes that have occurred to me in the last year, was something I was not expecting to happen, especially traveling throughout the year competing in various competitions and attending conferences. As I look back last night upon my senior year, I ask myself where did the time go? All I could think of was the fun times that I had! With focusing on my academic classes, I participated in clubs, and competitions, practices, giving tours, and hanging out with friends, I look back and am thankful that I had fun and enjoy these moments that I had especially meeting new people and helping being a part of NTID.

As my friends and graduates that I know who will be leaving and starting their own journey,  the interaction and friendships and the stories we all had will be missed. However, I recently came across a quote that I saw and felt this fits perfectly.

“This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.” -Winston S. Churchill

Our times here at RIT/NTID is the stepping stone and the beginning of getting our dream careers. The goal of obtaining our dream job will never cease, it will never end, however, there has to be an end to the beginning. College is a perfect fit to that quote. It plays the role of advancing and preparing us to be successful. After college, we can still maintain friendships, meet up from time to time, and always come back to visit our alumnus.

The memories and friendships that I have made here reaffirmed my decision to attend RIT/NTID. I cannot think where else you will find a diverse campus with multiple cultures and communication situations that present itself on campus that teach you how to be successful for the real world and to be able to handle any challenges that may be thrown your way!

I am going to leave with two quotes by Dr. Seuss and Tom Petty that best represents my thoughts on my friends and faculty that I know here. This has been true as I traveled and run into alumni and friends that I was not expecting to encounter! I apologize I don’t have pictures yet, my camera is broken so all the pictures are through my parents and friends who have them.

“You and I will meet again, When we’re least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won’t say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again” – Tom Petty

And last but not least;  “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” – Dr. Seuss

What is Senior Portfolio Walkthrough?

It is an evening reception to celebrate the accomplishments of our senior School of Design students as they display their work for all to see.

As you know, I am a current senior majoring in Graphic Design and will be graduating this Friday. So, I was told that it is “required” to attend this event, even though I really wanted to go since I went to the portfolio walkthrough for the past two years and I really enjoyed the event very much! Now, it is my turn! I just had my first and last senior portfolio walkthrough last night on May 14 from 5-7pm in University Gallery next to the Vignelli Center for Design Studies. I invited everyone including my supervisors, co-workers, classmates, friends, and many others. There were also a lot of other seniors from Graphic Design, Industrial Design and Interior Design majors showing their work. It was really nice!

I shared my table with two other deaf seniors from Graphic Design. We got a lot of nice compliments which gives me a lot of confidence in my future!

Here is my portfolio of work and self-promo pieces on the table!

And it is not over yet. I will post one or two more times this week before I graduate!

Hey…

So, this week is my last week as a college undergrad student. I feel weird knowing that today is my last Monday as a college student. Tomorrow will be my last Tuesday as a college student and so on. I had a lot of good-bye parties for seniors last Friday and there were a couple of senior receptions. We had our Senior Night last Friday. We had dinner, photobooth, shows, and more free stuff! You can never get enough of free food and stuff!

Yesterday, I went on a winery tour as part of Senior Week. Today was Senior Brunch (I missed it ), tomorrow will be a luncheon on a boat, then a bar hopping night on Wednesday and finally, on Thursday, we will have a champagne toast night. Friday, we will have our convocation (for all colleges) and finally, my graduation for College of Science on Saturday.

Right now, I just submitted my final paper this morning and have been working on a take-home final exam then one more final (the last one ever) on this Wednesday night.

On top of that, I have to pack up my apartment, clean up my room (ew), and say more good byes to friends and especially to interpreters who stuck with me for four years. I have professors that I need to say thank you and goodbye.

I am definitely ready for the summer but probably not ready for not coming back in the fall. It is a bittersweet feeling leaving your second home.

With that, aloha… just because it doesn’t mean it is a final goodbye from me.

I went the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis concert at Gordon Field House, RIT last Sunday, April 28. IT WAS EPIC! With my RIT student id, my ticket to the concert is only $17! Only $17 to see such a famous artist like Macklemore, and even better, he rapped on campus!

The tickets got sold out about two weeks before the day of the concert. It’s a full-house concert. 6000 people (RIT students and faculty and non-RIT people) filled the Gordon Field House.

During the concert, the crowd was crazy and full of high energy! There were a lot of crowd surfing happening throughout the concert. Even Macklemore threw himself on top of the crowd and got crowd-surfed. Luckily, no one got hurt. Even if someone did get hurt, there were workers from RIT Ambulance (RMIT) waiting outside in case of medical emergency. There were also police and security guards stationed everywhere to ensure that everything was in control. and no one was breaking laws or hurting people.

Finally at around 11pm,the concert ended and people started leaving. I went home and continued on my long paper before going to bed. It was a great concert, and I thought it was quite worth it to go despite that I didn’t really listen to Macklemore’s songs, that it was on a Sunday, and that I had a huge paper to write that night.

I can’t believe that there are only 18 days left until I will be graduating from RIT! The reality is starting to hit me harder and harder and all I can do is to grab all the opportunities I can find on campus before I leave and take advantage of them! And here I am back once again on the right track! I apologize that I wasn’t able to find the time to post in the past week, but I have so much to share with you all!

As you know I am a current student advisor for Asian Deaf Club, and for the past 6 years of being here at RIT/NTID Asian Deaf Club has been my second home. Asian Deaf Club’s mission is to give the opportunity to Asian and non-Asian students to have equal benefits of sharing a diversity of cultures and values among others and promote cross-cultural understanding among students with diverse backgrounds. I was a secretary when I joined my freshman year and then became president the following year. Time goes by fast! So, last Saturday was Asian Deaf Club’s 24th Annual Banquet and it was actually the last time I will attend the banquet and I will definitely miss ADC. But I will DEFINITELY be coming to the 25th Anniversary Banquet since it will be a big deal where all the alumni can come and get together for a reunion. It will be so great to see all my former Eboards and Board of Directors. I have to applaud the current Eboard/banquet committee who worked so hard to make this banquet so successful. I am very proud of these people! I believe that the banquet was successful and everyone seemed very happy…even alumni enjoyed it very much!

Here is the picture of ADC’s current eboards, banquet committee and the alumuni!

Yesterday, my roommates and I decided to go out and explore downtown Rochester since two of us will be graduating this May and luckily it was a beautiful day out there! We reserved a table at The Owl House! The Owl House?! What is that? It is only a place that serves all vegan and vegetarian foods! I saw the rating on Yelps and it had 4 out of 5 stars! So we decided to check it out and the foods were real good, I think. Haha, it is hard to determine what is good and what is not good since I am not vegetarian, I do eat both meat and vegetables but I enjoyed my meal!

A lot of my friends know me that I always take pictures of foods so here is a snapshot of the foods!

You should definitely check all the clubs on campus to gain your experiences and leadership roles and of course check out all the places in downtown Rochester, too!

It looks like nearly all of my posts are about birds. Today, I will be leaving for Canada on a class field trip. What for? To watch birds!

Seriously, we are going to Canada for bird watching. We are going to the important stopover site for migratory birds before heading to their nesting sites. We will be watching and identifying birds and discussing about conservation issues. I am really looking forward to this trip because I get to see more birds, but I don’t look forward to getting up at 5am everyday until I get back on Sunday night.

Speaking of birds, I will be starting to work at a bird banding station in May. I loved working there last spring and I was asked to come back again this spring. I am SO excited to start working there again. The only thing that I am not happy about is having to get up an hour and a half before sunrise…which is at 4am. I am not a morning person, but I am willing to sacrifice just for this working experience.

Hard to believe that I only have three weeks left of my college career. Where did the time go, especially for past couple weeks? We had Brickfest Sport Weekend (I was on Brickfest RIT soccer team against Gallaudet’s team), Alpha Sigma Alpha’s Heel Violence Walk last weekend, and yesterday I went to NTID’s Foundation Board Dinner as WOLK president and I was surprised to receive a free ticket to watch the play of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was only able to stay for the first act due a group project, but the play looked so good that I’ll be back to watch the second act next weekend! Those events are only a few events that I attended in the past couple weeks.

SpringFest is this weekend!! Imagine RIT is next weekend!! THEN SENIOR WEEK! I am sure there are more events that I forgot to mention but that is good enough for now.

It’s been a busy month already! So much has happened and I’m glad to get all my midterms out of the way! This quarter has been tough in terms of academics but I’m learning so much related to my major (Finance for those of you who were wondering!) and summer is only around the corner! This month we had Brickfest, an upcoming play (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and some club banquets coming up!

Just wait til it gets warmer then I’ll be able to hit up the pool but with the inconsistency of the weather here, who knows when that will be!

Right now I’m looking forward to finishing up classes, going back to Seattle, and catching up on my T.V. shows/movies! Later I’m heading back here for some summer classes and to see what Rochester is all about in the summer! Word has it that Rochester is actually beautiful during the summer and that there’s lots to do so I’ll find out! What are your summer plans?

Before I leave, here’s a picture of me with some buddies setting up before a pep rally hosted here at RIT!

Hello!!!!

Hard to believe what has happened since I was last on here. I traveled to Erie, PA to take my national engineering exam to start the process of obtaining my professional engineering license. The exam was 8 hours long and started at 8 am, which means I had to drive down Friday night and sleep in the hotel in Erie. It was not a bad drive, although my brain was exhausted after I had completed the exam.

After I had finished the exam, I came back to Rochester and caught up on my homework briefly before flying out early Wednesday morning to St. Louis for a steel conference related to my major. We got there early enough Wednesday that my friends and I who were attending the conference were able to take in the sights of St. Louis and try out some of the local food. It was definitely delicious and you could even tell it was originated from St. Louis. I was able to see the St. Louis Arch and attend the conference and the dinner. The dinner was the best part since they had so much food and the various activities for attendees to do and socialize with other people for networking. It was a blast and I really enjoyed the time with friends and the friendships that I had made in St. Louis.

I arrived back Friday afternoon and RIT was hosting the ASCE conference here as well for my major. We had 14 schools here competing to see who built the best canoes made out of concrete and the best bridges from steel. It was an enjoyable trip and sight to watch. I guess the phrase “All good things must come to an end” is true as I am playing catch up on my homework as I missed classes for the conferences.

Here are some pictures to look at from the recent trip that I had taken!

A view of the St. Louis Arch from my hotel balcony. It was a gorgeous view!

Background of the Conference, serving locally made root beer and cream soda!

Here is a fountain completely from barbeque and you can cover your food up with as much bbq as you want!

Enjoy!

-Stephen

Hello!

Week 6 flew by (I notice I say this every time I post a new post but the number changes, wow!) I am getting overwhelmed with the load of homework I get! There’s so much! However, I can worry less about one class. Why? The class I was taking was called, Special Topic: Planning for the RITZ.

You may ask yourself, “The RITZ? What is it?” It was a dinner that was ran by only students. What we do is we serve, we plan, we make the food, all of us. Just students, no faculty, and no staff. Anyone can take the class, not just the Hospitality students. What do we get in return of that? We get credit and when the semester comes around, it will be required for the Hospitality Management majors compare to now. We are not required but we can take it to cover our general elective classes. But then that is one less class for me next year because it’s already on my requirements for the semester conversion.

I was a server for a large table of 10. I was lucky because I was requested by my NTID Hospitality advisor so I had no worries about who I was serving. I was thrilled when I found out! My nerves went back down after it being shot up when I was assigned to be a server in the beginning of spring quarter! I have experience being a server by working at a local family restaurant back at home as a busser, but I was able to help serve some food when they needed it.

I was there from 2ishpm to 11pm. My feet were killing me at the end! When I got in my car, I was like, “ahhhhhhhhh”. My two friends who rode with me, they were food runners (they were the people to bring out the food on the tray from the kitchen. I was just delivering the food at the table) and they said the same thing. When I got home, I knew they would hurt if I walked around after standing for so long, so I immediately got into my pj’s, brushed my teeth and laid in bed. I, at first had a hard time falling asleep after feeling it throb so much. I massaged my feet for a few minutes and it felt a bit better afterwards so I was able to sleep afterwards, plus the fact that I was up at like 6:30am for a workshop at 7:30am to 1:30ishpm for an organization that I am a part of.

Anyways, so that was a really long day. I am now sitting at my friend’s table trying to catch up after a long weekend and I know I have a long week and weekend coming so I will be super busy in the next 5 weeks. Ekkkkk, the life of a college student!

Have a great week and chat next time! Sorry I do not have any pictures to post from the dinner. The country club that we used told us that we were not allowed to use our phones at all. So, no pictures were taken. However, there is a link that you guys can look at if you like that is related to the dinner. Hope this gives you some information for perhaps next year’s dinner if you are interested in taking our class, even if you are a Chemistry or Engineering major!

http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=49876

Adios!

-Stephanie

The week flew by!! I had couple of midterms last week and this week and my weekend is already almost gone.

“So many things to do and so little time” is true for the past couple of weeks. Last week was Deaf Jewish Awareness week and my club had an event every night from Monday through Thursday. All of my time was focused on making those event happen and they were successful. As president of WOLK, I am so proud of my club for making all of those events so successful!

Spring is here! How do I know that? It had been raining all week and because of that, some parts of campus are flooded. Mostly in the field because parts of the the campus is built on swamp land so some areas around the campus will have mini ponds for a while.

One of those rainy days

This is usually all grass.

Mini-pond!

From last Thursday until today, Sunday, there is a play called Dog Sees God. The play is about Charlie Brown from the Peanut gang being a teenager. One of my roommates is a stage manager and my other roommate is one of the actors in the cast. The play was directed by a senior theater major. The play is his senior thesis and I have to applaud him because the play had a full house for all showings. I watched the play on Friday and it was a powerful play.

The play.

On an ending note, I am going to enjoy the beautiful days this week… I heard it is going to be in the 60′s and 70′s!!