Soph(LESS) Time

So what I have discovered this year is that I really don't have enough time in the day. It has felt like the past few weeks I have been completely booked solid almost every single day. Sometimes, I just need me time, you know? Being stressed about school, internships, Bluebonnets, and ASME isn't really how I want to live during my years in college. Luckily, I have some pretty amazing friends here  and some awesome parents to help me out and make me feel better. And I am most definitely learning through my mistakes and trying to worry less about the small stuff.

First off, let me tell you about one of my new close friends, Christina. She is one of the most genuinely caring person you will ever meet. I met her through Bluebonnets, and now we are officers together, and boy I would not survive if it wasn't for her. Her and I have pushed through some of the craziest, busiest times together, and she has always been there to either share our worries about one thing or another or be the optimist for me. She seriously takes on more than she should be handling, and she is always willing to step up and help me out with Bluebonnet stuff when she sees that it is overwhelming me. This past week was Big/Little Week, and it was a ton of work but it was all worth it in the end when my littles found out who I was. And to top it off, Christina and I have named our joint families the "Depena-Dennington Dynasty" or the 3D's! haha

Next are my parents/Sephra/James, they have all listened to me talk/cry for who knows how long about schoolwork, bluebonnets, and internship stuff. If I was in their shoes, I don't know if I could do it. (I can talk a lot) Anyways, my mom and dad have really been giving me good advice concerning internships and schoolwork. Not to mention, they practically proofread every email that I send out to a potential employer. Details to come later, but I should be employed next summer! Anyways,  I really miss my family, I had planned to spend this weekend with them, but I stupidly slept through my bus. On the not so but sorta bright side, I studied 4 hours for my Solids test today and did 3 hours of computing homework. I predict I will be doing the same amount tomorrow... Life of an engineer.

That's all for now, to any Biffles reading this blog-I am sorry for not being super in the loop with y'all, it has been a really hectic couple of weeks, but I miss y'all a lot and I can't wait until Thanksgiving!

-KD

Soph(MORE) Fun!

Well I have kicked off my Sophomore year at The University of Texas at Austin! I am living in newest dorm on campus which is closer to my classes in the engineering quad, the drag, and West Campus! I love my new room, and I am so glad to be with Sephra again!

I have been attending my classes, and I am really enjoying them! I know they will be a lot of work, but I am doing my best to keep up with all of the homework and readings.

With Texas Bluebonnets, we have kicked off our recruitment with tabling outside and info sessions! It is a month long recruitment process full of tons of events, and I am really excited to have it underway and meet our new Baby Blue members!



In ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), as the new events coordinator, I have already set up a Freshman Meet 'n Greet and our Ice Cream social is tomorrow! Whoo! We had a tailgate yesterday for the BYU game, and I got there at 7am to help cook the brisket! We also had some dang good ribs, played tons of games like corn hole, ladder golf, and can jam! All in all it was really fun!

Now, I am trying to relax away my Sunday before my first full week starts up this week! Yep that is right, we had labor day off last week, and started on Wednesday the week before that, so this will be my first full week of school! Yay!

That is all for now! I will keep you posted as much as possible!

Katie

Summer Livin'

Well I am sitting in my Physics Summer Class that I attend Monday-Thursday 4 hours a day. Whoo. Go school. But there are only 5 days left, so I am just trying to power through. So where did we leave off last... Oh right!

MITE! My Intro to Engineering Camp counseling! I had a great second week and it finished off with my mom driving up to Austin and suprising me with cake and presents! It was so nice of her to come up and spend 6 hours in the car to see me on my birthday! 

After she left, James took me out to Hula Hut, and we had a nice dinner out on the lake!

The Biffles also celebrated Abbi and I's birthday with a night out in the woodlands! 

About a month later (mainly I just hung out with friends), we went on family + Hall Vacation to Colorado! We had never visited Colorado in the summer, so it was cool seeing Colorado in the summer! We drove to Amarillo the first day and went to the AWESOME Palo Duro Canyon, and saw the "Texas Show".

Once we got to Colorado, we river rafted the Rio Grande (not so Grande 20 miles south of it's origin), we traveled on a train through Colorado and New Mexico, and we visited Pagosa Springs! 

On the way home, we stopped in Santa Fe, and we saw the "miracle stairs" that supposedly Joseph built, pretty cool! We walked around the city markets and just explored the cool city! And then as soon as it started, we were back home!

Ever since then I have been doing this super fun summer class, full of homework, too many stupid questions, way too long tangents by my professor, and tests with averages of a 65! Go team! 

It hasn't been all bad though, I do get 3-Day weekends and I have spent a lot of time hanging out with friends, working on a TON of Bluebonnet stuff, crafting stuff for the dorm, and cooking up/eating yummy food!

I also saw Rascal Flatts at the Day in the Country Music Festival with my Mom! I have wanted to see them since I was like 12!!! 

I am really looking forward to school to start, but I am still trying to enjoy every day of summer I can get!

-KD

Spring to Summer and all the Stuff in Between

It has been a really crazy semester for me, between being an officer in ASME and Texas Bluebonnets, having to rerun for new officer positions, Spring Break with Marissa in Utah, Finals for college, starting summer classes and being a camp counselor there is no rest for the weary! I will try and summarize some of these things in the next few paragraphs, wish me luck!

First off! SPRING BREAK IN UTAH!!!! Oh my gosh, it was amazing. I planned that trip to visit Marissa since August 2013 and it finally happened in March 2014! I met her awesome roommates, Jessie, Becca and Maren and got to see her cool apartment styled dorm! We went skiing up in the mountains, hiked up a frozen waterfall, saw a boy band a cappella show, visited Salt Lake City, walked up to a point and overlooked the city of Provo, ate JDawg Hotdogs, toured a history museum, and had some delicious waffles. As you can probably tell, we did a lot of stuff thanks to Marissa's awesome planning of our time! I will never forget that spring break and I am so so so glad I had the opportunity to spend it with Marissa and the mountains!

Next up, end of the year shenanigans! I applied, interviewed, and was chosen as the new Events Coordinator for ASME! Basically, I coordinate and plan all events that our organization does throughout the year. We have approximately 500 members total, but normally a little less than 50 show up to the actual events, but it is still a lot of work. During the transition from the old officer team to the new officer team, I planned Senior Project Happy Hour (money donated from professors for a Happy hour for the seniors at a local bar, Posse East), Fiesta Friday (end of the year grill out), and two Study Break sessions (free food and a place to study during finals week). It was a ton of work, and I am loving reorganizing and documenting how these events are run! We also had a delicious end of the year banquet, and I was awarded Officer of the Semester!!!! It was such a great feeling to be awarded this honor, it really means a lot to me to be chosen by my fellow peers to receive this award. I look forward to all of the events that we have planned for the next school year!

Another organization I am in, Texas Bluebonnets, also had officer elections. I was nominated for Vice President and sustaining my role as Secretary, so that is what I will be doing next year! We also had our official initiation ceremony for the "Baby Blues" who are now active Bluebonnets! So exciting! We also had our semi formal end of the year event where we rented a party bus and headed down to Peter Pan mini golf all dressed up! I even got a hole in one at one of the holes, of course this is right after James golfed before me and also got a hole in one on the same hole.... oh well. Still pretty cool in my opinion!

While all of these end of the school year events were wrapping up, it meant I had to start studying for finals. I had four finals this semester out of the five classes I took. Economics and Thermodynamics were the first day of finals, Statics the day after, and Differential Equations two days after that. I finished up early and in time to make it home for Mother's Day, only to return a week later to Austin to attend Patrick's graduation from the MPA program! It was interesting meeting James' family, and it is really cool to see the end of the journey of which I have just begun!


Once I got back from all of this, I started taking Online Government via community college and also volunteering a little at Habitat for Humanity! I went to a music festival called Free Press in downtown Houston and saw a bunch of different alternative singers and rappers with James. I have also been watching The Bachelorette with my friends and trying to enjoy my summer!

The past two weeks I have been at MITE (My Intro to Engineering Camp) where I had the opportunity to mentor high school seniors. This camp is really special to me because I also attended this camp when I was in high school. To give you an idea of what we do, professors from each engineering department give a talk about that engineering area, they work on a Rube Goldberg styled project, tour campus, participate in engineering activities, and have fun (hopefully)! This camp really wears me out! Here is a picture of my kiddos from Session 1 (there are two sessions with 50 different kids at each session). I was very proud of them because they earned 2nd place overall! We are almost finished with the second session, and I am eager to see how my new group fares!

(Session 1 Group)

Whooo, that is 4 months summed up as best as I can!


-KD

Random Stuff!

So I have been up to a lot of random things over the past two months, but mainly I have just been too busy to focus on anything but school, organizations, and squeezing in a little friend time! Here are some pics of random things I have done with captions underneath!

Eric, Andrew, Sephra, and I tried going to Hopdoddy's a famous hamburger place, but then we ended up going to Mighty Fine Burger and Fries because they had a smaller line!

Look it's Kevin!! And Eric creeping in the back ground...

 James and I volunteered at ExploreUT! It was a huge open house, and each of the engineering groups put on some sort of activity! James' group mixed cornstarch and water and put it on a sub (speaker) and you could see it harden and soften due to the vibrations! My group dissected toys and taught kids how things work!

 One day James, Eric and I went to a Vietnamese sandwich shop, and we ordered sandwiches that taste suspiciously like Vietnamese Pho. After we went to a driving range, and also practiced some putting! Eric is demonstrating how you have to squat really really low if you want to use a kiddie putter. 

Jimmy, Andrew, Eric, James and I went to Kerbey Lane one night after we finished taking tests! Super fun hanging out with these geeky guys :) They didn't know I was taking these pics... so they all look pretty derpy in them!

Sephra and I also went to some parties during an event called Roundup! I am reppin' my spirit group, Texas Bluebonnets!

In the other picture, Sephra is hanging out at the Phi Kapp party with a bunch of my MechE friends from class!

 

Last picture is with this guy! James and I had some awesome brunch this past weekend at then infamous IHOP! He demolished the mexican omelette and two pancakes he ordered, while I stuck to two pancakes, two eggs, and some bacon! Let's just say one of us wasn't feeling too well after we ate, and it wasn't the person taking the picture ;)

E-Week!

Well that awesome week that I have heard so much about is here! Here is a quick schedule of the events I participated in over the past week!

Saturday Feb. 15: Puzzleception, Scavenger Hunt: Build a UT Monopoly game board, Hug 7 people in your dorm, eat Chik Fil A in Raisin Canes, build a resume for future Dean of Engineering, wear an ice skater suit.

Monday Feb. 17: Musical Chairs (ASME got 2nd!), ASME 500 (an event I planned and ran), Charades, study for tests :(

Wednesday Feb. 19: ASME Knockout (a basketball game), Thermodynamics test, Statics test.

Thursday Feb. 20: Trivia game, ASME Capture the Flag (another event I helped plan!), after which I was exhausted from standing in the sun for 3 hours! I also got to see my sister,  when she was touring the Capitol building for a Leadership Group she is in!

Friday Feb. 21: Texas Bluebonnets info Session, then I left for home!

I hadn't been home in almost two months, so it was great to see my family and catch up with them! Also I had to pick up all of my snow gear, because I was heading up to Utah for Spring Break!









One of the events for the scavenger hun was "highest stack of pennies", so we went to the top of RLM (17 floor math building) and took a picture!

Sorry for the late posts, I am just trying to catch up!

Snowpocalypse Part 4!

Well, classes got cancelled...again. We have not had a full week of classes yet since the start of the semester! So far we have had a Friday, Tuesday, half of a Thursday(yesterday), and today (Friday) off. As nice as it is to do whatever I want and sleep in until whenever, I don't like missing so many lectures. Teachers end up having to rush all of their lectures, and we get super behind on homework.. oh well.
On the bright side, I have been able to keep up with the Olympics, with the help of my ultimate Olympic schedule excel spreadsheet of course! I have been playing a lot of Bananagrams (scrabble like game), doing laundry, applying to the one job on the ECAC (engineering career assistance center) that I qualify for, and helping plan events. This weekend is somewhat packed, I have a Blazer Tag ASME social tonight, tomorrow I am volunteering at MathCOUNTs with ASME, and Sunday I am going to see Sweeney Todd at the Bates Hall! Then a week of freedom/studying, followed by the start of E-Week/Engineering Day at the Museum, an Economics test, a Statics test, and a Thermodynamics test (the Statics/Thermo test are the exact same time so I have to ask for a change in time). E-Week will conclude with Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (an event I attended when I was in high school), Dr. Ramshorn (the male/female engineering beauty pageant), maybe a trip home? and then a DiffEq Calculus test the next Tuesday. By the way, E-Week stands for Engineering Week, an all out battle between all of the engineering organizations, where each organization puts on a couple of field day like events and also the ultimate scavenger hunt! I have seen items on the scavenger hunt list from the past, like get a tattoo, find a corp member to give you a hook 'em, and do a backflip, so it gets pretty intense. Being the ASME representative, I had to plan three events for E-Week, so we are doing Knockout (Basketball game), ASME 500 (build a lego car), and Capture the Flag! It is all very exciting, but I am sure I will be much more focused on my three tests unfortunately...
That's about it for now, I am definitely missing my family and friends, I know both of my parents have been trying to catch flights and travel during the "crazy snow" in Houston/El Paso/Dallas.. Hopefully I can go home soon. But it has still been fun in Austin, especially making new friends, well a new friend that is! Anyways, that's all for now.

-Katie

The Little Things

Survived another week of school, talked to my parents and sister, did super well on my first round of quizzes, played mini golf, and my homework is pretty manageable, so I would call this week a success!

The main purpose of this post though is to show off my roommate and I's craftiness! We made WHOLE WHEAT BANANA BREAD :) Whoo!!

Our stash of ingredients bought at the local HEB!

Mmmm yummy, we had to mash the bananas with our hands, and none of the measuring spoons were labeled, so we had to use engineering methods to figure out the sizes ;)

Sephra loving on the banana bread! It was indeed delicious :)

Recipe as follows: 

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 ½ cups sugar

4 medium bananas, mashed

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup applesauce

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 eggs

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350-degrees. Grease and flour 2 (9×5) loaf pans with cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together the eggs, bananas, oil, applesauce and vanilla.  Mix in the dry ingredients slowly until the batter is well combined. Pour into the prepared pans.

Bake for 55-65 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes, before turning out on a wire rack to cool completely before cutting.

Store the leftovers in an airtight container.  The extra loaf can be wrapped in plastic and slipped into a freezer bag – store in the freezer for 1 month.

Restart

Well, I am back at school again. Whoo. It has only been the first week, so I can't comment too much on how classes are going, but so far so good. It is a lot more reading than I had to do last semester, and I already had 2 homework assignments due the second week! Luckily we had a 3 day break for MLK day, so it gave me a nice day to relax and spread out the homework. The weather has been pretty nice here, lots of sun, few clouds, and only a light jacket needed, so it is pretty nice! Up to now I have:

• S'mores Social with ASME
• Kan Jam and Box (frisbee games)
• Taco Tuesday, yeah it's a thing
• Begun planning 3 events/competitions for Engineering Week
• Played Ultimate Frisbee
• Ate at Pluckers
• Played more Ultimate Frisbee
• Homework for 4 solid hours at Starbucks w/Leslie
• Cleaned the ASME office
• Watched the Patriots game
• Downton Abbey...poor Anna
• J2 and Kinsolving food (but not as much as normal)

Of course, it has only been a week, so there isn't much else to talk about! Just settling in once again and getting back on the "school grind". Yes Mom/dad, I will try to call yall soon, I am in ASME office hours right now for 3 hours, so I have time to blog but not really call. Unfortunately, Tuesday's are my worst days because I go from 9:30am to 8:00 at night, with an hour and a half for lunch and that's it. It is crazy! blah. Anyways, thanks for reading as always

-Katie