What’s New This Week?

Finals are finally here! (not meant to sound excited about it). With finals comes, stress-eating, anxiety, long hours in the library, and usually some more stress-eating. Although finals tend to be 15-20% of your overall grade in a class, its important to remember that your health should come before everything else. It drives me crazy when I hear about people staying up for 3 nights straight during finals week. It’s actually been proven that if you don’t get enough sleep the night before a test, you’re not going to do as well as you would of if you just slept. If you’re overly stressed about a test try to break up your time studying for it. Switch up the subjects. Call your parents for some wisdom. Go get a corndog (IDK). If you want some quick easy tips to use while you are studying for your finals go here –> http://news.fiu.edu/2013/12/8-study-tips-that-will-help-you-overcome-finals-week/70573 <– and remember, C’s get degrees, guys! (not actually try your best but just in case).

Also, from my personal experience, I have found that working out actually decreases stress levels a whole lot. Make cardio a friend during finals week. Dance around your room if thats your type of cardio… Personally I’m a runner. So I take to the treadmill for a solid half hour and then head back on into the library and eat a lot of dark chocolate. It works. I promise. Try it.

WORD OF THE DAY:

Sang-froid(n): coolness of the mind, calmness, composure.

No. I didn’t plan that out. 

What’s New This Week?

Today happens to be a day that is very near and dear to my heart. Almost 19 years ago, my little brother was born. A normal baby (other than he was a c-section because he decided to try to come out feet first). He looked normal, acted normal, was normal. But around two and a half years later he started showing signs that my doctors told my parents was autism. For those of you that haven’t heard of autism, it is “a mental condition that is characterized by difficulty in communication and forming relationships with other people and in using language and abstract concepts”. But, for Danny and my family it is much more. Still to this day, Danny is mute and he can’t learn how to read/write. Don’t get me wrong, he is the happiest kid you’d ever meet in your life. Not to mention probably one of the most good-looking kids too (as shown above).  Anyway, today (April 2nd)  happens to be the 8th Annual Autism Awareness Day. In New Jersey, 1/68 children are diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum. (WHAT). At the moment, there is no cure, or even a medical test that can diagnose it. Today is a day that raises Awareness, so hopefully one day they can find a cure. So, instead of treating today just like another day out of the year. Learn a little bit and teach a little bit to others that don’t know as well. You can find more information at www.autismspeaks.org.

What’s New This Week?

So, last week I mentioned that Kappa Delta was hosting a 5k race to raise money for Family Services of the Piedmont. Just in case you were wondering, IT WENT AMAZING. More than 350 people participated in the 5k or fun run, and we raised $20,000!!!!!!!!! If you couldn’t make it this year, DON’T WORRY, there’s always next year 🙂  

What’s New The Week?

This weekend, (Sunday March 22nd), my sorority Kappa Delta is hosting our second annual 5k run to help promote Prevent Child Abuse America. All proceeds go directly to our own community, Family Services of the Piedmont. They are the largest private nonprofit agency in Guilford County, NC and they provide services to families and children that are in need or going through a hard time. The best part of this 5k (other than running 3.1 miles who doesn’t want to do that), everyone has the option to dress up as their favorite super hero!!! There will also be food trucks and a silent auction! Its a lot of fun and for a really good cause. If ANYONE would like to register to run or even just make a donation, you can do that here (http://www.familyservice-piedmont.org/superherodash). For some more information here is our philanthropy chair, Leila, talking about the killer event on Fox News! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgnlSiYdYTw&feature=youtu.be)

What’s New This Week?

~Smoking~

I’m not really sure why people smoke cigarettes even after they know what they do to their bodies. Just incase you were wondering what exactly it is inside:

It kills me seeing kids my age or younger that already have the habit of smoking, especially after reading this new article. Its titled,  Tobacco Kills Two Out of Three Smokers. This was a 4- year follow-up study that followed 200,000 men and woman and their smoking habits. Old studies show that 50% of people that smoked cigarettes died early from related diseases, but this upped that to 67% of people.

“Furthermore, the team also found that, compared with non-smokers, smoking 10 cigarettes a day doubles the risk of dying and a pack a day increases the risk four- to five-fold. But here’s some good news! Among past smokers, the risk of premature death diminished with time. In people who quit before age 45, their mortality was almost the same as never-smokers.”

Definitely found that silver lining.

What’s New This Week?

A new viral sensation has hit all social media in the form of a dress.. (?!). The question is, what colors are this dress? 

At first I thought, “its obviously gold and white..”, and didn’t really look too much into it. But, then as I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed I passed it again.. and it was blue and black. Confused, I finally started to read up on it. Apparently different people see it different colors. Gold and white, or blue and black. So naturally… I read up on it a little bit. (Just letting everyone know that when I pasted that picture to this post it was gold and white and then I clicked off the screen for a second and now its black and blue).. According to Cedar Riener who is an associate professor of psychology at Randolph-Macon College, its about how your brain is interpreting the light coming into your eyes.

 “In the case of the dress, some people are deciding that there is a fair amount of illumination on a blue and black (or less reflective) dress. Other people are deciding that it is less illumination on a white/gold dress (it is in shadow, but more reflective).”

So, basically its how your brain is interpreting it, and the lightening that your brain is allowing your eyes to see. (Crazy weird). By the way, the dress is back to tan and white. I’m still confused.

What’s New This Week?

I happen to be a HUGE fan of Girl Scouts.. not only because of their cookies but because they are also my sorority’s philanthropy and we get to work with these girls a lot during the year. We get to watch movies, play games and help them sell cookies.. I also happen to be a huge fan of the Blackhawks (behind the New Jersey Devils.. but I don’t usually mention that), so I bet you could imagine my excitement when I saw that one of the players of the Blackhawks was helping out a local Daisy and buying cookies from her…

But in all seriousness, the Girl Scouts of America organization is unbelievable in promoting confidence among these adorable little girls. (and the cookies are amazing, you should buy them) The whole video is 100% worth watching. 

What’s New This Week

Idk about you guys, but I’m a HUGE fan of Taylor Swift. Not only her music, but also with the way she carries herself as well. During the holidays, Swift personally hand-wrote holiday letters to her fans, and hand-picked out gifts for them. And these weren’t gifts like Taylor Swift CD’s and apparel. They were scarfs and other things that she thought they would enjoy, like an actual friend would do. And of course she made a video of herself doing the whole thing — http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/taylor-swifts-holiday-gifts-bring-fans-to-tears-video-201521 — But, she’s at it again this week at the Grammy’s. She tracked down one of her fans, and brought her backstage at the Grammy’s. THE GRAMMY’S. The article, “Taylor Swift Tracked Down A Fan To Bring Her Back Stage”, starts out by saying, “Taylor Swift is probably the only pop star that stalks her own fans like they stalk her”. But, yeah, its because she’s awesome.

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Also this week, Apple became the first US company to close with a market cap of over  $700B…. (pocket change duh)… They did this after they announced that they were going to be partnering with First Solar and will be building an $850 million renewable energy farm in CA that will be capable of powering 60,000 homes. This company already has two of these “farms” in North Carolina and one in Nevada. 

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Sidenote: Here’s Barack Obama’s doppelgänger… its really weird. He’s some 40 year old guy from Indonesia. 

What’s New This Week?

There’s really not too much new stuff going on this week (other than the flu that is currently running ramped through campus and the measles running ramped through CA). But the Superbowl just currently passed and I found this really funny article that a girl I went to high school with wrote for totalsororitymove.com. It’s titled, Girls Who Want To Impress Guys With Sports Knowledge: Do This. It’s actually a pretty cute read on how girls should actually act when they are watching a sporting event with a guy. Because, to be completely honest, is there actually a guy that really likes a girl that tries to pretend she knows more than him about a given sport? No. There isn’t. So, if you’re interested..

What’s New This Week?

Girls. New. Girls.

Over the past few months every sorority chapter (at least here at HPU) has been preparing for the most exciting week of the year, recruitment. Yes, girl flirting. SO MUCH GIRL FLIRTING. Recruitment is composed of 2 Philanthropy nights, 1 Skit Night, 1 Preference Night and 1 BID DAY.  All of these tireless and sleepless nights are more than worth it. Kappa Delta took a beautiful new pledge class of 69 girls. That’s 69 new girls that get to start a new chapter in their lives. ( ITS EXCITING STUFF).

Every year each sorority picks a “bid day theme”. Ours this year happened to be Wild Wild West. So we put on our cowboy boots (or lack thereof) and sprinted to the Slane Student Center where the bids were being handed out. Then, commence the hugging. 

And the crying.

And the hugging and crying..

So, as you could see it was pretty emotional. Expect to see a lot more on the new pledge class in upcoming weeks…

~Article Find~

What else is new this week? I think a new low for humanity has been hit with this article I found. It’s titled, New Yorkers Are Flocking to Craigslist to Find ‘Blizzard Boyfriends’ and Girlfriends. Basically, people were making posts to craigslist to find people that they could get stuck in an apartment with for a few days… comforting. Here’s what someone posted;

Ugh, God bless America. That’s all I have to say.