Busy week!

This week is going to be a big week, and a very important week for me. There are four days until my 22nd birthday, there are five days until I take the MCAT and cheer at my senior game, and six days until the next Miss Fulton County Workshop! My MCAT scores have been improving with each full length practice exam I've taken, so I am not as worried as I used to be about the MCATs! I am still nervous, of course, but I am not deathly afraid of it any longer, yay!

I am very excited to see all of this year's contestants again. I know that they have been hard at work since the last workshop almost a month ago. It is so hard to believe that in two weeks, one of these contestants will be the next Miss Fulton County! And, I will be done with the MCATs, hopefully forever.

It is interesting that Miss Fulton County has helped to distinguish big chapters in my life. I first competed in the pageant in 2007, when I was finishing out my senior year and was excited about the big changes that were to come with entering into college life. Now, I am giving up my title when I am finishing out my senior year in college and am looking forward to seeing what life has in store for me from here.

I only have about an hour until my next MCAT study break, so it is time to sit back, relax, and not even think about them for a while =)

First workshop is done!

Hey everyone! The first Miss Fulton County workshop was today! It was so great! All seven contestants were there to do contracts, take their headshots for the program books, and do some mock interviews. All of the contestants are great and the judges are definitely going to have a tough time picking the winner! The constants also got to hear about what Aaron and I have worked on for production so far! I am so excited for this year's show! It is going to be such a fun year, and the music definitely showcases this!
As promised to the contestants, here is this year's music choices! Opening number: Telephone by Lady Gaga; swimsuit: Could it be You by H*wood; evening wear: Just the Way You Are by Bruno Mars; and for the finale: Move Like You Gonna Die. So what do you think? I'm very happy with our choices and the contestants seemed to be excited about it as well. I also have the walking patterns all set for the show. We also have some great talent that will be performing at the 40th anniversary show, including the current Miss New York, Claire Buffie! I will also be performing two dances at the show, which I am looking forward to. We have also invited all former Miss Fulton Counties to the show, and it sounds like the great majority of them will be able to make it!
I believe that is all of the Miss Fulton County news I have for now! Stay up-to-date with everything MFC by not only following this blog, but also by checking the Miss Fulton County website and the MFC Facebook page!

Merry Christmas!

>Hello everyone! It has been a while since I have blogged, so I figured Christmas Eve would be the perfect time. I am loving being home after a very successful first term. I finished out the term with a 3.931 GPA, bringing my overall GPA to a 3.67. I'd like to round that up to a 3.7, which is only 0.1 away my goal of 3.8! Now that I have finished studying for the term, the next few weeks are solely dedicated to studying for the MCATs, which I will take again January 28th. I have been taking a Kaplan course to help improve my score. I have been absolutely loving it, and I am actually beginning to understand concepts and subjects that had escaped me in the past. I am really hoping to improve my score and get at least a 30Q on the MCATs this time. I have a few more weeks to prepare and to hopefully meet this goal!

Getting back to Christmas...This is an amazing season, and a great time to remember that we are not the only people in this world. I found this great article that reminds us all that this season is an great time to help others. Click here to read it! Please take the time to read this article and take what it says to heart. As I have started whenever promoting my platform, you do not have to do a great project in order to make a difference; it is the little things that we do each day that make a difference to those around us. Offer to help that elderly lady struggling with her groceries. Check in on a neighbor that you know does not have a lot family to visit on the holidays. Help your neighbors clear off the snow. It is these little things that we take for granted that truly make a difference to those around us. Just the other day an elderly lady dropped her receipt, and I picked it up for her. I will not forget the look of sincere gratitude as she thanked me for doing such a small action. We should help those around us, and take the focus off of ourselves for once. Please take this message to heart, and apply it all of the time rather than just during the holiday season.

On another note, we are planning out this years pageant! YAY! I have started working on walking patterns, we are finishing picking out music, and I have started working on my dances! I am so excited! This year's pageant is going to be absolutely amazing, and everyone should come check it out if they can! Aaron is always amazing at planning out the pageant, and I am sure he will out-do himself this year! We have a great group of contestants, and any one of them would be a great representative for Fulton County. I cannot wait to see who I am crowning this year!

I know I said that I would post a picture of me in my crown with my SOAR class, but of course I left my USB cable in my dorm room...so that will have to wait until I return to Elmira January 10th.

I wish all of you a merry Christmas and a very happy new year!

Appearance Today!

I will be making an appearance for Mr. Kalweit's 4th grade classroom at Hendy Ave. Elementary, where I volunteer for the SOAR program. It is a surprise for the students, and I cannot wait to see how excited they become after seeing this different side of me!I will be at the classroom from 12:30 until 1:30; I will post pictures after the appearance!

Veterans Day and the past month

I cannot believe another month has already flown by! That means only a few more until I am no longer Miss Fulton County--it is so weird that this year is flying by so fast! It seems like I was crowned not too long ago! Now we're already planning this coming year's pageant! I am very excited about the upcoming pageant--we're working really hard on it, especially with it being the 40th anniversary of the Miss Fulton County Scholarship Organization. It is going to be an incredible show, and I am working on my dances to see if the ideas I have are actually going to work! Just too many ideas floating around up there sometimes.

This past month has been really busy for me. I volunteer every Thursday with the SOAR program, and it is so much fun! Alice and I get to help the children with their spelling words and their reading. Last week we even got to help with math a little bit! They are great to work with and their teacher is amazing; you can see that he truly cares about them learning and understanding the material he gives them. We've also been busy at practice. We have almost half of our nationals routine done! So exciting! The team is doing so well this year and I cannot wait to put the rest of the routine together! Tonight is a big night for the team because it is Hoops Hysteria at Elmira College. Hoops Hysteria is equivalent to a pep rally to kick off the start of the basketball season. The men's and women's basketball teams do short scrimmages against each other, Dance-line performs, and all three cheerleading teams (JV, Game, and Competition) perform routines. This is the first time many students will see us perform together as a team this year, so it has to be a perfect performance.

Aside from the school activities that I have been doing, I also found a day to go home and to make an appearance. Yes, a day; actually, less than 24 hours. Last weekend the city of Gloversville had a Veterans Day Parade, so since our practice for saturday was cancelled, I was able to drive home to attend. It was chilly, of course, but it was a great parade. A lot of people came out to watch it. I also rode with this year's contestants for Miss Fulton County. There are 8 young women competing for the title, and I was able to have some time with all of them. There are 6 veterans and 2 new contestants. It was great to see everyone that I knew again, but it was also nice to meet the new contestants that I did not know as well. Each one is a great candidate for Miss Fulton County, and I cannot wait to see the outcome of the pageant this year!

After the parade, I stopped into my old dance studio to say hi to my dance teacher, Sue Dygon, whom I have known for many years since she started teaching me when I was around 3 years old! It was great to catch up with her for a little while. During my visit, she told me that in a couple hours a dance instructor from Saratoga was coming to teach a traditional ballet course and that I should come back to take the class. I, of course, did since I miss taking dance classes all of the time. That dance instructor whipped me right into shape! I had not taken a formal dance class in 4 years, since I had graduated and gone to Elmira College. I did not realize how much I truly missed taking classes until I attended this class. It was great! We worked on technique A LOT, which I definitely needed. It was a lot of barre work and then we did across the floor work, but it was amazing. I hope that I am able to take the class again when I am home during breaks!

After the class, I was only home for a couple more hours since I had to drive back to Elmira that night. My team hosted the Elmira Fall Cheer Classic the next day, and I had to be there at 8:30am, so I did not feel like waking up super early to drive back. I hosted the cheer competition as Miss Fulton County, which was a lot of fun. A lot of younger girls attend this cheer competition, so they loved seeing me in my crown and were asking me many questions on how I became a "princess." It was very cute, and I loved it. The team also did an exhibition of our Hoops Hysteria routine, and my standing tuck was solid, which I was incredibly happy about. The only thing that was wrong with my parts of the performance was that my double did not make it all of the way around, which did not feel good. Hopefully that will not happen tonight! I like pretty doubles, not ones that do not make it!

Enough cheer-talk. I just wanted to say thank you to all of our Veterans for the service they have done for our country. Also, thank you to those that are currently serving. You do so much for our country. It is because of these people that we have the freedoms that we do. They have done so much for us. Please take the time to reach out and thank the Veterans, and those currently serving, for their work. To those currently serving, please come home safe!

Unfortunately, we had to cancel the Mr. Fulton County pageant due to lack of participation. We did not have enough contestants to make holding a pageant worthwhile. We loved the idea of this pageant, so hopefully it will be able to happen next year. We just need the participants for it actually to work.

I am not sure when my next appearance is. Maybe we will be able to have one while I am home for Thanksgiving Break in two weeks. I have to continue to study and to write papers right now. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me =)

Update =)

It has been quite a while since my last update, but I can guarantee you that I have remained busy. It is midterm week here at Elmira College. Thankfully, I only have one midterm in Foundations of Education! The test should be fairly easy since it is a 1000 level course (that I need to graduate, of course), and I already have 100% on a section that was worth 30% of the midterm grade. I am not too worried.

I have been incredibly busy in classes, though my lowest grade thus far is an A- in Animal Behavior. I am hoping to finish out the term and to bring my overall GPA to a 3.8. I am hoping that this will help me with medical school applications, which are due really, really soon!

Apart from a never-ending pile of schoolwork and labs, I have also had practices for cheerleading. I know that this is not going to make sense to many people, but I have a consistent standing tuck and star-toe-tuck now! I have also been working my roundoff handspring layout, I just need to go higher. Our team is hitting skills that we have only dreamed about for the past four years. I am so happy to be on such a talented team that has the opportunity to be beyond successful this year! I was also voted captain by my teammates! We have four captains this year, which may seem excessive, but it works for us. We all compliment each other very well and have strengths where others have weaknesses.

Through cheerleading, I have been participating in the Elmira College SOAR program. The SOAR program is a program through which student athletes volunteer their time to go into and area elementary school and provide their assistance with primarily reading to one classroom. Two members from each sports team volunteer to participate in this program. I along with a freshman, Alice, have volunteered for cheerleading. Those two members are then assigned a classroom that they are to help with for the year. We are assigned to a fourth grade classroom, which we got to meet today. We are there from 12:30-1:30 every Thursday and we are able to assist them with ELA (English Language Arts) mostly, but hopefully with some science too! The children were very excited when I told them that I was a biology major and that I get to take a lot of science classes. They were also had a lot of questions about what college is like, how much work we have, how we got into cheerleading, and what teams we cheer for. It was great to see their interest in higher education and every student raised their hand when they were asked if they were planning on attending college when they were older. Some even had their college choices all set! Though I did not hear any for Elmira College...Their teacher was actually a graduate of Elmira College and played hockey here. A lot of the teachers at this elementary school have some connection to Elmira College, which was nice to see. We were able to help them with ELA today where they were reading a play. I was surprised by the types of words they were expected to know at that grade level. I have to admit that fourth grade is in the distant past for me, but I do not remember having to know what "indignantly" meant. The class was so enthusiastic about reading and learning in general. They greatly impressed me with how well they read and how well they could define difficult words. I cannot wait to return next week and to again help them. I am also going to talk to their teacher to see if I can talk to them about being Miss Fulton County and about my platform because it is truly meant for their age group.

It is unfortunately time to study for my education midterm, so I will have to end this here. I promise to update sooner than I did this past time!

Busy!

So I have survived the first full week of my senior year, and it looks like it is going to be a busy one! I am taking 17.5 credits this term with Foundations of Education (needed to graduate), First Year Italian, Child and Adolescent Psychology, Animal Behavior, Evolution (needed to graduate), and Beginning Private Guitar. The two classes marked are the only two classes I need to graduate to fulfill my Biology and General Education requirements. I have more than enough credits to graduate right now with almost 150 credit hours when you only need 120. Technically, I can graduate after this term, but then I would not be able to cheer, and I am definitely not giving up my senior year of cheering, especially when I could not compete last year due to a sprained neck. I will just be graduating with a lot of credits, I suppose. It's nice because a lot of my classes build off of each other, and are interrelated. They're also interesting, and I'm enjoying them more because they're what I've chosen, not what I've had to take. I've learned a few sentences in Italian already, and I've learned the notes on the first three strings of the guitar! I can play "Twinkle, Twinkle," haha! My Evolution class is probably my favorite because it brings up a lot of discussion. It's nice to get information about such a controversial topic, but when you actually break it down to to the biological definition of evolution, you can observe and measure it all of the time, making it a fact. It's when you go into relationships and a common ancestor that controversy starts to rise. All in all, I enjoy my classes and it should be a good term!

I am also working as one of the head dance instructors at Elmira Gymnastics Club. I worked for five hours on Thursday night teaching beginning ballet to the gymnasts both on team and off team. When I am not in classes or practice, I will be spending my time working at the gym, so teaching dance will keep me incredibly busy as well! It is nice because I can use their facilities to dance in, as well as to tumble in!

I am also going to be busy with practices for cheerleading. We are going to practice five days a week, Tuesday through Friday two hours a day, then a three hour tumbling practice on Saturdays. It is a lot with classes, homework, work, and practices, but I enjoy being busy, and hate having nothing to do. I am more efficient when I have a million things going on and can set strict deadlines for myself.

I am very excited for this term, but also for this year with cheerleading. After an amazing start with a full-paid bid to nationals, the team is ready to work incredibly hard to get what we want: another National Championship title! This is my last year to obtain the National title that I came to this school wishing for. I have been working harder than ever this year, especially on my standing tumbling. I have gotten tips and tricks from some amazing people, and have worked to get a consistant standing tuck. Although it is not consistant yet, I have been landing it more and more without a spot, so I am really happy about this. I went with a couple of my teammates to practice standing tumbling before open gym and tryouts. It definitely paid off because I even landed in line in front of Coach yesterday! I just keep thinking "Up, spot, bar, heels," which probably means nothing to any one else, but it helps me to land. I just have to stay confident with it.

So it is going to be a busy, crazy term, but I am more than ready for it.

Only 9 days until I find out my MCAT scores!



I just wanted to end this post by touching on the horrors that happened nine years ago today. I, like practically every other person that was old enough to remember that day, can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I was told about what had happened. I was in 7th grade in science class with one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Newvine. My friend, Kayla, was sitting next to me. It is incredible what you can remember with a flashbulb memory. I remember how confused I was, it did not make sense that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. I just kept thinking that my Uncle Anthony worked in New York City, and I had no idea where. Was he close to the Twin Towers? Was he okay? What about all of those people that worked there? Thankfully, my Uncle Anthony was not in the middle of the chaos, but there were so many people that were. Then to think of all of those heros, the firemen, the policemen, and everyone that stepped up that day who's lives were taken. It is a lot to think about, and we should never forget the events of this day nine years ago. I am writing this right before the ceremony that is happening at the flagpole here at Elmira College. However you choose to remember this, also remember to thank the troops that are currently fighting to defend our honor and our way of life overseas. I just want to say "stay safe" to those that are already over there, and those that are about to be deployed, especially to Colin Beswick, my suitemate's fiance, who is being deployed this Tuesday. Thank you for everything that you do, and come home safe!