Fumbling Through College

With the semester coming to an end, almost every college student is going to have a presentation or two coming up. I am going to provide a couple different presentation tips to make your final go a little bit better. 1. Practice The first piece of advice I have is to practice your presentation multiple times. You should practice alone a few times in front of a mirror so you can watch your posture and also focus on your voice. Then you will want to move on to practicing in front of friends or your roommates. Ask them to pay attention and provide feedback. If you practice enough then you should be just fine doing your presentation in front of a group of strangers. 2. Work on pauses When giving a presentation is it easy to start talking fast and run out of breath. You want to slow down your words to give your audience time to reflect on what you're saying. Take time between each point to breathe and clear your mind for a second. These pauses can also help drive home important ...

This Black Friday marks the fifth year I have worked at American Eagle. This is (hopefully) the last Friday I will have to put on an ugly shirt that the company sends us and spend twelve hours on my feet trying to ring people out as fast as I can.  Honestly, working Black Friday is not that bad. Managers do not expect you to get people to sign up for rewards cards or credit cards because they would rather have more people going through the line. It becomes very mindless working at the register. The only time I really need to use my brain is when someone asks for something unusual or they start complaining to me. However, this time something unusual happened. I was ringing someone out and all of the sudden my computer just stopped working and would not take her payment. Then one by one every single register stopped working. My manager started texting people to figure out what to do and found out this was a problem for every American Eagle in the country. We were able to...

Last week my post was all about the NCAA  football playoffs. This week we will explore the NFL in depth. I won't talk much about playoff predictions because there are still many weeks in the regular season. Instead, we will follow some interesting stories from the past week. Arguably the biggest story of the week is about Le'Veon Bell not coming back to the team before the deadline. If you aren't aware of this story, Bell hasn't played all season in hopes that his team the Steelers would pay him more money. This plan almost completely backfired because the backup running back James Conner has been absolutely electric and has become one of the best running backs in the league. Since Bell did not come back, he will not be able to play for the rest of the season, and will not be paid for playing. Our second story to follow was the Cleveland Browns win over the high powered offense of the Atlanta Falcons. Now I'm not saying I called this, but I will say I told a cla...

It's almost that time of year again. The time of year where everyone starts to complain that the college football playoff committee is terrible and the playoffs should be more than four teams. Which is true but that's neither here nor there. Every fanbase is currently trying to decide what exactly needs to happen for their team to make the playoffs. I'm going to use the online playoff prediction tool from FiveThirtyEight  to give a couple scenarios of how the playoffs could end up. Ohio State Ohio State currently has three games left on their regular season. They play Michigan State, Maryland, and that team up north. If Ohio State can win out their regular season, then there is a 100% chance they will win the conference and a 91% chance they will make it to the playoffs. UCF The University of Central Florida is a team that is begging to be talked about. They have never made it to the playoffs even though they have a 19-7 record since 2016. This year we are looking...

Being a vegetarian during Thanksgiving can be extremely difficult. Almost everything has some sort of meat in it! I am lucky enough that I have multiple vegetarians in my family and everyone who isn't vegetarian doesn't mind meatless dishes. I'm going to share with you a couple of my favorite vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes. My all-time favorite soup for Thanksgiving is the butternut and acorn squash soup that my mom makes. It is extremely tasty and filling. Another good recipe is vegetarian stuffing. Stuffing used to be my favorite Thanksgiving food but since going vegetarian I have not been able to find a stuffing I like. After a couple Thanksgivings, my Aunt tried her best to make a vegetarian stuffing that was just as good as the regular. It is really the best stuffing I've had! I can't wait to have it again this year. My last favorite vegetarian dish is the vegetarian roll my mom made a few years ago. I'm really not sure exactly how it is made, b...

Many people get their dogs from a puppy mill which is a very terrible thing. These puppy mills are large-scale breeders which often put profit over the health of the puppies. They are usually overcrowded and unsanitary. At the same time people are getting puppies from puppy mills there are many dogs that are sitting in shelters that are at risk of being put down. I would encourage someone looking for a dog to adopt a dog from a shelter. I'm gonna throw something a little different at you here in this blog. I'm gonna go through AdoptaPet and find five dogs that are currently up for adoption in the Ada area. This is Nash! He is a 2-year-old black Labrador Retriever. and Great Dane mix. According to the listing, he is very relaxed and is already neutered and up to date on shots. The adoption fee for Nash is only $125! You can view the listing here This is Shadow! She is a 6-year-old Labrador mix. According to the listing she has been at the she...

Being in shape seems to be a hardship for many people these days. Some people find it difficult to stay motivated in the gym, and others have a hard time sticking to their diet. I am going to share some tips that could help you get a step closer to reaching your fitness goals. 1. Make a Schedule Instead of going to the gym whenever is available, make sure to go to the gym at the same time every day. If you get in the habit of going to the gym at the same time, then you will no longer have to motivate yourself to go to the gym. You will eventually just start going to the gym without thinking about it. 2. Count Calories Counting calories is an extremely easy way to stick to a good diet. When counting calories you will subconsciously start eating less. Counting calories will make it easier for you to track macros as well, which can also help you reach fitness goals. 3. Use Time Efficiently  Being on the optical for an hour is a good way to burn calor...

It's the time of the semester when exams, projects, and presentations start to rack up. What better time for a break then right in between all these midterm assignments! Many classes are canceled throughout the end of the week, mostly because professors want to leave and go on a break themselves. I, on the other hand, had to meet with my capstone clients Thursday night, so I did not get to go home early. It's not too disappointing that I couldn't leave early mostly because I have absolutely no plans outside of spending time with my family at home. Let me give you a live look at my ideal break. First I would get home and probably watch Netflix all day with my dog and my family. Saturday we may go out to eat and go shopping or something like that, then watch the Ohio State game. Monday will roll around and I will probably watch football all day, and also help my parents with any projects they have been waiting until I get home to help with. Monday we may do some actual...

Fall is the most fun part of the year. It is especially fun in Ohio because we get a longer fall in the midwest. I'm going through the top 3 fall activities to do in Ohio. 1. Suters Suters is in Allen County and offers many things to do! They have a cider mill, a pumpkin patch, hay rides, and a corn maze. I have personally been to Suters and I had a lot of fun! we messed around in the corn maze for hours and got lost multiple times. They eventually escorted us out. 2. Lynd Fruit Farm Lynd fruit farm is pretty famous in Columbus. It is THE place to go for all fall activities. They have about 5 billion different types of apples that you can pick as well as berries, pumpkins, and peaches. Lynd also offers a farmers market all through the fall that offers many different types of produce and ciders. 3. Tom's Maze Tom has one of the best corn mazes in Ohio. They offer an 8-acre maze as well as other types of mazes, such as a "no left turn" maze. They also have p...

The first week of lacrosse is upon us. This means constantly being tired and constantly being sore. I've started stretching and hydrating properly every day this week. We started testing last Thursday with our jump rope and pull up test. Our bench press test came Saturday morning. Bright and early at seven in the morning we dragged ourselves to the gym to push as much weight as possible over top of ourselves. After our bench test, we had to complete our 300 test before the first practice. This is the most difficult part of our tests. This takes all of your strength and willpower to finish in time. This morning we woke up at five thirty in the morning to go to the track and run our mile and a half test. You have to run a mile and a half in less than twelve minutes. After killing our legs we will do our wall ball test. This consists of throwing the ball against a wall a bunch for twenty minutes. On top of all of these tests, we still have class, lifting, and practice. Happy fall ...

The first couple weeks of class are always super odd to me. I'm so used to being busy all day and never having any time to do anything. At the beginning of the semester, there are not many assignments to be completed and we don't have lacrosse practice yet so I find myself doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. It is a blessing and a curse of having nothing to do during the day. On one hand, I can do whatever I want! Usually, I just watch TV, play video games, or work out. After the third hour of "Parks and Rec" things start to get a bit slow and boring. I'll turn on a movie I haven't seen before and about ten minutes in I'll change it because it looked boring. I've reached the elite level of boredom when I end up laying down on the floor looking at the ceiling. All of your social media is exhausted, you don't want to watch TV, and you've already worked out. There is ACTUALLY nothing to do. I can't wait to be busy again.

I gotta love everything about the fall. Halloween, Thanksgiving, pumpkin spice, and football. Football is really the best part about the fall. You get to hang out with your friends and watch games together, or you can start a fantasy league for some friendly competition. The two teams I'm watching this season are THE Ohio State Buckeyes and the Cleveland Browns. It's kind of the best thing and the worst thing being a Cleveland Browns fan. On one hand they literally lost every single game last season, but on the other hand, there is only room for improvement from here. If you have been watching Hard Knocks on HBO, you can follow the Browns preseason and see how many people are saying that they have the most talented group of players many of them have ever seen together. One player who won a Super Bowl with the Eagles last year, who is currently on the Browns, said that Cleveland has much more talent than the Super Bowl winning Eagles. We will have to stay tuned to see how the ...

This summer has really been one for the books. I interned at the Ohio Machine, which is the professional lacrosse team in Columbus. I usually spent about 28 hours a week at the Machine, which was unpaid. I also had my regular part-time job at American Eagle, which was about 25 hours a week. I was spending a ton of time at work, but that doesn’t really mean I was actually working. There are some big differences between what I am doing and what I thought I would be doing. I didn’t realize that there would be so many interns, as there were only two office interns and about  four game  day interns. This has expanded to eight office interns and about fifteen game day interns. With this high number of interns, it is sometimes difficult to find something productive to work on. I often find myself finding a task to do, finishing it in about twenty minutes, and then sitting around for the next forty minutes before I ask for something else to do. Sometimes all of the interns...