The day has started as excitingly as any other - with waking up at 7AM. Today is the day when we are presenting our researches at UCF! We worked on them just until we departed Croatia on March 7th. First we went to the McNair office to prepare ourselves for this great opportunity. This is my first research presentation ever, so I was a little bit nervous just before my turn to present. Fortunately, there was no real need for worry.
I'm not 100% happy with my presenting, but I still think that I did meet up with the expectations. I would even say that there were quite a lot people at our presentations, but what really surprised me was the amount of actually good and interesting questions that we got from the audience. I mean, I was prepared for the american way of asking a lot of questions, but I really didn't expect this much (this is not a bad thing, just to be clear). All in all, I have the intentions to continue my research and I hope that I'll get more great opportunities like this one, or maybe even a better one!
After waking up and seeing the cloudy sky for the first time since we are here, we went from our apartments at Rosen College to the main UCF campus. It rained quite a lot during the morning, but just a few hours after we came to the campus it stopt, so everything was just fine. But it was a really warm day, so it was a little bit weird to experience that, since it's not usually like that back in Croatia.
This day was intended for us to explore the campus in a little bit more detail and to get to know some trivia about it. We had a great tour guide, a really fun girl named Vu. She was really entusiastic about everything that she told us during our tour of the campus. So, we went from the McNair office in the Computer Commons building to the Student Union building. The Student Union building is huge, a couple of stories high and with lots of stores, places where you can by food or refresh yourself as well as conference rooms and other facilities. In the very center of the building is the actuall center of the UCF campus and on the floor you can see a bit pegasus logo of UCF. If you didn't know, UCF uses two logos... The Knight called Knightro for sport promo purposes of UCF and the pegasus for academic purposes – an incredible couple!
After that we went to the Millenium Mall. This mall isn't what you would expect from a mall. It's not a huge building with lots of stores, but it's a really big field where UCF holds events of a big variety of types. But it's simply amazing.
The last part of the tour was visiting many of the department buildings, like the Business Administration buildings (there are actually three of them), Engineering and lots of others! This place really encourages you to study hard, but that might seem to me like it's true just because I'm fascinanted with everything about this place... You really should see this with your own two eyes.
After a pretty fun weekend it is time to return back to the real world and start doing something useful. For starters, waking up a little earlier!
Mondays aren't fun, that's a fact, but today was phenomenal! The first thing we were supposed to do it go on a tour of the UCF Library. So, in general, two people gave us the tour... Meg Scharf (Associate Director for Public Services) and Laila Miletic-Vejzovic (who works at the Special Collections & University Archives). Laila is actually Croatian, which is something that brought a smile to all of our faces! Meeting someone Croatian at the University of Central Florida wasn't something we expected! Laila spent the last 37 years in the States and she didn't forget the Croatian language, something I thought wasn't actually easy. But, now to the important part... The Library of UCF is amazing and huge, with lots of space for all the UCF students to come, take a place and study or do some research. The Knowledge Commons part of the library is an interesting part because students can ask for help with finding material for their researches, which can be really helpful. The other really cool thing is that the Library has 40 iPads and about 50 laptops available for students to check-out and use for their work if they don't want to carry their own laptops or other devices all over the campus. And the collection of paper, research and books you can see there... I don't even want to talk about that! :D
After the library, we had lunch with Dr. Elliot Vittes, the Interim Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Studies at UCF. For those who don't know what that means, simply said: he's quite important and one of the highest positioned people at UCF. Dr. Rick Schell also joined us for lunch, and he is the Vice President and Chief of Staff at UCF. These two people are the people that I need to say thank you too, because they are the ones who are the biggest supporters of the McNair program that actually gave me this amazing opportunity. While talking to them, we have heard so much nice things about how and why they support the McNair program. Also, they talked quite a lot about a company with over 700,000 employees around the world and how UCF and this company are negotiating some form of cooperation and mutual benefit. The one thing that I really liked about them is that they showed genuine interest in our lives and our studies, which is really refreshing to see. So... Dr. Rick Schell and Dr. Elliot Vittes, thank you so much for everything that you've done for us and we hope that you will keep supporting future generations of students that come to UCF from Croatia as much as you supported us, and even more!
The last meeting that we attended today was in the Barbara Ying Center at the International Services Center. We met with Chris Legoullon, the Recruiting Coordinator at ISC and Mark Hartman, the Associate Director of ISC. They have cleared up all the questions that we had about applying to UCF and to study there. Well, in short, after they had their presentation, I actually think that applying to study at UCF isn't that much of a problem as I originally thought it to be. There are just three steps with a few sub-steps, and everything else is just preparing and ensuring the paperwork is done and OK! More on that later...
At the end, we had a short talk with Angel Cardec, the Director of the Office of International Studies. He is a really busy man so he didn't have enough time to talk a lot with us, so I actually don't know what to write about him and the meeting with him. But, one thing is sure... The man seems like a really happy person always willing talk to students!
That'll be it for today and I hope you'll continue reading what I have to say from Orlando, Florida and UCF!
Have a nice one! :)
The first weekend that we spent here in Orlando was dedicated to cultural events and fun experiences!
We got up quite early the second day we were here to get to the Universal theme park! We had soooo much fun there, it's been incredible! The most amazing thing for me was that I actually don't like this kind of fun, but Universal open my eyes to a whole new spectrum of having fun, so - if you ever go to Orlando, be sure to visit Universal!
OK, and Sunday was special... Just special... We had a little surprise! OK, it was not that little... We went to see the musical Wicked! I know a lot of people don't have the slightest idea of what Wicked is, but for me, a person who knows about Wicked and has wanted to see the show live for a long time, this was an amazing time! I almost cried at my favorite scene of Act 1 (Defying gravity, for those who want to know). That shows you how good it was! :D
And yeah, again, due to some issues I'm not able to post pictures yet, but as soon as I will be able, I'll post them too!
The final meeting of the day was with the Vice President of UCF, Dr. Meribeth Ehazs that runs the Student Development and Enrollment Services division of UCF. What we heard from them was really impressive. The focus of the conversation were two things/projects that UCF applies at their campus. The first thing is the pantry. The idea behind this came from a student class, and it was created with the sole purpose of helping students in need. These students can get what they need, from books to food and other stuff. It's incredible how students are actually aware of these problems that their fellow students face, and even more amazing that they want to help them in a meaningful way. If I got it right, the whole center is supervised and run by one UCF faculty member or official and everybody else is a student volunteer. Besides that, UCF has a practice of a Creativity School for Children. It seems to me that the whole thing is in some sort of a wierd experimental phase, but that probably because I couldn't get the whole idea in just a few minutes of talking, but it all sounds amazing. UCF actually offers its students to give education to children in several ways... From students giving lectures to whole classes of children or students-parents that educate their own children. Dr. Meribeth Ehazs talks about this with such an amount of passion that while she was talking I was wondering whether I was more amazed by her talking or what she actually talked about.
P.S.
Pictures soon due to technical difficulties! :)
It's an incredible feeling to wake up one morning at 4AM and the first thing that comes to your mind is that you'll be at the other side of the planet in just under 24 hours. That's how my last day started, Thursday, March 7th. At one moment I was in my worm bed and in the other I was on a plane to Amsterdam, then to New York and then... Orlando, Florida. But, I didn't go alone... By my side were Alenka, Danijel, Neva, Ozren i Igor! What I can say for this little group is that it's phenomenal! I met a lot of people and seen a lot of groups that got along just great, but this group clicked like two Lego blocks! When your trip that lasts a whole 24 hours becomes a overly fun experience and one of the best days in your life, you know that you're in good company!
Were finally in Orlando. We came here at around 10:30PM local time, what would translate to 4:30AM local time in Zagreb (the following day). We had a nice little welcome by a well known group: Natalia Sepulveda and Michael Aldarondo Jeffries, director of the McNair and RAMP program at University of Central Florida (or simply: UCF). Michael is a our host, and a great one as well!
The night that has gone by like 5 minutes was the prequel to a great first day at the UCF campus. Our obligations for the first day were three meeting with very interesting people positioned at really interesting positions at UCF. In chronological order they were Ulla Isaac, acting director of the Career Services & Experiential Learning Center. What we talked about with here were all the opportunities to get internships for all UCF students. Shortly said, the system and proces that UCF uses for these internships are far beyond anything that's used in Croatia. After that, we went a couple of floors lower to meet with Dr. Bill Blank, director of the Career Development Services. He talked about how Career Development Services provide knowledge for the student on how to create a good CV, cover letter and even how to prepare for interview, and much more.
This is the intro video for a blog that I'm going to write while in the United States of America. I'm going to Orlando, Florida, with 5 other students, where we will present our research papers at the University of Central Florida. We will be in Orlando from March 7th 'till March 18th, so expect daily updates from America. My research paper it titled: Human Rights and ICT: Social Media as a supporting tool of the Universal declaration of Human Rights. What else should I say? I have a feeling that this experience will be amazing, not just going to the States, but presenting a research paper that I'm really passionate about. It should be great!
Opportunities like this should be thrown away or ignored, no matter the cost. This is going to be an amazing experience and I hope that the stories from my blog (and the blogs of my friends who are also writing their own blogs) will motivate you to apply for the same or similar projects! Why? Because I hope to read your blogs one day! ;)
