Homecoming Week: Day 2

Today I spoke with a current Morningside student, Megan Davidson, who is one of the co-directors of Homecoming Activities this year. I wanted to find out more about tonight’s event, Class Battles.

Class Battles – 8:00 pm in Allee Gymnasium
“Compete for bragging rights to see who really is the best class!”

Tonight each class will have representatives “battling” one another in a multitude of events. I asked Megan what some of these were, and below are just a few of the fun (and crazy) events taking place. I’ll begin by listing a few events that are pretty self-explanatory, and then try to explain a few of the more unique ones Megan told me about. I may not be 100% accurate on how these competitions are done, so please do not take my word for it.

CLASS BATTLE EVENTS
Ring toss
Speed Puzzle
Chug a liter of pop

Football Roll
From what I understand… teams must get a football across the gym WITHOUT using their hands or feet.

Blind-Fold Football Toss – I’m not quite sure how this one works. I’m assuming the blind-folded person will be throwing the ball, BUT if the blind-folded person is required to catch the ball I have some simple advice for the guys… either be the quarterback or stay outta this event. Trust me… nothing good can come from trying to catch a football if you’re blind folded. Allow Hans Moleman from the Simpsons to demonstrate.

Marshmallow Mouth – I believe the competitors must try to stick as many marshmallows in their mouth as they can at one time. I don’t think they’re required to eat them, but if they are… I totally feel sorry for them…  “Don’t you know that marshamallows expand?!?” Below is a “classic” clip from Malcolm in the Middle when Francis attempts to eat 100 marshmallow Quacks.

There are many more events and challenges taking place tonight, but NO class competition would be complete without the infamous… TUG-OF-WAR.

Honestly, I’m not sure who I have my money on at this point to win the overall competition, but feel free to cast your vote, and I’ll let you know both results (from the poll, and the actual outcome of this event) in tomorrow’s post.

By the way, I heard that Laser Tag and the Inflatables in the HPER last night were a big hit!
Click here to read Monday’s post about the 1st day of Homecoming Week

Finally, I’d like to mention there are many different prizes being given out during the week, but rumor has it if our students attend every night event this week their name will be entered in a raffle to win the ultimate prize… a PlayStation 3! I’ll be back tomorrow with more on the PS3 and Wednesday’s Homecoming Activities. Good luck to everyone competing in the class battles competition, and have fun!

-Jim

Filed under: Events, Just for fun

The Week That Was… and a Photo Slide Show!

View our photo slide show of Iowa Private College Week!

Well, Iowa Private College Week is over, and I promise this will be the last post you hear about it. (I think my last 5 posts or so mentioned our event in them… sorry bout that!) Anyway, we had a great time hosting the event again this year, but I must say it’s good to be able to sit down in my office again, and also eat something other than hamburgers for lunch every day of the week… though I really shouldn’t complain… no one was actually forcing me to eat them; they tasted great, and best of all they were free! A little advice to live by… never pass up a free meal. :)

I planned on recapping the event in this post, but instead I decided to put together a more entertaining photo walk-through on Flickr using various pictures I took throughout the week. The link for the photo slide show can be found below, but please read a few simple instructions that will help you run the slide show before clicking it.

Click here to view the Iowa Private College Week photo slide show!

IMPORTANT: Instructions for operating the Flickr Slideshow
1. On the bottom left click the pause button so you may view each photo at your own pace. You may then manually move forward or backward through the photos by using the left and right arrow keys.

Step 1: Pause the photo slide show

2. At the top right click the Show info button. I suggest you go through the slide show once with it on so you know what is taking place in each photo. (You may toggle the information about each photo on or off at any time.)

Step 2: Click Show info

I hope you find the photo slide show entertaining as well as helpful in understanding what a Morningside College Iowa Private College Week session was like if you were unable to attend our event this year.

If you were at our event, thank you so much for coming, and be sure to look for yourself in the photos. All of you should be in the group photos at the end of the slide show. I took those after we painted the Spoonholder.

I will post again later this week, probably Thursday or Friday, so be sure to check back for it. I plan on sharing my experience of a recent trip I took with my family to the Omaha Zoo, and telling you more about myself and my role here in the the Office of Admissions at Morningside College. I remain the only person in our office without a post!

If you haven’t read the other Admissions Office profiles yet, look at the picture below and follow the instructions for how to get to them on this blog.

 

At the top: Click BROWSE by topic and then "Office of Admissions"

 

Thanks for reading and take care!

Jim

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Filed under: Events

Edward Cullen, campus visits, and buildings fall… another crazy week at Mside.

Edward Cullen welcomes visitors to Morningside College.

It’s been a busy week so far for the staff and faculty at Morningside, and with only one day left of Iowa Private College Week I think it’s safe to say we’ve enjoyed hosting another successful event. We’ve welcomed many first time visitors (students and parents) to campus, and have had a few guests that were back again to take a second look. We also had a surprising number of Alumni who brought their children to see their old stomping ground and to share their own memories. With all the renovations and changes that have been made to our campus, many of them couldn’t believe it was the same place they had attended years ago.

While our Admissions Staff has been extremely friendly in greeting our guests as they arrive, Edward Cullen (the character from Twilight) and his creepy cold stare await them as they enter the first set of doors of the Learning Center… we really need to rethink the location of his cardboard stand up. Actually, it’s been pretty entertaining listening to the comments “Edward” gets. So far they’ve ranged anywhere from excited fans of the Twilight series posing and taking pictures of him/with him, to others mumbling (myself included)… “we just can’t escape him can we… he’s everywhere!”

You may be wondering why we have an Edward Cullen cardboard stand-up on display in the first place. Well, our theme for Iowa Private College Week, (which I was hesitant to tell you in an earlier post for fear of spoiling the surprise) is “Preview Morningside College!” So we decorated our Learning Center with movie props, posters, and other movie theater related items to go along with our theme. Edward Cullen joined our cast of cardboard stand-ups this year which include, Elvis Presley, Rocky Balboa, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and my personal favorite, “The Duke” John Wayne. Next week I will have my final post about Iowa Private College Week. And for those who were unable to attend, I’ll also provide a link to a Flickr photo slide show that will walk you through a day of Iowa Private College Week.

I do have a couple other updates, though. Yesterday (Wednesday) our Public Relations Department invited the Sioux City Press Club to campus. They were treated to lunch and a campus tour to see all the recent renovations and beautification projects; from what I heard they were blown away by all the changes we’ve made.

On a side note… When I saw the Press Club on their tour I noticed one of our alums and former classmate of mine, class of 2006, Jenna Rehnstrom. I grabbed my phone and posted a quick tweet to our twitter account about her visit, but I made a mistake and would like to correct it. I accidentally recognized the wrong television station where Jenna works. She actually co-anchors at KCAU. I’m so sorry for the mistake, and I promise everyone I’ll do a better job fact-checking before any future tweets from @msideadmissions. :)

Morningside also began tearing down a couple buildings we own that are adjacent to our main campus this week. It was pretty cool watching the demolition, and I snapped a few of shots as the buildings came crashing down. The area will be initially be turned into a newly landscaped green space area, but I’ve heard many different rumors of what the land will be used for in the future. I’ll let you know what the plans for that space will be once I know for sure.

This is the only post I was able to write this week because of how tight my schedule has been with Iowa Private College Week going on, but I promise I”ll be back with some great stories to share next week. I’ll be out of the office Monday (heading to the Omaha Zoo with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and my little niece and nephew, Emmy and Grady), but I’ll have a new post Tuesday so be sure to check it out for a recap of Iowa Private College Week and much more.

By the way, if you’re on facebook please visit our NEW fan page, “Morningside College Admissions.” We plan to use this to communicate with college bound students and their parents about Morningside and the college admissions process.

Take care, have a great weekend, and thanks to everyone who visited Morningside so far for Iowa Private College Week!

Filed under: Events, Just for fun

Painting the Spoonholder

Well it was another busy but fun day for the Morningside admissions team. On the final day of preparation for Iowa Private College Week that begins next Monday we were calling students to confirm their visits, setting up and rearranging the campus locations we’ll be using during the week, AND painting the Spoonholder!

Admissions painting the Spoonholder.

Ashley and Allie painting away!

Mack did all the wording, looks great!

The Spoonholder is the large bench that sits out front of Lewis Hall on our campus and is visible as you drive by the front of campus on Morningside Avenue. It was given to Morningside in 1908 as a gift from the class of 1903. Painting the Spoonholder is a Morningside tradition, and I did a little investigating about the history of this. Here’s what I found in the book, Morningside College: A Centennial History…

During Commencement week of 1908, the thirteen members of the Class of 1903 gave the college a “beautiful settee.” The Morningside College Bulletin described it as a “pew curved to a quarter circle and facing the college. It is built of solid cement, beautifully faced, while at the center is placed the name of the class. It will accommodate in all thirteen people and has a gross weight of 5 tons.” This “pew” became known as the “Spoonholder,” both for the kitchen utensil it resembled, and for its frequent use by young couples “spooning.”

The tradition of painting the Spoonholder comes from the class rivalries between the 1902 and 1903 classes. In 1902, when 1902 inscribed its year on a large granite boulder to present to the college, 1903 promptly painted the boulder green. Although 1902 scrubbed the paint off that evening, they awoke the next morning to find the boulder gone, and a pile of dirt marking the spot. The books from the senior classroom were also missing. The seniors found both after a hasty excavation. On the morning of the official dedication, 1903 organized a mock dedication, which Dr. Lewis quickly stopped. Shortly after the Spoonholder dedication in 1908, so the legend goes, the bench was painted green.

I’ve been at Morningside for 7 years now (came as a student in 2002), and I’ve personally seen the Spoonholder painted well over a hundred times by students and different student groups and organizations. I always feel bad for those people that spend a lot of time on it, just to get it painted over a few days later; but life isn’t fair, and most everyone knows this before they even start painting… I believe I’ve heard that the unwritten rule is you have to wait 24 hours before you paint over it.

Anyway, every year for Iowa Private College Week and for a few other group visit days, the Admissions Office paints it for our guests, and then we allow our guests to sign/paint it as well. It’s our way of letting our guests leave their mark at Morningside and take part in a campus tradition.

I mentioned that life isn’t fair, but I’m going to do my best to even the score a little bit for anyone who paints the Spoonholder this year. Whenever I see it painted differently I’ll take a picture of it and make sure to include it somewhere in my blog posts. I’ll start today with the pictures below of the Spoonholder. Before admissions painted it, it had been painted by the library staff here at Morningside early in June. They painted books on the front so it looked like a giant bookshelf!

The Spoonholder – Painted by our Library staff in early July.

Back view of the Spoonholder.

Below is what it looks like now in preparaion for Iowa Private College Week… (It will continually have signatures added to it all next week by our visitors, and I’ll post the finished picture after Iowa Private College Week on Monday, August 10.)

The Spoonholder – Painted by the Admissions Office 7.31.09

Mack finishing the back of the Spoonholder.

It will be difficult, but I’ll do my best to at least get 1 post up next week, and I will also be tweeting our event at some point so be sure to check our Twitter page and follow along!
Our Twitter page – twitter.com/msideadmissions

Take care and have a great weekend!

Filed under: Events, Just for fun

Road Trips and Iowa Private College Week

I love road trips. For those who have been “lucky” or “unfortunate” enough (depending on how you look at it) to travel with me, you know you’re always in for a bit of an adventure; I usually end up missing at least one turn or exit per trip due to sightseeing, being distracted with conversation, or more often than not, getting lost in deep thought (which others sometimes refer to as “spacing out”). I just want those who will be traveling with me in the future to know that my days of bad navigation will soon be over thanks to a handy gadget my father-in-law let me borrow for a recent road trip with my dad.

On Sunday my dad and I went to a Kansas City Royals game. We are not fans of the Royals, but my sister hooked us up with tickets in the third row behind home plate; there was no way we were going to pass these seats up! It turned out to be a beautiful day for a baseball game, 88 degrees and sunny, but the Royals ended up losing the game to the Rangers 7-2, go figure. The game was actually scoreless until the seventh inning when we learned that the Royals second baseman would have preferred overcast to the sunshine. :) Watch the game recap to see what I mean…

Anyway, to minimalize my wrong turns and missed exits my dad decided to print off a google map with turn by turn directions for the trip. Once we reached Kansas City and its multiple lanes of crazy traffic, however, we realized flipping through a bunch of papers and a road map wasn’t going to help much. It was at this time I decided to use the gadget my father-in-law let me take along, a Garmin GPS, and it guided us safely and accurately the rest of the way to the stadium. My dad and I had known about GPS systems like my father-in-law’s for a long time, but this was our first real experience with one. Let’s just say we’ve both started our Christmas list a little early this year.

MY NEW LOVE – How I feel about the Garmin.

You may be asking yourself why I’m talking about traveling in today’s post. Well, if you’re a prospective student or a parent of one it’s time to start printing your directions, pulling out your maps, and firing up your GPS if you have one, because Iowa Private College Week begins next Monday, August 3rd!

ROAD TRIP!
Iowa Private College Week

The following (in green) is a brief synopsis of Iowa Private College Week taken from one of my previous posts.
In case you don’t know, Iowa Private College Week is a week long event that takes place the first week of August (August 3-7, 2009). During Iowa Private College Week all Private Colleges in Iowa will offer two daily visit sessions, one starting at 9:00 am, and the other at 1:30 pm, for visitors to attend and learn more about what each college has to offer. Not only is it the perfect opportunity for high school students and their families to visit many different colleges in a short amount of time, but if they attend three or more colleges during the week and mail in their Iowa Private College Week passport they will be entered into a drawing for a $500 bookstore gift certificate. Each of the 30 colleges is giving away two bookstore certificates.

Morningside’s Event
Every college’s Iowa Private College Week event will be different, and over the years we have heard some great things about ours from our guests. I would love to share our unique theme with you; but I’m going to leave it a surprise for those of you who choose to visit next week.

However, here are a few things I can tell you about our event… if you visit you’ll learn a lot about us in a short amount of time, you’ll get to personally meet the admissions counselor who will be assisting you with your college search throughout the year, and you’ll also get to meet a professor in the academic area of your choice. I’d like to point out that not every college is lucky enough to have their professors on campus to meet with visitors during Iowa Private College Week. We’re so glad that our professors truly enjoy visiting with possible future students about their academic area, and that they take their own personal time to come back to campus for our event. It’s just another example of what we know makes Morningside College a great place; the people – our faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

If you’re a high school student (or parent) make sure to mark your calendar for this event.
To learn more about our event, and register to attend a session at Morningside click here.
We look forward to seeing you on campus!

To learn more about Iowa Private College Week (and the other colleges involved) please visit the link below.
http://www.thinkindependently.com/

Thanks for reading this post. We look forward to having another great Iowa Private College Week, and we wish safe travels to everyone who will be out and about across the state next week!

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Filed under: Events, Just for fun