UF Trip

This spring break was a very eventful one for me. Being the hospitality and outreach coordinator it was my responsibility to plan a trip and presentation to our partner school at UF. I had a great group of people to help me with it. Adam, Luqi, Hiliary and I left for Florida on Wednesday morning and arrived at 5:30 pm. We were greeted by our host family the Haydens. Having just rode 8 hours we of course had become ravenous. We decided to go get some mexican food up the street and come back to go over our presentation. We made sure we knew our talking points and our transitions so the would be smooth in the classes. After we practiced a little Maisie the student who's family we where staying with took us on a quick drive around campus. We realized how closed off our campus was as well as the difference in the size. After our tour we went home exhausted and went to sleep. We woke up early in the morning and got ready for breakfast with Dr.Mennel. She took us to a cuban resturaunt for a traditional cuban breakfast and it was very delicious.  Over the course of breakfast we talked about our film programs. We found out they are technically english majors with film concentrations. From there we went to the University and it was time to present. We gave presentations to 4 upper level film classes. Our first two classes where very receptive to us and showed a good amount of interest. Our third class didn't seem to be to interested there where a few people that payed attention but some of them where stuck with their head in their laptops. Our last class was a Pizza party of which i had none. Sarah Bean one of our successful scholars was a part of the class. Everyone there participated and it seemed like they all really enjoyed the presentation. We gave out alot of past Visions DVDs and Visions 4 shirts. We fostered a great amount of interest in the festival and made a good impression on Dr.Mennel. All in all I think we did a great job. We also all formed a good friendship on the way down in back. I couldn't have done it without my team.

Pre-UF Trip Update

Oh man has this been an eventful week. I have done a lot in order to prepare for this trip coming up during spring break. I have emailed Maisie Hayden the student we are lodging with to make sure the logistics are still squared away and haven't changed. I also corresponded with Barbara Mennel as well to see how many students she would be bringing with her to visions. She informed me that she had to speak with the dean because there are so many students interested it has to be run by them because they want to bring in a charter bus from Florida. She also informed me that last week was a busy one for her so she will finalize logistics about the trip with me this week. Thursday night was amazing. I arrived ahead of time to help set up for the Masquerade and to get a feel for the event. I greatly enjoyed being the MC for the party. I feel like we really threw an event that is guaranteed to bring people back next year. I would like to motion myself for lifetime Visions party MC. I have never been out on a thursday my whole time being in college and it truly changed my view on thursday night parties. I feel that that party really helped to boost team moral. I also met with Adam my tech guy to work on a refined presentation. We went in condensed some stuff added some links and put in some pictures to make it more fun. My initial presentation was kind of bleh so i think we really made some progress. I put myself on the syllabus to present to the class on tuesday to get some info from them. Last but not least I helped with the Visions table outside of the Birdman screening to help drum up some interest.  Olivia, Hilary, Adam F., Adrienne, and I had a great time and it was awesome to look at all the old merch from previous years.