Lifestyle

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  Mason Week celebrates road to Cabrera’s inauguration

  Featured, Lifestyle, Multimedia April 30, 2013 at 8:27 pm Comments are Disabled

  Mason Week 2013 featured concerts, events and giveaways for Mason students ready to show their Patriot pride and celebrate the inauguration of Mason President Angel Cabrera. The week began with a trip to Kings Dominion on April 20, and ended with a finale celebration at Mason Day. Concerts throughout the week featured rapper Kendrick Lamar, acoustic artist Chad Hollister, Andy Grammer, and local band of Mason students Sub-Radio Standard. Other events included a zip-line, a BMX bike show, a comedy show featuring Scott Schendlinger and the carnival rides and booths at Mason Day.

   
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  Ten Minute Play Festival brings talent to the stage

  Featured, Lifestyle April 30, 2013 at 2:59 pm Comments are Disabled

  On April 26, the Mason Theater Department presented the Seventh Annual Ten Minute Play Festival. The end product of a grueling playwriting competition, the festival showcased the work of eight aspiring student playwrights. This competition narrowed down the submissions based on their ability to create a meaningful, well- rounded story in just ten minutes. To some, this may not seem like a great task. However, it should be noted that many great performances do not even introduce their main character in the first ten minutes, much less craft an engaging plot with a solid beginning, middle and end. The plays’ brevity had the potential to create problems. With so little time, it can be difficult for the audience to build a connection with the characters on stage. In addition, the playwrights had to build a world on stage quick enough for viewers to feel engaged without making it confusing or contrived. The student writers and their casts managed to pull off that task seamlessly. The festival’s performances ran the gamut of the human experience. From the literal dawn of time to a plague infested future, from silly, heartwarming romantic comedies to gritty, realistic family meltdowns. The playwrights utilized every last minute to […]

   
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  Study abroad offers students a chance to work with the African Wildlife Foundation in Kenya

  Featured, Lifestyle April 30, 2013 at 2:49 pm Comments are Disabled

    This winter break, while many Mason students were stuck in frigid temperatures in the U.S., eight students were able to escape the cold and enjoy the dry, 70 degree weather of a Kenyan summer. These eight Mason students not only earned the opportunity to study environmental conservation and wildlife in Kenya, they were also offered the chance to work with the African Wildlife Foundation (AFW). “Students are now more interested in more exotic places. They’re also not satisfied with things that are easy to get — they’re interested in a real adventure,” said Academic Director Ryan Valdez, who has been teaching students in the Kenya study abroad program since 2010. Valdez has been with the Kenya study abroad program since it began, conducting research with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “During my research, I began working with the African Wildlife Foundation, who’s primary role is conservation. Over the year my collaboration got better and better, and the opportunity for my students to work with the AWF came up,” said Valdez, who is also working on his doctorate degree at Mason. “I’m always looking for new things for students to do, and I was specifically looking for internships.” In the […]

   
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  Student Body President inspires brother to attend Mason

  Lifestyle April 30, 2013 at 2:44 pm Comments are Disabled

  It is not uncommon for a typical-age college student to say, at least a few times, that they don’t know what to do with their life. Christopher Williams, a junior economics major transferring to Mason this fall, was no exception to this rule. After graduating from high school in 2005, Williams blindly chose to attend Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia. “I started out in psychology just because it seemed like something easy to pick,” Williams said. When his grades were below what was required to continue on with his major, Williams dropped out of University and attended NOVA for a time, though his grades still suffered. “I don’t know if I always wanted to become a Marine,” Williams said. “I literally had no direction with my life. I ran into a recruiter during my lunch break while I was at NOVA, on the Sterling campus. At the time, I was living at home and in between jobs while all of my friends were being successful in school. So, I decided to give the marines a chance.” When Williams joined in 2007, he thought he had found a safety zone for his future. His plan was to serve a full […]

   
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  An insight into Mason Life

  Lifestyle April 30, 2013 at 2:33 pm Comments are Disabled

  Students who participate in Mason Life speak out on the strengths and benefits the program provides to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  “Should I go to college and continue my education or skip college and get a job,” is a commonly asked question among young adults. Those who have jobs already know want it takes to keep a job, while college can provide a higher level of self-understanding as well as sociological and psychological expertise. In addition, college familiarizes people with inter- esting areas of study. College can be for everyone, including those who have disabilities. However, those with disabilities face unique challenges in a higher education environment. First, how can we help people with disabilities to get a higher level of education just like their brothers and sisters? Second, can they handle and stay in college. I’ve done some research to prove that they can. From my research I found a program that helps people with disabilities. Mason LIFE (Learning Into Future Environments) is a supportive program that helps students with disabilities. The program examines the individual needs and wants of each student alongside their parents, and creates a course of study focusing on three areas: academics, employment, […]

   
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  Creative writing major’s Tumblr wins book deal

  Lifestyle April 30, 2013 at 2:02 pm Comments are Disabled

  Senior Paul Laudiero spends lots of time writing – and rewriting. “I’m an English major, so I write a ton,” Laudiero said. “And most of what gets onto paper is shit.” This February, Laudiero realized that he was not alone, that even famous writers must struggle with a series of drafts before the final masterpiece. Starting with his favorites and moving on to the classics and more popular works, Laudiero drafts up what he images the author went through in crafting the perfect title, dialogue or scene. To date, he has picked on everyone from J.K. Rowling to George Orwell, even creating a mock version of the rough drafts of the Ten Commandments, by God. The site quickly rose to popularity, with some of his posts receiving thousands of notes and shares on the blogging site. Then, after a positive review on Huffington Post, Laudiero saw a dramatic increase in page visits and interest. “They tweeted at me a week after I started the tumblr, asking if they could do an article on it,” said Laudiero. “I tweeted back. Immediately.” Laudiero entered the blog into a book competition that publishing company Chronicle Books was hosting in collaboration with Tumblr. Two roads diverged […]

   
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  Guide dog foundation recruits student handlers

  Lifestyle April 30, 2013 at 1:57 pm Comments are Disabled

  Program seeks off-campus students to help raise puppies for future work as service dogs    Dozens of people hurry through the Johnson Center, clicking their heels, rolling their bags and chatting loudly on their cell phones. Someone drops a stray piece of food as they rush by, and it rolls across the floor right in front of Sachi, an 8 month-old golden labrador stretched across the floor. Despite the distraction of the people, smells and noises radiating off the high ceilings and laminate floors, and the temptation of the food that now sits inches from her face, Sachi does no more than to lazily wag her tail as she observes her surroundings. As part of a program sponsored by the Guide Dog Foundation, Sachi is being raised to be trained as a service dog for the blind, veterans or other people with other disabilities. But the extensive training required to aid someone with a disability cannot start until the dog is approximately one year old, which is where people like Melissa Harrington come in. Harrington, local puppy program representative, has brought the Guide Dog Foundation to campus in hopes of recruiting students to help raise puppies for one year. Joanna […]

   
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  Active Minds speaker shares personal struggles

  Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:24 pm Comments are Disabled

  Maggie Bertram was in college not too long ago. She was valedictorian of the small Illinois high school she attended, and she went to college at a small Illinois university. People knew Bertram as an athlete, intelligent and someone on her way to fulfill the dreams and goals that were laid out for her. “I came off as ‘put together.’ I was the person people came to when people needed help. I never thought about what I would like to do,” Bertram said. Bertram and her college friend decided that they had everything in their lives in fairly good order, but they needed one thing to make them truly happy – a man. The pair began exercising and dieting in order to lose weight and attract a guy. “It felt great to exercise again. It was nice to have that routine, and it was great to have people be like, ‘Hey, you look really great! Have you lost weight?’ and for me to say, ‘Yeah, I have!’” Bertram said. “But because exercise made me feel so much better about myself – gave me confidence – I was starting to exercise more and more and eating less and less. It started […]

   
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  Mason Makes Careers: Hasan Spall

  Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:19 pm Comments are Disabled

  Every week, Broadside features a student or alumnus with a great internship or job to highlight the opportunities and potential earning a degree at Mason offers.   NAME: Hasan Spall GRADUATION: May 2014 DEGREE: Finance INTERNSHIP: Shanghai, China 9-week internship with the Center for Global Education       Describe your day-to-day responsibilities? At the very beginning of the internship, my boss gave me a specific assignment — marketing project for his company “kakatong” — and every day I came in to work I researched other companies that were similar to the one I worked for and how they functioned daily and how they brought in customers and kept customers and so on. I also found ways that could make our company better. I also was tasked with converting their Chinese app for mobile phones for their company into an English version. How did your courses or involvement in student organizations at Mason help you with your job? One class that helped me a lot before going abroad was my Management 301 class. It taught me how foreign countries were going to be different to work for/with and how to approach things in a foreign country. The customs and the way […]

   
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  How to get to Mason from the other side Mason Makes Careers of the world: Part Three

  Editorials, Featured, Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:15 pm Comments are Disabled

  Over the series of three articles, Stepan Gordeev shares his experiences as an international student The previous part had ended right before the beginning of the semester. I was pretty nervous and curious at the same time. I was waiting for my first days of a very different college in a very different country to start, and I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out that there are a few things in US education that I wasn’t prepared for. When the classes started on Aug. 27, 2012, the first thing that surprised me was the incredible freedom — or lack of discipline, whatever you want to call it — in the classroom. Students can come and leave whenever they so desire, eat and drink in the classroom and do all kinds of stuff that would severely affect the student’s grade if he or she did it in a Russian university. It would be a lie to say that an average Russian college is the stronghold of discipline and obedience. It is not, Russian students love being free and independent just as their American colleagues. But the need for some sort of discipline in education is not being questioned or doubted. […]