Hey readers and fellow bloggers! As you may remember, I stayed at Rutgers over the weekend to attend six Haiti Relief Effort Workshops (dance classes) in downtown New Brunswick. $10 paid for all of the classes, which went to the American Red Cross, and clothes were collected and donated to the Fashion Delivers Charitable Foundation. In all, we raised over $1000 and acquired several suitcases full of clothing, all in the name of dance! <3 To wake you up, I'll share with you videos the classes that were taught:
^ This is the select group for the class taught by Jeff Laconico and Steven Armendi from Project D Dance Company. The guy in the black shirt is my friend Mark, who is captain of Verse|One and a junior at RU. The song is "How Low" by Ludacris.
^ This is Storm Lewis from E.P.I.C Motion (2nd Place Winner at PRIDE 2 Dance Competition at RU a couple of months ago) teaching a piece to "Somebody To Love" by Leighton Meester.
^ Jason Lai and Katrina Endozo from FR3SH Juniors teaching a piece to "Blue Magic" by Jay-Z.
^ Mark Salud, a junior at RU and co-coordinator for RAPS Dance Troupe (aka RDT; 3rd Place @ PRIDE 2), teaching a piece to "Trunk Bang" by Dorrough.
^ Dezmin Staley and Johan Tan from Soul'D teaching a piece to "Radio" by Musiq Soulchild.
^ Last but not least, here's Danny Duma (who was on America's Best Dance Crew Season 4 with FR3SH) teaching a piece to "Pimpin' All Over The World" by Ludacris. He graduated Rutgers in Spring '09 as a Computer Science and Mathematics major.
Was it fun? Yes. Were my legs functioning properly after Danny's class? No. Walking kind of sucked for the next two days. And pretty much anything involving my legs. 
So speaking of dance, I didn't make it into RDT. 
I did have the opportunity to meet up with Mark Salud and review my audition versus other auditions, discuss good things and bad things about my dancing, how much weight the freestyles had on the audition process, and many other things. Hopefully when I audition this fall, I'll have better luck! 
Alright, so now that I've had all my classes at least once, let's talk about them!
DANCE APPRECIATION - PROFESSOR RANDY JAMES
Alright, first of all, Randy prefers to be called "Randy" instead of "Professor", "Sir", or "Mr. James". He's a really hilarious and laid-back guy, which makes it that much more worth it to wake up at 7AM (which is the college equivalent of waking up at 5AM in high school). This class will consist of a couple of simple writing assignments, fun in-class group dances, and watching many performances. I think it's going to be a lot of fun!
ODASIS
Like I told you guys, ODASIS is a program that offers extra science and math courses for minorities, and generally improves their grades. This includes a two hour recitation class, a half hour computer session, and a two hour discussion group. Normally, I have no problem with these, but this time around they're not giving me any credits, I have to do 8 hours a week of study hall, I have PreCalc tutoring added to my schedule, AND they took my iPod and headphones. So as much as this is a good resource, I kind of hate ODASIS right now.
GENERAL BIOLOGY 102 - PROFESSORS MARTIN, TRANSUE, & D'ARVILLE
We're back! Bio 102 is going to be a lot more fun because we're learning about animals (including humans) instead of plants. I mean, who cares about plants? My TA for Bio Lab is pretty cool, too. Dr. Martin will be teaching the material on the first exam, Dr. Transue (?) is taking the midterm classes, and Dr. D'Arville (yuck) is teaching us the final lectures. I'm glad to say that I kinda know what's going on right now because I took the notes for the first exam over winter break.
PRECALCULUS 111 - PROFESSOR YURI ZADERMAN & MARK KIM
I looked up Professor Zaderman on ratemyprofessors.com during his first lecture, and he pretty much passed. He's a nice guy and all, but apparently his body mic hates his guts and loves to malfunction during lecture. Mark is my Recitation TA, and he's a pretty chill dude. I'm actually in his class right now.
INTRO TO MUSIC I - PROFESSOR DAVID CHAPMAN
I have to admit, when the idea of taking Intro To Music was first presented to me, I replied, "I don't NEED an INTRO to music class." But now I'm in it. I actually registered 10 minutes before the first lecture started. What can I say about this class? I can tell that I'm going to be very interested, but for right now I'm bored to death because I know everything as of now. ZzZzZz.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEDICAL DECISION MAKING (BYRNE SEMINAR) - PROFESSOR GRETCHEN CHAPMAN
Professor Chapman, who is chair of the Psych Department at RU, is going to be leading an interesting, discussion-based class about decisions that are made by people inside of the medical field and patients. Oh, and we get free pizza and water every week so hell yeah. I figured that since I might want to major in Psych, it would be a good idea to take that class and kind of get a feel for the real thing.
|TNT|_____________________() <(^_^<)
That's all for now, I suppose! I'm sure I'll have more to talk about regarding my classes in the future. Hopefully, this semester will be much better academically than the last. I have PreCalc lecture in about two hours and tonight is the premiere of Season 5 of America's Best Dance Crew! XD Can't wait. On Tuesday night, I will be auditioning for Team Technique, another Rutgers affiliated dance crew. Wish me luck!
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