On my way to a final.
Sometimes, even when you are bleary eyed, stressed, and completely in your own head, there are things that pull you out of your own little world and make you wonder at the world around you. Take a deep breath, and go into your finals confidently! The sun will be out here when you are done.
Off to a Regatta!
Well it was a historic weekend for Stony Brook—our sailing team competed in our first ever competitive intercollegiate regatta!! Now maybe I’m a bit biased as I’m the Founding President of the team, but still. Pretty freaking cool!!
When you hear during orientation that if there’s something you’re interested in, and there’s no club at SBU for it, you can create your own club—well that’s totally true. When I came to SBU four years ago, one of the few sacrifices I made was not being able to sail—go figure why a school ten minutes from the water didn’t have a sailing team, but on the list of con’s for the school, it wasn’t enough to turn me away.
Two years ago, I found a group of people who were all interested in sailing, and we began to forge the beginning of the sailing team. Starting a club involves a ton of paperwork, writing a constitution, and going to lots of workshops to learn how to run a club. After that, if your club is approved, you are assigned a programming advisor, who works in the Student Activities Center and helps you book rooms for meetings and events. Plus, you also get to find a faculty advisor, who is there to help solve personality problems or offer suggestions to the club. When all this is said and done, and you have been around for long enough, you can start the process of obtaining a budget from the Undergraduate Student Government. This is quite the ordeal. I’m pretty sure I went through at least a couple bottles of Tylenol with all the headaches this caused. Long story short, we were able to get $1500 last summer, and then $13,500 for this past school year. We also amazingly got a grant for $20k to purchase boats! Right now we are building up our fleet of 420’s (2 person, 2 sail, racing sailboat that is 4.2m long)- we have two boats that we bought used from SUNY Maritime that are in excellent condition. This week hopefully we’ll finally be taking possession of eleven 420s from the Port Jefferson School District. These boats are quite a bit older, and need some love to get them up to par, but boats are boats! We also have a couple inflatable motor boats for coaches.
For the past couple months we have been launching into Port Jeff Harbor on the weekends—and hopefully soon enough we will officially be partnered with the Setauket Yacht Club- we won’t be homeless anymore!
This past weekend, five varsity sailors and our coach went down to Annapolis for our first ever MAISA-sanctioned regatta. What’s MAISA? Most college sports are regulated by the NCAA. Sailing doesn’t fall under NCAA- instead MAISA is our “governing body”.
On Saturday we sailed ten races—gorgeous 85 degree weather! By the end of the day, the team finished third out of five schools!! Pretty awesome! Because the weather cooperated, the regatta was able to be finished in one day… it was supposed to extend to Sunday. So with the day off, we decided to drive forty five minutes south, and spent a couple hours tearing through DC! I had never been to DC, so it was pretty awesome to get to see the White House, Capitol, and all the other fun stuff. I was especially happy to get to see the WWII Memorial—both my grandfathers served in WWII, my uncle served in Vietnam, and I currently have a cousin in the Navy and a brother in the Army. Multigenerational military family 
The ride back Sunday was a bit long, and just in time to welcome in finals week… gotta love Jersey Turnpike traffic!
So we meet again, finals week…
It’s crazy to think that it’s already the end of the semester. I am 4 days away from finishing my sophomore year of college, almost half way done with my undergraduate college career. It feels like just yesterday I was a senior in high school making my final decision about which college to attend. 4 long months later, I went to my first college class. Now here I am, at the end of my sophomore year, and it feels like it went by WAY too fast. There are so many things I have accomplished over the past two years, but I still have so much more to do in my next two years.
Freshman year recap:
My freshman year, I guess it’s fair to say that I focused on getting a good starting GPA and making a whole new set of friends. I remember completing homework assignments as soon as I could, and spending the rest of my time either at the gym, cooking, or hanging out with the friends in my hallway. As a WISE student, during my freshman year we had these mentoring groups of 4-6 people with an upper-class WISE student of the same major. Basically we would meet up twice a week for a couple hours each time and just do our homework, study, or help each other with classes, roommates, anything. It was really helpful, and probably one of the most beneficial parts of the WISE program.
Sophomore year recap:
This year, I feel like I completely switched gears. I went from having a lot of free time, to having basically no free time. Joining the Crew Team was definitely a major time commitment, but it’s really an experience like no other. I have written a couple blogs about crew, so I’m not going to bore you with redundant information. Crew, along with classes becoming more difficult and time consuming, and being off the meal plan and cooking my own food, every minute of my day is filled-and that is perfectly fine with me. I love being busy all the time. In fact, I drafted this blog while I was in a hotel room after part of a two-day regatta! On the friend-side of my college life, basically all of my current close friends are either in classes with me, or are on the team, but that was expected to happen.
I think that as long as you’re happy with what’s going on, it should all work out. :]
Congratulations on making your final college decisions, and I hope you guys really enjoy your college years… they go by so fast!
Until next time,
Pratha
Goslings come to campus!
Everyone at Stony Brook has at one point complained about the seemingly inevitable goose droppings that get ground beneath their shoes. Yet, come the spring, everyone manages to forget how much they loathe the geese when the goslings appear. You will often see a cluster of students at Roth pond clustered around the new geese, with constant “awwwws” and “they’re so fuzzy!” resounding around the circle. To those who picked Stony Brook earlier this week on the momentous May first, congratulations! You will get to see these very goslings in their awkward teenage stages very shortly!!
Stock up on Everything…….EARTH!
Each year, Stony Brook holds a week-long festival in honor of protecting the Earth’s resources by holding lectures conducted by keynote speakers and presenting workshops to the general public. All the events held this particular week help raise awareness of the environment and aid people in identifying ways to reduce their carbon footprints on the Earth. All of these smaller events culminate to a large celebration of all things related to the Earth (more like something we all hear: GO GREEN!) on a day known as Earthstock Festival. Tents and stations are set up by environmental organizations in order to promote going “green” to the public with hands-on workshops.
All this information seems like what you would read in a pamphlet or a bulletin board. But nothing compares to actually being there! Waking up to catch the last few hours of Earthstock was actually worth it this year unlike every other year when I tend to sleep in and miss the entire day. But what was so special about this year’s Earthstock Festival? In all honesty, it might have been the fact that I attended it.
The stations that are set up in itself make the day enjoyable. The day kicks off with the Pride Patrol, a group of students who wish to clean up the university and beautify it with flowers. They are treated to an Ice-Cream Social later on in the day along with everyone else. After this, displays of educational events and projects are placed along the long, black asphalt of the Academic Mall by environmental groups. Students and faculty are free to roam throughout the Academic Mall and visit each station to learn and experience different aspects of sustainability and how it affects us. One station that I remember in particular was the station with a snake; individuals could hold a snake if they wanted to but I knew I did not want to get near one whatsoever! Another interesting station displayed your average junk food such as chips, Cheez Doodles, and other treats in bowls, ready to be picked up and eaten on your way to the other stations; the only catch here was that you had to identify between similar bowls of the same treat. One bowl had an organic version of the food and the other one was the processed type that we are so accustomed to eating.
Besides the stations, a Farmer’s Market tent was placed between the SAC and the library, for those who wished to purchase apples and other fruits as well as their own plastic containers of free bubble tea! Other prominent events for the day included music played by Peat Moss and the Fertilizers, as well as adopting one of about 500+ red rubber ducks and racing them down the waterway from the fountain. The day ends off with a Color Guard performance, a URECA research exhibit for environmental projects established by students, and particularly this year, a small concert.
Every event, whether it seemed fun or boring on this day, seemed to have had an eco-friendly tag to it. That is why I am so sure that I will wake up on Friday next year to attend the whole of Earthstock.
Hope you have picked out your schools by now!
Good luck Seniors!
- Justin J
Battle of the Bands!!
Battle of the Bands is a yearly contest which showcases some of the greatest talents on Stony Brook’s campus. Stony Brook has a strong music scene, gaining inspiration from the diverse student body and it’s proximity to New York city. Above is Roy Lotz, who studies musical anthropology, rocking out with his band Yesterday’s Pants. They ended up winning the entire contest! Congratulations Roy!
I’m playing Words with Friends with one of my English professors. I think this is a pretty awesome example of the bonds you can make with your professors here at Stony Brook.
The Weekend Life of a Crewton.
Yes, we do refer to ourselves with funny names usually containing the word “crew” or “row”, ie; crewslice, rownut, crewbie, oarsmen, and children of Poseidon, just to name a few. This past weekend the Stony Brook University Crew Team went to our first regatta of the season.
A regatta is the equivalent of a track meet for track and field, or a soccer game for a soccer team, but with multiple teams at a time. Regattas are super fun and you end up spending all day with the team! It’s a great way to get some extra team bonding in. Going to a regatta is almost more about spending team time than it is about the races! Nonetheless, the races are still important and competitive and it is our way to show our Stony Brook Seawolves Pride. We were up against schools like Maritime, Iona, SUNY Binghamton, NYU, and more! Unfortunately we did not medal in any of the events but everyone had a lot of fun, and our men’s novice 4 made it into the finals! This was awesome, especially because this was our first regatta of the season. It was a great way to spend a Saturday; waking up early-ish in the morning (actually we got to sleep-in for an entire 40 minutes!!), driving over to New Rochelle, setting up the boats, eating food, racing, eating more food, putting the equipment back on the trailer, and driving back to campus.
By now, many of you might have heard about Stony Brook’s own “Roth Regatta”. This Regatta is similar in that student clubs make boats and row them across the Roth Pond. The catch is that the boats have to be made entirely of ONLY duct tape, cardboard, and paint! If any of you have visited campus, you know that Roth Pond isn’t exactly the ideal body of water to be splashing around in, or worse fall into…but that’s just the price you pay for your club’s honor! Typically members of a student run club help make the boat (designing and building) and then the club selects which people get the privilege to actually row it across the water. There are many heats, in the end are the finals, and the winners get trophies.
Roth Regatta Poster
But here too, it’s not about the races themselves, it’s more about the student unity (working together, cheering together). There are also musical performances, food sold outside, and if you’re lucky you get to take a picture with Wolfie!
Some friends, me, and Wolfie at Roth Regatta last year!
If you’re around campus this Friday, or live near SBU, you should definitely check out Roth Regatta! It’s one of Stony Brook’s Traditions.
Until next time,
Pratha
As I was sitting eating dinner by the Wang fountain.
Walking back from class
I promise I didn’t edit this picture! I just was trudging back from a long day of class, and I had to stop, completely awe struck, at how magical Stony Brook appeared.
