The Student Recreation Center

      The Student Recreation Center is one of the most underutilized facilities at UAF.  As student employee of the Rec Center, I get to see first hand how many students are uninformed about our facility. Most students don’t even realize that they have access to the gym, and that they have already paid for it in their fees. Every semester if you are a full time student, that fee is automatically added onto your account. This fee allows you to use not only the SRC, but also the Patty Center pool for both the lap and recreational swim.

            The SRC has many different workout options to give you anything from great overall workout to a specific type of exercise, such as focusing on cardio or building muscle. We have a cardio section with treadmills, spin bikes, computerized stationary bikes, varying ellipticals, and rowing machines. We also have an indoor 1/8 of a mile track that circles the upstairs portion of our facility with three lanes for people walking, running, and passing others.                  

For weights, we have machines that vary from free weights in the downstairs weight room, to Life Fitness resistance machines up by the cardio equipment. We also have a Fitness Studio that was remodeled along with our lobby this summer. The room is completely walled in with large windows, and an entire wall of mirrors. There is a sound system in the studio, as well as an assortment of exercise balls, low weight dumbbells, and BOSU Balls.  When there are no classes going on, the Fitness Studio is open for individual and group use.

There are also three multi-purpose courts available for student use. One court is typically used for pick-up basketball all day, and the other two can be rented out for free by students for volleyball, soccer, cricket, badminton, or any other activity.

In addition to all of these resources, we also have an Indoor Rock Wall and an Outdoor Climbing Tower. Certification for both walls is easily obtained through a quick class, and there are even classes available to further your skill and teach you more about climbing. The Outdoor Tower is a regular Outdoor Wall in the summer, and turned into the Ice Wall during the Winter! Check out Logan’s previous post for more information!

Finally, this year we added a Wellness Coordinator! She is available to answer any fitness or nutrition questions, as well as make appointments to sit down and discuss different strategies for you overall health and wellness. Here at the SRC we like to focus on Individual Health and Wellness, and try to give you a comfortable environment to reach your goals!

Nanook Terrain Park: Coming Soon!

While terrain parks are commonplace at ski and snowboard areas and resorts, they are not so often seen on college campuses.  Luckily for any of you winter sports enthusiasts, UAF strives to be anything but commonplace. Opening this coming semester is the new Nanook Terrain Park. While it may not have all the features of the big mountain resorts, it will be complete with freestyle jumps, rails, and boxes. Snow permitting, the terrain park will be operational early next spring semester!  As if rock climbing, ice climbing, cross-country skiing, intramurals, and snowshoeing weren’t enough fun for the UAF campus? They decided to go ahead and add yet another awesome activity for students to do in their time away from the books and classroom.

The terrain park will be located south of the Museum of the North, on the hill above the roundabout and Tanana Loop. A basic outline for the terrain park can bee seen below. This will not disrupt the cross-country trails, as there is a fence between the bottom of the park and the trail. Also, the community use sledding hill will remain as it is, on the other side of the trees. The terrain park is coming after several winters of student made jumps on this hill that did not meet safety standards.

Risk management did not welcome the idea of an actual terrain park at first, but the US terrain park council was consulted on the new design for jump, boxes, rails, and traffic flow in the park. Helmets will be required for participation in the park, and all users will need to sign a waiver and watch a safety video in order to use the Nanook Terrain Park.  Those are pretty reasonable requirements for having the first real on campus terrain park in the United States. Stay safe, and hope to see you on the hill!

 Photo courtesy of Department of Recreation, Adventure and Wellness

Blogging Duel: The New UAF Branding

UAF recently decided that we needed to spice-up our image that we portray to perspective students. How will we do that? Pffff! By focusing on what makes Alaska unique: Nature.
This blog will be a duel between two ambassadors, Teal and Shaun, as they duke it out in a hand-to-hand keyboard combat over the new branding.
Coin Toss! Well, we didn't have a coin, so we used a seal notepad. Shaun called heads, and it was heads. *Note*: No baby seals were harmed in this coin toss.

Shaun: So, as we're looking through the office at old brochures that were used for advertising the university, there wasn't anything to unite them all together, nor even a standard model or even a design element. This new logo creates one single image and logo that is applicable to our university. First Question: How do you think this will help out the university on a level of identity as well as on a level of recruitment?

Teal: UAF has launched the new branding campaign "Naturally Inspiring." What does this mean to me? Alaska is one of the most unique places you will ever see. We are surrounded by nature in every direction.Why not emphasis on it! Students here are involved in our community, going out to sample trees, foxes, satellites, the Aurora...you name it. Our campus may look small, but we have the vast land to explore! I believe this is a crucial marketing strategy for the University. Our identity is our natural atmosphere, we are isolated, but we find fun things to do! The new branding shows images of students hands-on having the "fun" through several of our outdoor classes as well as research intensive undergrad courses. If I saw these images when looking for a campus, I would hands-down choose UAF. How could biking to a rock climbing class not be fun?

Teal: UAF has also been focusing on social media recently. Shaun, do you feel like the social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. are beneficial to current as well as future students?

 Shaun: Totally! These two media outlets are really more of community bases, in which people can talk about what is going on in their current lives. Pictures of things people do, from that aurora last night to the hockey game, or even to a cool guest speaker in a class. The university likes to show off events that have been happening on campus (ComicCon, TechFest, Starvation Gulch) and post tons of photos from their photo booth that accompanies them to tons of events; it's not very hard to find yourself in a bunch of the university's photos! Though on a student-community level, people post what is currently happening in their lives, which shows a bigger and better picture of UAF to perspective students looking to study here at the University.

This is it for the first of (hopefully) many Blogging Duels between us two, or between other UAF ambassadors. Keep watching for more in the future!

Series: Living on Campus

            Campus life is one of the most exciting parts of attending UAF! Whether you live in the dorms, student apartments, or family housing, there is always SOMETHING going on. I grew up in the Fairbanks area, and decided that UAF was the place I wanted to be when I graduated high school. At first, I was hesitant about living on campus and being “on my own”.  I worried about who I would be living with, sharing the bathroom with a lot of girls I didn’t know, and what I was going to eat. Little did I know I had absolutely no reason to worry! My roommate was so awesome (I still live with her today!!), the girls on my floor were really nice, and the food at the Tilly Commons (thankfully!) wasn’t as bad as all the horror stories I have heard!

I lived in Moore Hall my freshman year, Bartlett Hall my sophomore year, and this year I live in the Cutler Student Apartment Complex. Over the years I can honestly say that living on campus has made my time here so much more enjoyable. You get the opportunity meet and connect with so many new and interesting people solely because you live in the same place and go to the same events.

  

Aerial views of Moore, Bartlett, and Skarland Dorms, and the Student Apartment Complex

         Living in the dorms gives you different activities to attend every other week, if not every week. R.A.’s are required to host “programs” that bring the floors together for things like movie nights, tie-dyeing, or even group trips to the store. Not only do these allow you to meet people, but they also give you an opportunity to get out of your dorm and take a much-needed break from your homework! 

Besides the obvious social aspect of living on campus, you also get to experience the convenience of being minutes away from your classes, and the majority of buildings on campus. This is especially helpful for those late-night library cram sessions before finals week. Of course, I’m sure that living off campus has its perks as well, but I would like to see those guys oversleep their alarms and still be able to make it to class on time! 

Series: Why I Chose My Major

One of the first things everybody asks you in college is: “What is your major?” They ask this question because the major you choose to study is a sort of identifier that people use to remember you. Your major is important. Your major defines what you will be studying for the next four or more years and possibly even what sort of career path you will take later on in life.

HOWEVER, your major does not need to be decided upon immediately, nor is it set in stone. Plenty of people wait a couple years to decide their major and plenty of people change their majors several times before they find one that suits them. While you should generally try to find a major that you enjoy by the end of your sophomore year, that still gives you an entire two years to figure it out.

Whenever I talk to someone about choosing a major, the first thing I ask them is: “What do you do for fun?” The reason I ask that question is because if you want to truly enjoy college and your future career, you need to study something that you are interested in and have fun doing. When I was in high school, I played video games and browsed the Internet for fun. It isn’t surprising that I decided to major in computer science.

I am currently a computer science major, and I love it. I’ve loved computers all my life and have always wanted to have a career that reflected my interest. Interestingly enough, my high school did not offer any computer science classes, so I had almost no background in the subject coming out of high school. The only time I had ever programmed prior to college was at a summer camp hosted at UAF called the Alaska Summer Research Academy (unfortunately I can’t talk about that now, so click on the link). Fortunately, I understood that picking a major didn’t rely on prior experience. All that mattered was that I loved computers and knew that I wanted them to be a part of my major. However, I was not always a computer science major!

When first reading through the list of majors offered at UAF, I couldn’t decide between computer engineering or computer science. I had read as much as I could about both programs and couldn’t decide on a single one. Naturally, I decided to try majoring in both. I took the introductory engineering and computer science courses and decided to see which I enjoyed more. Although I didn’t realize it until the end of my first semester, I hated engineering and loved computer science. I would much rather sit at a computer all day doing my programming homework than anything else. It also helped because double majoring would have added an extra year or two to my degree program, which I wasn’t totally okay with.

After deciding on a major and taking several required core classes, I realized that there were several other subjects I was interested in. The nice thing about college is that there are these crazy things called minors, which are like miniature version of a major. They’re nice because if you like a subject but don’t necessarily want to major in it, you can get a minor in the subject easily and expand your horizons! Since starting at UAF, I have added mathematics, economics, and accounting minors to my degree. Now I get to go to school to study computers, math, and money. How awesome is that?

Thanks to the small bump in my college road, I was able to settle on a major (and several minors) that I love. The computer science department, faculty and students, is made completely of awesome, and I wouldn’t trade my degree for the world.

Ice and Rock Climbing at UAF!!

How many college students do you know that can go ice climbing for study breaks? With an outdoor ice climbing wall on campus, that is a unique opportunity all UAF students have.  You don’t even need to own the gear! All the equipment one needs to ice climb is readily available just a few feet away from the roughly 40-foot tower. The tower has three to four top ropes set up, and great features to start ice climbing. If you’ve been to the ice wall and you want to try climbing on real waterfalls, check in with Outdoor Adventures about taking an ice climbing trip to Dragonfly Creek, or even taking the technical ice climbing class, in which they take 4 field trips to ice climbing areas outside of Fairbanks.  Use of the gear is included in the cost of the class and free with the eight dollar day pass if you’re just climbing at the ice tower. But students can’t have all the fun, so the wall is open to faculty and staff for ten dollars a day and the general public for fifteen.  What more could you ask for?

 If you’re a climber, but you don’t feel like getting out on ice, that’s not a problem either! Next door to the ice tower is the SRC, which houses our indoor rock climbing wall. With tons of bouldering routes, and ten top ropes, there is something for climbers of all skill levels. If you’ve never climbed before, but you want to get into it, it is as easy as taking the one hour orientation class for ten dollars. Rock climbing classes are offered every semester at the climbing wall inside the Student Rec Center, and if both rock and ice climbing interest you, there is a class that includes both!

If you are in Alaska, you might as well do some adventuring, right?!

Photos from the Department of Recreation, Adventure, and Wellness website.

No One is Invincible

I was so excited to meet new people and friends and to participate in all the New Student Orientation activities when I got to college.  It was a whole new world, a fresh start and I was ready for anything… or so I thought.  I would call home if I had free time and kept in contact with my family via Facebook, Skype, and texting.  It might have just been one small message home a day like “it’s snowing!!”

Homesickness then hit me like a semi-truck.  BAM!  It was mid-October, a Friday, I get a message from my mom to call her after my Calculus 2 exam.  I call her up to find that my father has been medevac’d off the slope to Anchorage, and that she is on the road driving up from Homer.  At this moment I felt so far away, helpless.  

Looking back, this is my advice from my freshman self:

1. Put trust in your new friends, and don’t bottle everything up.  People can’t hug you through the phone and most of the time someone can relate to what you are going through.  We are all human, and no one’s life runs as smoothly as it might appear from the outside.
2. Make sure to keep in good contact with your family and friends, because you never know when you’ll need them or they’ll need you for support.  Designating a time to call home once a week is a really good idea.  
3. Bring pictures to college with you or have pictures on your laptop that you can always go and look at.  My walls are always covered with pictures and whenever I look at them they make me smile and appreciate my family and friends.
4. Have fun and be happy, but don’t be afraid of your own emotions.  Don’t hide everything with a smile; be honest, not just with the people around you but most importantly yourself.

My Dad had a heart attack and was lucky that one of his friends at work took him to the medic when he did.  My Mom and brother were both able to make it to Anchorage that day and they kept my sister and I updated through phone calls.  It was hard for me to be away from them, but I was so thankful for cell phones so that I could know what was going on.  I just wanted to be there at the hospital with them, but instead I had to be the voice on the other side of the phone. 

I bottled everything up, and then it was too much.  I cracked and snapped at one of my friends when they teased me about being on the phone for so long with my family.  I blurted out that my dad was in the hospital and they could tell I was upset.  Well that was certainly one way to get rid of my roommates study group right quick—but I would not recommend this method.  That is why I have the above advice for myself and new students coming to college. 

Pre-Law Journey

Pre-Law Journey

As I approach the end of the semester, I find myself faced with a question that many high school
seniors most likely can relate to: where on Earth am I going after this. I came to UAF four years ago,
knowing that this time would come, the time for me to transition from my undergraduate career, to the
world of Law. I thought this would be an easy transition, but in reality nothing in life worth attaining is
necessarily easy.

As a freshman I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in the legal field. I also knew that my
desired career option left my decided undergraduate major wide open. It is a common misconception
that in order to be a lawyer one must major in political science, philosophy, pre-law, justice, or english
as an undergraduate. In reality you can major in basket weaving, as long as you have a decent GPA, a
Bachelors degree, and do well on the LSAT, in theory you can get into Law School somewhere. I chose to major in psychology, as in the legal field the ability to work with people is a must, and convenientlyI happen to love psychology. I would not recommend picking a major that doesn’t interest you; otherwise you are going to spend four years of your life incredibly bored.

Another important aspect in an applicant that Law Schools value is leadership and community
service experience. I would recommend participation in service to any student, whether this be through
a school club, a church, or a community center. Yes, service looks good on a resume, but there is more
to service than developing a resume. Personally I feel very blessed to have had the opportunities I have
had in my life, and feel it is important to give back to the community that supports me. The problem
that I have found in my journey of trying to give back is that I always walk away from “giving back”
having learned more from those I was “giving back” too, than I think I gave back to them. Case in point, I would recommend getting involved in service to any student, no matter what major or background. Believe me you will grow from it.

If you make through your junior year, and still want to be a lawyer, I have four letters that
should rule your life L S A T. The Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). My advice for the LSAT is that it is never too soon to start studying. I think this is where philosophy classes would help a pre-law student, as this is simply a test of logic. Learn how to identify argument structures, flaws in reasoning, and pick up a logic games book. When it comes to the LSAT the key is accuracy and speed, the sooner you start practicing the skills tested on the exam, the better you will do.

So now here I am, I have finished my LSAT, have a decent GPA, and am trying to figure out
where to go to school. The state of Alaska does not have a Law School, so the sky is pretty much the
limit. Law schools can be very persistent in convincing you to apply. Given the massive media age we live in, expect to get emails from schools encouraging you to apply to their school, some of which include fee waivers. I have a whole folder in my email devoted to the emails I have received from different schools, presently there are 62 messages in it. In the end I will probably apply to schools who sent me fee waivers, as well as to a few schools I have narrowed down as places I would like to go while considering the probability of getting accepted given my GPA and LSAT score. And I will continue to sit in limbo while I wait to hear back from all of the schools I have applied to.