Congratulations Ivan...& Happy Trails

Well, we received news this week that Ivan (best known for his famous picture evaluating applications from this past winter, but also known for being a tremendous person, the only Spanish speaking counselor we have, and the rather invaluable liaison to Lawrence High School among other things) is leaving the university after about a year and a half of service. This is sad news for the office and for the university. We are losing an alum, a good worker, and a good person. However, it is happy news for the also recently married Ivan (see above and below pics). Even though he is leaving his alma mater, he is leaving for Spain, for a new international teaching career, and what basically amounts to a chance at a new life with his new wife, Betsaida. Best of luck to Ivan and Betsaida.

I really liked this picture:

I'll check in some time next week. For now, have a good weekend.

Thoughts On Summer While Turning 30 and Watching the Hood Blimp Fly Overhead

Well, again, it's been a while, so I figured I would check in with some random summer thoughts.

This summer has been an interesting one as I feel like it has had a lot of trouble actually feeling like summer. I don't know if that is because every time I go to the beach it seems to be overcast and/or windy or because I didn't take enough vacation. That said, a not-quite-summer-feeling-summer is a heckuva lot better than any day that does not happen during the summer.

So what have I been up to? Let's see here...

I've been obsessively reading Chuck Klosterman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Klosterman who is perhaps the best young (relatively speaking) American humor essayist of my generation. Some would call him "low culture" while others will and have called him "America's Most Annoying Writer" but those people are generally either incredibly jealous of his career, crazy, or humorless, or all of the above. If you are into clever humor, seemingly strange metaphors that go nowhere but then miraculously come around only to make perfect sense, and sports...and rock & roll...and heavy metal...or music in general - basically, if you have a personality - you will enjoy Chuck Klosterman's writing. I highly recommend him, but don't start with Fargo Rock City, his first effort, start with this http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=517695. Then go from there.

I have also just recently completed uploading all of my cd's into I-tunes, which was fun. I now have almost a week's worth of music on I-tunes, which feels like a lot but which I will surely be sick of soon. The fun thing about going through the uploading process was that I was able to have time to read liner notes that I either never took the time to read or totally forgot about. Actually, most liner notes are pretty disappointing. The major exception to this tends to be Pearl Jam. Check out Vs. if you need an example.

A few weeks ago I attended one of my best friend's wedding. The wedding was great, not just becuase of the excellent location (it had a stellar view of The Cape Ann Light Station on Thacher Island off of Gloucester, MA...see picture above), but because it was a really small wedding. There were maybe 50 guests, and I knew most of them. One of the great things about the intimacy of the wedding is that you actually got to hang out with old friends, something I rarely get to do any more as life gets in the way very often. One thing about most of my old friends is that a lot of them live really far away, in places like Chicago, Colorado, and California to name a few. So to get everyone together in one spot like that is pretty rare these days, and it made for a really special occasion the likes of which happen only a handful of times. Anyway, that was cool.

So what else happened? I went to the Boston Bruins Rookie Development camp held last week at Wilmington's Ristuccia Arena, or whatever they're calling it these days.

I have a serious love/hate relationship with the Bruins. On one hand I will always love them because they are my team, they are in my blood, and I can never stop caring about them. On the other hand, they have crushed my soul on numerous occasions, including - but certainly not limited to - this past offseason, where they decided to really not do anything noteworthy other than make a couple of questionable trades. Note that I did not say "bad trades," I simply said "questionable." Here is what would not have been questionable; trading Glenn Murray and signing Chris Drury as a free agent. Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point or else I should make this a Bruins blog instead of a UMass Lowell Admissions blog, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying here. Wow that was a tangent. So, the development camp was fun. I stole lots of drills that I can use next year when I'm coaching at Lowell High and I was reasonably impressed with some of the Bruins youngsters, so there is reason for optimism. They keep pulling me back in.

I just took a look at some of our print materials for next year and they are looking 100 times better than they used to look. They are much more current and real than they have been in the past. Just to let you guys know in case you did not already know this, but admissions in general has turned into a huge business. More accurately, the "business" of admissions has given birth to a burgeoning admissions industry complete with consultants, conferences, "publications packages", etc. The long and short of it is that it is simply not a coincidence that many of you will be receiving upwards of 100 pieces of mail from colleges you may or may not have heard of and that some of those things will look so awesome that you will instantly want to go to school at those places. Most of those were done by huge companies who specialize in marketing to your demographic. What makes our stuff kind of cool is that it is more organic. We really are trying to engage our students in the process more and I think it is paying dividends. Granted, we don't have the kinds of resources that those other places do for publications but we give it the old college try, and I think what we come up with is pretty decent stuff this year. I'm proud of it for the most part.

Oh yeah, another thing that happened is that I turned 30. This was traumatic for me, but probably not the way you think it was traumatic for me. It was traumatic because about two years ago - when I was 28 - I started having dreams that I was turning 30. I would wake up in a panic and swear that I was suddenly 30, and I was just not happy with this development in any way. However, one unexpected byproduct of these nightmares is that those recurring dreams forced me to deal with the whole turning 30 thing two years before it actually happened. When it did happen it was almost totally uneventful, except for the fact that everyone around me said it was a big deal, so I had to acknowledge that it was. I guess it is when you think about it. Still, I feel absolutely no different than I did last week at this time.

Oh yeah, by the way, I watched that show on National Geographic. Sadly, I was slightly bored by it, and the UMass Lowell content was not until almost the end of the show. But on the bright side I thought the actual segment involving UML was decent. See below post for details if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll check in at a later date.

UMass Lowell Baseball Research Center on National Geographic

http://m-5.uml.edu/umlbrc/

One of the coolest things about working at UMass Lowell is that we are home to the Baseball Research Center. The research center was founded by a grant from Major League Baseball and Rawlings in 1998 and has done everything from simulating bat and ball collisions to actually testing all the bats and balls that are put into play in NCAA baseball. The ball used in the 2004 World Series win by the Red Sox was tested at UMass Lowell. It's really cool stuff. Check out the web page via the link above. You can even watch video demonstrations about some of the stuff they are doing in the center.

National Geographic is featuring the baseball research center this week. On July 6, at 9:00 p.m., theBaseball Research Center will be featured on a segment for the show, “The Science of Summer.” The show will re-air on July 7 at midnight, July 8 at 11:00 a.m., and July 13 at 5:00 p.m.

Check it out.

Writer's Block

One weird thing about having a blog and not really having any kind of angst or deadline (or readers?) or anything is that you realize that either you do not have much to say or that you are incredibly boring...and still do not have much to say. Hopefully you're not just getting lazy and becoming one of those people who just ingest popular culture to the detriment of original thought.

I remember when I was in college I could, and would, just bang out some writing for a class, for a journal, for myself, or for a long lost girlfriend or something. I don't seem to be able to do that any more.

In college I also read something by Andre Dubus (the original Andre Dubus, not the UML professor who wrote The House of Sand and Fog who is Andre Dubus III, the son of the Andre Dubus I am talking about) discussing the writing process. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like good and therapeutic writing is like a rain cloud where all of your thoughts and emotions and everything gather up in a cloud in your head, and the cloud burst - the rain - is what flows out onto the paper.

I also have read something similar from Carlos Santana (by the way, if you only know Santana from his duet thing with Rob Thomas, immediately try and find a clip on youtube or something of Santana doing 'Soul Sacrifice' at Woodstock - that is the real santana in my opinion), where he describes good improvisational music being akin to water rushing through a musician whose function then becomes that of a hose watering the audience of flowers.

The Santana image may be a bit overstated or melodramatic, but I actually think it nails it, and I do think that is almost exactly what Dubus was talking about. I think that if two guys who are as brilliant as those two artists are/were saying it, there has to be something to it, right?

The reason I bring that up is that I feel like I haven't had a real hose moment in a long time on paper. I haven't been able to conjure up the cloud all that often. It could be the confines of this blog are such that it restricts true expression, but that should not be the case.

I also have a memory of one of my favorite English professors demanding from us that we promise him that we won't become one of those people who just stops reading and/or stops challenging themselves to think. I remember making a genuine effort to be true to that promise, to actually engage myself in some kind of thoughtful activity for the remainder of my life. I'm not convinced I've done as good of a job as I can do, but hopefully renewing that promise like this can change that, and can help me think of something to write about.

Of course, as writing workshop teacher after writing workshop teacher will tell you, the difference between those who make money writing and those who are just merely good/lazy writers is that the ones who make money make themselves write, and write a lot, and then re-write.

The point is, it is not just about the hose. You can't always wait around for those rain cloud moments where dramatic and meaningful words cascade onto paper like guinness suds down a pint glass. Sometimes you have to write about the fact that you can't think of anything to write about and hope that if you stay dedicated that you will eventually have something to say beyond, "I have nothing to say," which is basically what I'm saying in this post.

And with that, and without an ending, I will just say Don't Stop...Beleivin', and fade to black.

Admissions Cookout

Today is our office cookout. We do it every year and it is really a good time. However, today is also about 55 degrees, overcast, and there is sporadic rainfall. This is not ideal cookout weather. For better times, here's a couple of pics from our cookout two years ago:

Good Times on Youtube

Something we have been thinking about a lot lately here in UML admissions is how to use the internet to recruit students, or at least to give prospective students an idea of what is going on around here. One thing that a management class recently used is youtube.

However - and, to me, this is the absolute beauty of the internet and social networking sites and video sites like youtube - a quick search of the term 'UMass Lowell' on youtube yields way more than just the senior management projects. I thought I might check some some of those other results out. Here are my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfCb9ljX3Y4
A date auction at UMass Lowell. Those that I knew that attended (I did not) said it was a good time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHo3aQbiK4
A medley of late 80's and early 90's rap played by a live band at our spring carnival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Twp0TV6rw
A firefighting robot. Stick with it before you decide that it is actually just a maze navigating robot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rxkST0K_-A
A bungee race from Spring Carnival. I must say, this looks totally unfun to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQ_wAoNwL4
This is fairly uneventful, but it does show our club men's volleyball team in our rec center and they don't get a lot of publicity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_GuIKWQSPA
This is a clip from UML's Mothers of Rock, which is an event that our MEISA program sponsors in conjunction with our Women's Week at UML. Good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNSbo4366dY
"Resonance: An Attempt To Shatter Glass" The title speaks for itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDp-EGDyI_U
This is strangely captivating. I really enjoy this one because it so accurately captures the parking experience here at UML. Hey, we are what we are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLF9yZUFHmI
I'm not sure I should be posting this one, but hey, it's funny and it came up in the search.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-TwIW2pd6c
For the record, Marty Meehan is our new Chancellor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aew4qLJKNvo
Recording at UML.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNTfI3_IUGY
This is a glimpse into Dr. Moser's class. Dr. Moser is original in a lot of ways. If you are a future management student, you will most likely want to take a class with him. He is one of those professors who you will tell stories about after college. Some day you will realize that those are the ones who are the best professors.

Spring Carnival Pictures

We were supposed to have spring carnival a few weeks ago but it got rained out. Yesterday was the Spring Carnival redux, and it was a good time as usual. There were bands, all the clubs had booths and were selling food and t-shirts and all kinds of, well, carnival type stuff. They also had various inflatables from a rock climbing wall to those bouncy castle things where people revert back to childhood instantly. All in all, a good time was had by all. Folks, I was an English major, and you should never have the word 'all' three times in a nine word sentence. I don't think there is any grammatical rule against it, it just looks weird. Anyway, I digress...below are the pics from carnival. Enjoy: