Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Snow Football
Jordan in the Patriot!
The article in context.
Susquenita High School students get a real spell-ing lesson
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
BY DOTTIE ALDRICH
For The Patriot-News
DUNCANNON - An 8-foot-tall surfer, a famous model, a spy, a ballerina and an opera star entertained students at Susquenita High School yesterday -- and then disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.
All the performers were students, transformed by hypnosis under the watchful eye of Laura Amaroso, an advanced clinical hypnotherapist from Philadelphia.
Sophomore Jordan Himes handled an imaginary surfboard with grace and stood ramrod straight when Amaroso told him he was 8 feet tall.
"I don't remember when I was told to do things. I just remember my body wanted to do things and I didn't try to fight it," Himes said.
He was one of two dozen student volunteers, all with parental permission, who abandoned their resistance and let Amaroso guide them through dances, songs and character portrayals.
As Amaroso gave the students direction, she added hypnotic suggestions, such as, "You feel strong, calm and confident."
One of her goals is to help the students feel good about themselves, she said.
Under hypnosis, sophomore Heidi Freeland became a famous model and walked the runway as though she had done it for years.
When she was told that classmate Nate Bell was a puppy, she patted and rubbed his head until Amaroso changed the hypnotic suggestion.
Anna Zapart, a freshman, sat in the audience and laughed heartily along with the rest of the student body as she watched her friends doing things she never expected.
"It was awesome. People were not aware of what they were doing. If [Amaroso] comes back again, I will volunteer," Zapart said.
Junior English teacher Kathy Kisner couldn't stop talking about how she felt under hypnosis and what she remembered.
"That was the most bizarre thing I've done in my life. I was kind of skeptical and scared for a moment when I couldn't open my eyes, but I could hear everything," Kisner said.
Kisner said she felt as if she were coming out of anesthesia after surgery. She said she could taste tomato juice when followed the suggestion to swallow an imaginary drink.
"It's truly mind over matter," Kisner said.
Amaroso said she has been performing shows at schools, seminars, fund-raisers and social events since 1997.
"The students are absolutely so positive," she said. "They are the best audience ever. They learn all about hypnotherapy and depth levels. With the demonstration, they get to see some fun things."
High school Principal Nancy Valdez said Amaroso agreed to return next year and work her magic on another group of students.
"It fits right in with my goal of having two or three good assemblies a year," she said.
Susquenita High School students get a real spell-ing lesson
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
BY DOTTIE ALDRICH
For The Patriot-News
DUNCANNON - An 8-foot-tall surfer, a famous model, a spy, a ballerina and an opera star entertained students at Susquenita High School yesterday -- and then disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.
All the performers were students, transformed by hypnosis under the watchful eye of Laura Amaroso, an advanced clinical hypnotherapist from Philadelphia.
Sophomore Jordan Himes handled an imaginary surfboard with grace and stood ramrod straight when Amaroso told him he was 8 feet tall.
"I don't remember when I was told to do things. I just remember my body wanted to do things and I didn't try to fight it," Himes said.
He was one of two dozen student volunteers, all with parental permission, who abandoned their resistance and let Amaroso guide them through dances, songs and character portrayals.
As Amaroso gave the students direction, she added hypnotic suggestions, such as, "You feel strong, calm and confident."
One of her goals is to help the students feel good about themselves, she said.
Under hypnosis, sophomore Heidi Freeland became a famous model and walked the runway as though she had done it for years.
When she was told that classmate Nate Bell was a puppy, she patted and rubbed his head until Amaroso changed the hypnotic suggestion.
Anna Zapart, a freshman, sat in the audience and laughed heartily along with the rest of the student body as she watched her friends doing things she never expected.
"It was awesome. People were not aware of what they were doing. If [Amaroso] comes back again, I will volunteer," Zapart said.
Junior English teacher Kathy Kisner couldn't stop talking about how she felt under hypnosis and what she remembered.
"That was the most bizarre thing I've done in my life. I was kind of skeptical and scared for a moment when I couldn't open my eyes, but I could hear everything," Kisner said.
Kisner said she felt as if she were coming out of anesthesia after surgery. She said she could taste tomato juice when followed the suggestion to swallow an imaginary drink.
"It's truly mind over matter," Kisner said.
Amaroso said she has been performing shows at schools, seminars, fund-raisers and social events since 1997.
"The students are absolutely so positive," she said. "They are the best audience ever. They learn all about hypnotherapy and depth levels. With the demonstration, they get to see some fun things."
High school Principal Nancy Valdez said Amaroso agreed to return next year and work her magic on another group of students.
"It fits right in with my goal of having two or three good assemblies a year," she said.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Rock Apartment
I found out that my group's application to live in the Rock Apartments was approved. Yay! I have to go to the housing office next Thursday to pick which apartment I'll live in. Joshie and Brandon's application was approved too so we're going to be neighbors :)
GOOD LUCK POPPOP
Good luck with your surgery Poppop. I'm sure you'll be happy with its outcome. You are in my prayers.
Room mate update
Things are going swimmingly with the new roommate. His name is Brian, not Ryan. It took about a day for him to realize that I was calling him the wrong thing. Oops. I think the residence coordinator told me it was Ryan though, so I accept no blame.
Brian is a pretty nice guy. He is a freshman. This is his second semester at SRU. He is very quiet and studies a TON. That is okay by me though. He's clean too, which I like.
I'm at the Rocket now. I just checked the weather to see if there was anything about the impending snow storm. I heard there was supposed to be 6 inches or so but weather.com doesn't say anything about it. It does say that it feels like -1 degrees outside right now. I'm gonna have fun walking back to my dorm in that :(
That's all for now. No real plans for the weekend. Just gonna hang out and relax, I've had a particularly busy week so I'm about due. Oh, and Congrats again to Evan for being accepted to West Point.
Brian is a pretty nice guy. He is a freshman. This is his second semester at SRU. He is very quiet and studies a TON. That is okay by me though. He's clean too, which I like.
I'm at the Rocket now. I just checked the weather to see if there was anything about the impending snow storm. I heard there was supposed to be 6 inches or so but weather.com doesn't say anything about it. It does say that it feels like -1 degrees outside right now. I'm gonna have fun walking back to my dorm in that :(
That's all for now. No real plans for the weekend. Just gonna hang out and relax, I've had a particularly busy week so I'm about due. Oh, and Congrats again to Evan for being accepted to West Point.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
New Roommate
I got a new roommate yesterday. It seemes to be going okay. I only got an hour's notice, but that was an hour more than I expected, so I was happy with that. All of my stuff was pretty much in order anyway, I just needed to move a few things around.
My new roommate's name is Ryan. His major is physical therapy. He is a freshman who lived in another dorm but couldn't live there anymore because it was too much of a party-hardy atmosphere.
He seems pretty quiet. He's clean too. We've chatted a little, he seems to be a nice guy. I haven't had to rearange hardly anything. He didn't seem to mind Brandon and Adam coming over to play video games either. I think we will get along well. Anyhow, classtime, see ya.
My new roommate's name is Ryan. His major is physical therapy. He is a freshman who lived in another dorm but couldn't live there anymore because it was too much of a party-hardy atmosphere.
He seems pretty quiet. He's clean too. We've chatted a little, he seems to be a nice guy. I haven't had to rearange hardly anything. He didn't seem to mind Brandon and Adam coming over to play video games either. I think we will get along well. Anyhow, classtime, see ya.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Here's a better picture
Still snowing here
Here's a picture I took with my camera. I reduced the quality and you can't really see the snow. I have to learn how to use the camera a little better so I can take some really good looking pictures. :)
Friday, January 14, 2005
Research
I had my first real meeting with Dr. Dailey to talk about the research project that we're working on together. For those who don't know about this: I am collaborating with one of my favorite information technology professors to do a research project. The result of the project will be a paper that we will try to have published. The goal of the project is to implement a system of organizing images so that they can be browsed by context (I.E. A picture of a river and mountains will be shown with thumbnails of pictures of other rivers and pictures of other mountains so that the user can browse through similar pictures).
The really geeky side of this research lies in how the images similarities are determined. It is done though the comments that accompany the pictures. The way it is done is a little over my head but basically the component strings that make up the comment are charted in an n-dimensional space along with the string it is compared to, then the distance between the two vectors is the degree to which the images are similar. I don't expect anyone to understand that because I barely do!
My motivation for doing this research, aside from doing neat IT stuff with a professor that I like, is to be published. This is a major trump card when applying to graduate school. I am sure it will be a good experience for me, even if the research does to live up to our expections. It's an invaluable experience.
I get to learn cool stuff, too. Over break I learned MySQL which is a database language. I also configured a Linux server at Dad's house to run MySQL so that I could experiment with it. I am pretty good now and have implemented the use of my new databases in some PHP code that I worked on earlier. It's a very powerful tool. I have the opportunity to teach Dr. Dailey how to use MySQL as well as to work with the administrators here at SRU to get MySQL installed on the supercomputers here. Lots of fun. Bye all!
P.S. Pictures soon. Evan is already using the re-vamped server to put some pictures on his blog. I had better quick slacking, lol.
The really geeky side of this research lies in how the images similarities are determined. It is done though the comments that accompany the pictures. The way it is done is a little over my head but basically the component strings that make up the comment are charted in an n-dimensional space along with the string it is compared to, then the distance between the two vectors is the degree to which the images are similar. I don't expect anyone to understand that because I barely do!
My motivation for doing this research, aside from doing neat IT stuff with a professor that I like, is to be published. This is a major trump card when applying to graduate school. I am sure it will be a good experience for me, even if the research does to live up to our expections. It's an invaluable experience.
I get to learn cool stuff, too. Over break I learned MySQL which is a database language. I also configured a Linux server at Dad's house to run MySQL so that I could experiment with it. I am pretty good now and have implemented the use of my new databases in some PHP code that I worked on earlier. It's a very powerful tool. I have the opportunity to teach Dr. Dailey how to use MySQL as well as to work with the administrators here at SRU to get MySQL installed on the supercomputers here. Lots of fun. Bye all!
P.S. Pictures soon. Evan is already using the re-vamped server to put some pictures on his blog. I had better quick slacking, lol.
Weather
Wow, is the weather ever crazy here! Yesterday it was so warm that people were running around in t-shirts and shorts. The sun was shining and there was a warm breeze. Then around 10 p.m. it started snowing like nobody's business. There's about 2 inches on the ground now. Go figure. I'll have to set up my camera this weekend a take a picture. I hope the snow doesn't melt first; it's sunny again now, this weather is too wierd.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Summer plans
I just got back from the gym. I think I'm going to try to get there a lot more often this semester since I will have more free time in the evenings. I really enjoy it there. There's usually a pick up game of basketball, volleyball or badmitton to join.
This summer I plan to live at home and hopefully work an internship at Penn National Insurance. Linda Leo (Mother of Jen Leo whose home I spend a lot of time at) works there and encouraged me to apply for an internship. I would be doing work with their information technology department which would be an excellent resume builder as well as a lot of fun.
In addition to an internship, I hope to earn money in my free time with my friend Jason Brady. We hope to start a home network installation and maintenance business. This would also be a good resume builder and earn us a nice chunk of change.
This summer I plan to live at home and hopefully work an internship at Penn National Insurance. Linda Leo (Mother of Jen Leo whose home I spend a lot of time at) works there and encouraged me to apply for an internship. I would be doing work with their information technology department which would be an excellent resume builder as well as a lot of fun.
In addition to an internship, I hope to earn money in my free time with my friend Jason Brady. We hope to start a home network installation and maintenance business. This would also be a good resume builder and earn us a nice chunk of change.
Back at school
Hey everyone! I'm back at school now. Feels wierd to be back into the swing of things. SRU is pretty different for me this semester. Lindsay isn't here, of course. I heard from her just for a bit today and she is doing great and having a good time. Jon isn't here either. I haven't been assigned a new roommate yet. I'm thinking maybe I won't get one. There are a lot of rooms around campus that have only 1 occupant. This is probably due to SRU lowering its enrollment requirements this year, thus admitting a lot of freshman who didn't make it past their first semester.
I'm getting along okay though. I miss Lindsay a lot, but I'm making the best of it. I've been spending time with Joshie, Adam and Brandon. I've also spent some time with Adam and Brett, who I'll be living with next year. I'm meeting with Dr. Dailey soon to work on our research project. That should keep me busy. Talk to you all soon.
I'm getting along okay though. I miss Lindsay a lot, but I'm making the best of it. I've been spending time with Joshie, Adam and Brandon. I've also spent some time with Adam and Brett, who I'll be living with next year. I'm meeting with Dr. Dailey soon to work on our research project. That should keep me busy. Talk to you all soon.
