This week was definitely a unique one for sure! Not only was it Halloween Week, but I had a recruiting visit at my alma mater, and I had a valuable and fun opportunity to speak at an assembly with the freshmen at Oak Creek High School.
Monday was "a homecoming" as I traveled to Libertyville, Illinois - for a visit to my alma mater, Libertyville High School. I had a great visit with Ole Stevens, the LHS College Coordinator and two students. One student came learn more about
our great Pre-Health Programs and the other student was undecided, but found some new interests in a couple majors he
never knew existed, like Sport and Fitness Management! It is always fun to visit LHS, meet with current students and to see the changes over the years. I'll always be a Ranger, but I started as a Wildcat at LHS.
If you were near campus Tuesday night, you may have heard blood curdling screams. No, it's not finals - it was UW-Parkside Haunted Tunnels! This event has become a Halloween tradition on campus and seems to grow larger each year. The event is a "one-night only" haunted house that takes place through a labyrinth of maintenance tunnels that exist beneath Parkside. Admission is free with donation of 1 canned food item per person, and all donations go to a local food pantry. Over the last several years I have been assisting on behind the scenes operations for a charity-based haunted attraction that friends of ours run. The attraction was on hiatus this year, so I brought costumes on loan and my makeup case, to assist the PAB students in becoming ghouls. The tunnels consisted of several student clubs, each section with a different horror theme. PAB recreated an 1980's horror prom scene. The girls dresses were hilarious and "very 80's." The Residence Hall
Association reenacted the SAW movie, Black Student Union had a chainsaws, Parkside Adult Student Alliance and Parkside Asian Organization both created a dark mazes with ghouls and WIPZ radio did an elaborate indoor and outdoor zombie apocalypse scene. The students had an extremely small budget and only a few hours to create the attraction. It was amazing how much hard work was put in to transform the tunnels. Other Parkside staff and I were standing at the exit watching the "finale" laughing - it was a riot to watch our students and local community kids run out of the building screaming as they encountered WIPZ's zombies - many ran screaming all the way into the parking lots!
On Halloween we had a special family event, we took our 1 1/2 year old daughter trick or treating for the first time. She was a cow and our our dog Tootie was a bumble bee. She wasn't fond of her cow costume so after a couple of houses, and her saying "All Done?" about 100 times, we came back home. On Halloween she enjoyed the costume parade at her daycare much more, perhaps because Mommy pushed her the whole way in her stroller!
Thursday I got to visit the O.C. - as in Oak Creek. They had testing amongst the upperclassmen so they gathered the freshmen together and had a couple presenters from various post-high school options to speak. I was there to represent the 4-year institutions and to discuss how to prepare academically for college. There was also a representative from the military, and an administrator for curriculum at OCHS who spoke as well. It was a fun morning of interaction with the students. Though we represented different institutions, we all echoed the same message: "Don't settle, push yourself academically." I was impressed with the students who came down after the presentation to ask one on one questions.
After the presentations I had a few minutes to visit with the person who was my Admissions Counselor when I entered UW-Parkside, Jennifer Farnsworth! While Jennifer worked at Parkside in Admissions, she also went on to get her Master's Degree, and now is an outstanding Guidance Counselor at OCHS - but I'll always know her as my guide to Parkside!
Tonight I'm off to Indian Trail High School in Kenosha for a Student/Parent Forum on planning for college and tomorrow I'm doing a similar program on campus for Parkside's Women in Science Day (for local female students and their mothers). Saturday ends the week for me with our second Experience Day Open House. These types of programs so important for families and I always look forward to participating in them.
If you want to see more pictures from LHS, The Haunted Tunnels and Oak Creek High School, check out my "Halloween Week 2007" album!
See you on the road,
~ Nicole
PS: Good luck to Men's Basketball tonight as our Rangers play UWM! Go get 'em guys! Lookout UW-M, here comes the GREEN MACHINE!
reat and we
all felt like we were in a horror movie. It was scary and it had its funny moments as well. At one point, we were hopelessly lost in a fog filled maze. We thought we found the exit and started cheering, but then a 7-foot tall slasher-movie character (Jason from Friday the 13th) blocked our path. He shook his head "No" and we looked to find ourselves trapped at the beginning. We had no idea how we got there but it was funny! We went back in and finally found our way out (another 20 minutes later). 
