Film producer? Nah, maybe I should become an event planner

This week has been really stressful but at the same one of the most gratifying out of all the awesome weeks of this super dynamic Fall 2017 semester. In fact, this Wednesday and Thursday I had two events back to back of which I was one of the responsible organizers. First of all, on Wednesday took place the event called Make Art, No War by the 2020 A Year Without War SBCC Club of which I am part of the leadership, and in particular the Public Relation VP. Secondly, on Thursday the SBCC Ambassadors organized their first Pumpkin Carving Contest ever! My co-leader Tayfur and I were the ones who organized it with the great help of a super efficient Event Planning Ambassadors committee.

Happy Bloggers' Family :)

During the course of my life I have been attending event of every kind but I have never realized how much effort is required in order to make everything go the way it it supposed to be. This semester I had the opportunity to see things from a different perspective and I immediately realized that most of the times setting up an event requires so much energy, strong will and collaboration!! Surprisingly, the night of the event went so smoothly and you can’t imagine how how happy my co-leaders and I were! Amaaaaaaziiiiingggg! Anyways, the event took place at SOhO in Downtown Santa Barbara and it consisted of a series of performances of artists playing many different kinds of music. Out of the all the seven artists, four were my friends and it was so enjoyable to see how good they actually are!! My friend and other student blogger Cheyanne gave astonishing singing performances, my SBCC ambassador friend Gianluca played the guitar and sang with one of his good friends, 

Natsumi gave an amazing piano performance, and finally another student blogger, Cameron, had the honors of opening the night with his classic guitar’s lovely music. Along with these amazing performances, we sold 2020 AYWW merchandise, set up a 50/50 raffle and a silent auction! This fundraiser was not only successful but it was also super enjoyable because lots of my friends came to support our cause and spend a pleasant night with us!!

Enjoying the night!

On the following day, on the Maxwell overlook was supposed to take place the SBCC Ambassadors Pumpkin Carving Contest, but cold wind and rain started to bring our mood and hopes a little down… Well, after setting up everything in the open air, a super cold wind started to blow everything away including my enthusiasm (which is usually really hard to blow away)… However… backup plans are always the best option to keep everything rolling!! In a few seconds, really hardworking Ambassadors took down all the equipment, tables, pumpkins, food and drinks and moved everything to the East Campus cafeteria!! It all happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize that we were mastering every single problem that would come up!! After moving everything to the cafeteria, people started to show up, carve pumpkins, enjoy candies, warm popcorns and hot chocolate!!

Contest Winners!!! 

Happiness, kindness and serenity were all around us and it nothing could have disrupted our event. Even the thriller flashmob organized by World Dance for Humanity was a blast and a lot of ambassadors danced with the super cool zombies!! At the end of the night I was the one responsible to give out the three prices for the best pumpkins (practicing my poor public speaking skills…). After that, everybody went home tired but relaxed and satisfied. Haaaapppyyy Hallooooweeen!!!! 

Events and Opportunities pouring from everywhere!

This week has been an astonishing mashup of wonderful events and once in a lifetime opportunities! Besides the usual time spent on homework and studying, I have had an amazing time juggling between the Phi Theta Kappa and Honors Program events!!! In particular PTK’s events took so much time out of my week, and each of them was an opportunity for learning, sharing and growing surrounded by amazing friends. 

I would like to start off telling you about a fantastic event organized by my good friend and PTK VP of Leadership Michael Han Ding along with the help of the whole Phi Theta Kappa Leadership of which I am part of. The event’s name was Pondering Politics and at 5.30pm it brought to the SBCC BC Forum District Supervisor Salud Carbajal and Santa Barbara Unified School Board Advisor Monique Limón. The two politicians discussed in front of an awesome and active audience of students a varietyof different issues regarding the current politics in California and in the rest of America. Two hours flew by and it was already time to say goodbye to the two politicians. It has been an honor to have the opportunity to have them over at SBCC and have them interact directly with students!!

On Wednesday, Phi Theta Kappa collaborated with the Economics Club of Santa Barbara, the Student Senate and the Communication Honors Society to gather the greatest amount of students for the Third Presidential Debate Watch Party!!! At 6.00pm, the room PS101 was completely full with students chatting and ready to savor the last heated (and super-funny) debate between Mr. Donald Trump and Secretary Hillary Clinton. I was seated next my friend and Phi Theta Kappa Vice-president Amber and we had a wonderful time in commenting, cheering and booing this astonishing debate! It was awesome sharing time with her and my other friends. Laughs and good vibes were surrounding me and I simply felt so good after this event. 

The weekend is always so filled with amazing activities and fun experiences. In particular, this Saturday was so special that I believe I could have renamed it "Bonding Day"!! In fact, I have spend such a time with both Honors Program members and Phi Theta Kappa Leaders, and we got to know each other bettie and become more comfortable with each other. First of all, I went with the Honors Program PODS and other Honors Program Members to the harbor and we Kayaked for a full hour together! We had so much fun, we laughed a lot and we even saw sea lions!! How cool is that? Right after the wild sea life experiences, Shivani and got ready to leave and herd to Carpinteria and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity with the Phi Theta Kappans! HFH organized a super-fancy fundraiser with lots of rich people called Denim and Diamonds, and our task 

was to serve wine and help with the food serving! Ok.. Maybe the explanation mark at the end of the previous sentence is not that appropriate… But I put it because while serving wine and food, PTK leaders and I were such in a great mood that night that we couldn't stop laughing! Funny things kept happening one after the other, and at the end of the night we were so tired not because of serving the tables and cleaning up after the end of the event, but because we laughed too much!

Super fancy at the dinner
with Noam!!

Lastly, the most important and memorable event of the whole week happens right Sunday night. A great number of SBCC Political Science students and the PTK Leaders had the once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a dinner organized by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation with guest the noble Noam Chomsky!!! If on Saturday we were the ones seeing food, this time we dressed all fancy and we were the ones getting served at a super fancy dinner table! Noam Chomsky, one of the brightest minds alive, delivered a great speech addressing different political issues and I even got the chance to shake his hand and get a photograph and autograph!!!!! 

I think that for today I have typed enough on my Mac’s keyboard… I’ll post something by the end of this week because the 2020 A Year Without War event at Soho and the Ambassadors Pumpkin Carving are coming up!!!!! And Halloween is approaching so quickly!!! Are your ready for it?!?

Phi Theta Kappa’s tour de force…

Weekends are usually the time in which every normal person decides to take some time off, do some homework and relax in order to be ready to face a whole new week. Right? Well, this doesn’t apply to me or any other student who decides to become too involved in extracurricular activities. I don’t have much time to honor the Italian lifestyle characterized by the “dolce far niente”, or in English “pleasantly doing nothing” (if it makes sense—> just watch Eat, Prey and Love and It will explained to you when Julia Roberts arrives in Rome). Anyways, let’s talk about this super busy Saturday!!

Let's start with a warmup

First of all alarm at 7.00am! No sleeping in anymore during weekends… Amber, my friend and Phi Theta Kappa vice-president, picked me up to head to Goleta beach for the Walk against Breast Cancer. Quick breakfast at Starbucks and then ready to stretch with the Phi Theta Kappa Leadership and a great amount of other people who decided to join this noble cause! The walk was really enjoyable and event if it started so early it was totally worth going!! Everybody was smiling and wearing pink clothes!! Let’s FIGHT great cancer!!

Super Cool PTK Leaders!

I wish that after the walk I could have gone home and go back to sleep but.. we drove back to Santa Barbara to volunteer for Habitat for Humanities!! For who doesn't know what Habitat for Humanities is, I will link here their webpage and you should check it out!! This non-profit organization’s project is really worth supporting and I encourage you to join them

Hard-Working Elisa :)

in their efforts to make our community a better place for everybody! In fact, Habitat for Humanities focuses on helping lower class citizens to “build or improve a place they can call home” through the formidable help of a great number of volunteers. This weekend the PTK Leadership signed up to volunteer in helping the construction and painting of a veteran’s house. It was hard but at least I felt so helpful and satisfied when we left the house beautiful repainted!

Phi Theta Kappa is taking up a lot of my time and I couldn’t be more happy about it! Being a part of the Leadership is helping me a lot in improving my professional, organizational and working skills and it is also helping me in networking with great and valuable people on campus. I can’t wait to tell you more about the upcoming initiatives and events!! In particular, this week we will have the Democratic Forum on Tuesday, the Third Presidential Debate Watch Party on Wednesday, the Movie Night on Thursday and finally on Sunday we will participate to a really important dinner hosting the noble Noam Chomsky!!!!!

Sunday, fun day!

OMG! Is it really already week 8? Am I really halfway through the semester? How is it possible? It seems like school started last week…. Well, I can say that there is an evident difference though.. Midterms! Projects! Loads of assignments!! Yes.. everyone is getting so buuuusy!!!! Everybody is stressed out… However, I always take my little time, and I like to have some fun before jailing myself in the library till 11.00pm on Sunday night. 

This was definitely an awesome weekend, but Sunday was literally the best!!! As I stated in the title: “Sunday, fun day!” First of all, this morning I woke up at 9.00am and my friend Amber picked me up to go to an awesome free class at Lululemon. After enjoying a delicious brownie and some awful Starbuck cappuccino (Italian Warning: DO NOT get anything that is supposed to be an Italian beverage at an American Coffee shop), we went to the sports clothing shop Lululemon for some YOOOOGA! The shop was rearranged to offer a free yoga class for whoever wanted to start off with a super healthy Sunday morning. I really enjoyed it!! This free class will be offered every Sunday morning for free! So go check it out!!!

After yoga, Amber drove me back home, I took a shower and I immediately I got ready for the PTK Leadership meeting at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. This meeting was an educational event that the PTK Leaders shared with the PTK Advisors and SBCC faculty members: Manoutchhr Eskandari-Qajar, Phyllisa Esentraut and Mark Sanders. We had a wonderful lunch with awesome dessert and coffee, a great tour of the museum and a special lecture by Doctor Eskandari! It was really awesome!

As soon the museum’s visit ended, I haven’t had the time to get back home that my friends Brian, Deniz and Emma picked me up, and we went straight to the awesome California Avocado Festival in Carpinteria! It was such a blast! There were so many interesting little booths selling a variety of different products, food or clothes! The best thing was the avocado ice cream! I am not kidding… Soooooo good!

With all this enjoyment let’s come back to reality: LIBRARY… Next time I should just bring my bed here and spend the night studying. 

For once: close the books and work on the field!

As many of you may know, books can give you lots of information, but they are not helpful at all when it comes to practical experience. This is the reason why I decided to apply to the YMCA Video Internship this year and actually be on the field saying: lights, camera, ACTION! And this happened right this week! 

During the past few days I went to the YMCA office and brainstormed to decide how to create the YMCA annual campaign for fundraising and donations. It took me a little while to find the perfect way to promote such a big campaing! However, this week I finally had the opportunity to actually bring to life my ideas! As soon as I arrived to the office, my supervisor, Nathan, went to grab all the film equipment, and we set up everything to interview Jaan, the Noah’s Anchorage Crisis Youth Shelter coordinator (I told you about this YMCA branch in this previous post). 

Cool set.. Nathan ready to roll!!

It was my first time handling such professional (and expensive) equipment!!! We set up the lights to perfectly frame Jaan face, we grabbed the interview chair and the tripod and we were almost ready to go!! In fact, it is never easy to position the lights, camera and interview chair… We moved the chair, camera and lights more then a thousand times before being completely satisfied with the shot composition. We used Tina, one of the YMCA employee, as our “model”, and we kept her there until Jaan came in order to lead the shot composition to perfection. Yes… movie making seems easy but it is not!!! There are so many things to take in consideration in order to create something professional!

Jaan really confused by my questions...

The challenges are not limited to the set up!! As soon as Jaan arrived we had to take care of the way he was delivering the interview… Yes, even if you are not the one talking, you have to be able to extrapolate the from the interview the information you want to deliver in the video. I had to find the perfect questions to ask in order to have him say what I wanted in order to make the video more effective! So cool, though!!!! It was amaziiiing!!!!

First big Ambassadors event!!!

Focus!

Finally the first Ambassadors event took place this Saturday, October 1st!!!!! The great volleyball tournament hosted by the SBCC Ambassadors gathered fourteen teams on West Beach, and it was simply A-MA-ZING!!! I took so many videos and pictures during the whole day, and I cannot wait to create a short clip with the most clamorous moments of the day! I know.. I already put too many exclamation marks. But when you talk about Ambassadors I just get so excited!!!!!!!!!!!! The Ambassadors are like a family for me now. In fact, we don’t jut organize beautiful events, but we are all friends, and we love to hang out with each other. I found my best friends through this program, and if my social life now it’s so active is also because of this amazing people… 

The tournament started at 10.00am and it ended at 5.00pm. What a long day!!! The teams were so excited, and the ambassadors were all ready with whistles and pens to be referees and scorekeepers. Everything went so smoothly, and the great collaboration between the Ambassadors made this event successful and super fun! And there was also freeeeeeee pizza!! How can you not love and event with free food? I know that is was Domino’s pizza and for an Italian like me it is the worst thing you could propose.. But in a hot, happy and sunny day, Domino’s pizza and fresh water are the necessary energy sources to face a volleyball match. 

Exhausted Ambassadors...

At the end of the day we were all whether tired, sunburned or both things at the same time. We sticked together till the last seconds, and went home satisfied and happier than ever before. Now, we are ready to organize our second event: Pumpkin Carving and movie night!!! Are you readyyyyyyyy??????

Smart is healthy!

In my previous posts I have mentioned that I am now one of the PODS mentors for the Honors Program, but I haven’t had the chance to tell you all about it yet! Just read a couple more sentences and you’ll have a pretty good overview of what the PODS program is and why it is so important!! 

This semester, for the first time the Honors Program had the chance to start an initiative called PODS. Many of you will now be wondering “what the heck does that word mean?”. Well, unluckily the letters don't stand for an acronym… However, there is a specific reason why it has this name. The Honors Program PODS assign to “mentors”, people who have been in the honors program for at least a year, around five new honors members in order to let them transition smoothly into the program, and make sure they don’t drop the program after a semester without having the chance to receive a Honors Certificate. The noble Melanie Ekford-Prossor came up with the name pod because she thought that our small groups resembled the whales pods… Isn’t it such an awesome idea??

Cool people.. :)

At the beginning of the year I was really stressed about how it would have all worked out, and I was always wondering if I would have been a good mentor for new students. What should have I talked to them about? Which activities should I have organized? Well, all these questions were answered as soon as I started meeting up with my five awesome pods members. We have immediately clicked, and it is just so satisfactory when I can answer their question and giving them advice! Besides, it is even better when you join two pods together for some fun activities!!

Yes... This are the breathtaking
 East Campus stairs

This Friday, my friend Shivani’s pod and mine went to a great hike called Inspiration Point. During the hike, we had the chance to talk not only about school but also about who we are outside the academic environment. I just loooove sharing stories, interests and hobbies with new people!! It was really sunny and hot, and the hike was so steep… I need to do more “East Campus stairs” so that next time I’ll be sure to be fit enough… At least, when we got to the top we were all so happy, and the view was simply amazing!!! Please, let’s do it again soon!! Or maybe should we do rock climbing next time? Or kayaking? I’ll keep you posted!!