Gina's Volleyball Blog - 09-21-09

 Hello! This is the new volleyball blog! And I'm excited to be writing it. My name is Gina Vera and I'm a freshman here at Butler. My major is International Business with a Spanish minor. I'm from Joliet, Ill., (a suburb 45 minutes south of Chicago).

I'm a 5'8" setter and more than excited to be playing volleyball for BU. I'll just start off this first blog post with how Butler has been so far. First of all I love it! I know you probably hear that from a lot of freshmen in their first few weeks away at school but it holds true for me. I love every aspect of Butler. There's so much to do all the time. No one could ever possibly leave here saying they were bored. My days consist of class from 8 a.m. to noon. Classes are easy to stay on top of if you make friends the first week. We were on the road for the first four weeks of school but I never fell behind because I kept in contact with my friends about the assignments I missed and if I ever had a question I never hesitated to email my professors. They have been more than happy to sit down in their office hours to explain an assignment, project or problem I have. 

Then, practice takes up the afternoon so my day leads me straight to dinner and homework. Every night one of the 100+ organizations on campus has something going on or my unit has an activity. Something like a pizza party or Bounce for Beats (five trampolines on the mall and the boys from the fraternities perform a dance in front of hundreds of spectators) is going on and allows me to be part of the standard student body with my girlfriends from my unit. (Just a quick note: I went random for my roommate and we get along great! She's one of my closest friends on campus. We live in Ross Hall.) My days fly by because of the busy schedule but I would much rather be organized and regimented than procrastinating on the papers I have to write.

Volleyball has been awesome! Like I said we have been on the road for four weeks straight but I'm so excited that this is our first weekend of home games! Talk around campus is great leading up the games so I know we'll have a great crowd and support on Friday and Saturday night. Being an athlete here is a unique experience. Most of my friends are other athletes so being in Hinkle Fieldhouse four hours a day allows me to see the people I don't have classes with. All of the teams really support each other. For instance, when we were in South Carolina two weeks ago so was men's soccer so we went to their game one night and they came to ours the next night. I love all the girls on the team and although we're around each other every day we still meet up for meals and Grey's Anatomy nights!

I should get started on the homework I have for this week. I'll be posting weekly so keep a look out!

Go Dawgs!

-Gina