Back from surgury

My surgury ended up getting moved up to Saturday afternoon since i was in so much pain when i got home there was no way it could have waited. I am feeling a little bit better now and am happy this ordeal is over and done with. I don't like the idea of missing school for a week that is not very fun for me at all.

Thank you all for all your kind messages on facebook and myspace I love you guys a lot
love
Janine


Update 3/31/11 Besides whooping cough which occured during the summmer between junior and senior year of high school that was the worst medical issue I have ever had to deal with. I really hope that cyst never comes back. I don't want to go through that pain ever again! So far it hasn't come back and i'm quite happy

Academics: My classes are awesome this semester. I can't say I can complain too much about them at all. I think my favorite classses so far are Dramatic Theroy and Beginning Creative Writing. My other classes are pretty good too. As a whole I don't think this semester should be all that stressful workload wise but here's hoping. Deans List? Yes, that is my ultimate goal this semester . Let's see if it can get fullfilled.

Friends I can see many good things insight for friends this semester. I have made so many awesome new friends. Good times are ahead I can feel it. Yesterday I went to a concert at the Tweeter Center with SEC. I hung out with Jessie. Erin and Mariah and we had a blast. I liked some of the music that was played there but I have to admit hard rock is not my genre. As I have previously stated my floormates are amazing. Connor 3rd floor is clearly the best !
Love Life: My relationship with Sean is going awesome. It's the best thing that has happened to me in a really long time.
Extracurriculars: This is where my stress level has been substantially reduced. Last year I found myself having a hard time balancing my homework on top of always rushing around to meetings and events. I had to do a servere cut back in order to have enough time to be able to balance everythign equally. I can breathe a little bit easier knowing tha I won't have to rush around to half as many meetings as I did last year. I'm kind of disappointed that the radio station transmitter is still broken. I was kind of getting excited about doing my show again since last semester the transmitter was broken all semester and by the time they fixed it I was consumed in studying for finals. :le sigh:

Goal Fullfilltment Upates
2. Apply for a workstudy job and if I don't get the first job i apply for then apply for a coupe of other different jobs. Work two jobs if I have enough time but i don't think i will have enough time to work two jobs between all the other stuff I do and homework but a girl's gotta do what a Goal has been fullfilled since 8/30 The Art Gallery job is pretty fun. I think i am really going to like working there a lot.
Talk to the Pathways people about internships and talk to them about possibly doing an internship during the spring semester. I have been doing a lot of research and I found a really cool internship in Disney World so I might go to an information session on that that is in the fall to see if I want to do something like that Don't think the Disney internship is going to happen but I want to try and see if I can somehow get an internship @ WMUR or a local radio station during spring semester. This is where knowing one of the newscasters at WMUR comes in handy :)
7. Try out for the theatre productions and see where the chips fall for casting.
Another nervewracking week of auditioning has come and gone. I didn't get in but I'm most likely going to do crew. I can't decide if I want to do crew for Mainstage or CTE. Due to the fact that I like to mix things up a little bit I'll probably do crew for CTE sicne I did crew for Mainstage last semester.
11. Hang out with Amanda Keri and Zach as much as possible since they are all graduating in December this should go with out much furthur anaylsis :)



Yes there is no denying that this year is going to be fantastic!

love
Janine

Happy As Can Be

I am quite content with my life right now and cannot complain at all. This year is going to be amazing! Here's why...

First and foremost: I have a boyfriend! I am very happy and excited about being in my first relationship. My boyfriend's name is Sean. I met him last year when I did stage crew for the Apple Tree the most amazing play NEC has ever done nonetheless. We get along awesome and have a lot of stuff in common. I am very happy that I met him. :)
Secondly: My classes are awesome this semester. I decided to stick with my gut feeling and stick with taking Dramatic Theroy. I think I am going to like that class the best. Intro To Symbolic Logic seems like it will be pretty interesting too. Hopefully that class won't be too hard to do well in because I need it in order to fullfill my math credit. The rest of classes are writing classes which is awesome because I will be doing with I love.
Thirdly: Extracurricularwise I am cutting back on clubs this semester. I was in 11 clubs last year and now I have cut that total down to 5 to be able to manage my time better. I eliminated the things that bored me to death and stuck with the things that I like to do.
Finally: My friends are amazing as always. This year will be awesome with them. I plan on embelishing the friendships that I have now and hopefully hanging out with Keri Amanda and Zach a lot more since they are all graduating in December. I also plan on getting to know some of the freshmen that I met at orientation better includng Beth, Jen and TJ. Oh and my floormates are awesome. I've been through the list of the awesome people on my floor already and Jen Harty is my RA. Connor 3rd floors rules face!!!


Time to start heading to bed. I still have a bit of homework to finish before I turn in for the night

~Janine

Fall 06 Semester begins

So another birthday has come and gone as has another year in this jounrey we call life. I can't beleive I am finally 21. Where has all the time gone? I'm still in shock... just generally speaking!

Last night I went out to Jillian's in Manchester with a bunch of my friends. It was a ton of fun. It was nice to see people I haven't seen in a while or people who I haven't seen very much of this summer. Jillian's is cool becaiuse there is so much to do there. They have pool tables, air hockey and video games. They even had DDR but it was a different version of it than I am used to playing so it was a bit harder. I got a ton of cool presents too which was awesome. Thanks to everyone who came to my party you made my 21st night very memorable. I will never forget it.



Today my family came over for a barbeque. I wish the weather had been a little bit nicer but other than that I was a good time. My aunt just got back from Italy so we got to see pictures from their trip and pictures of my family's house in Italy. It's so pretty I can't wait to go there and visit them.

Good birthday all around! Thanks again to everyone who made it memorable! :)



Well I head back to Henniker on Tuesday for Orientation Leader Stuff Part 2 and helping the freshmen move into their dorms. I seriously can't wait to get back to school. This year is going to be a total blast and the fact that I am 21 adds extra incentive because now I can go out to the bars with my friends on the weekends. Party like a rock star and kick a little ass if you know what I'm saying. :)

This semester is going to be harder than the past two as the intenstiy of my course load gets relativiely harder. In order to achieve my ultimate goal of getting on Deans List this semester I have to take extreme focus and really buckle down on my homework as soon as I start to getting it. Last fall I had a huge and i mean huge problem with time management skills. Balancing homework on top of all the meetings and events I was going to was a bitch and needless to say when the semester ended there were grades for a few classes that I wish had been a lot better than they had essentially turned out. Last semester was better time management wise but I still ended up being disappointed with certain grades for certain classes because I knew I could've done better in them, especially my writing classes. I already know that a few of my classes this semester are going to be really hard and I will have to work harder in those particular classes to get a good grade or just to pass in general. Intro To Symbolic Logic is a key one to do well in since that is counting as my math credit. In order to reach ultimate sucess there are a few things I have to do.

*Find a good balance between doing homework and having fun to reduce stress levels

* CUT BACK ON THE AMOUNT OF TIME I SPEND ON FACEBOOK MYSPACE AND LIVEJOURNAL!!

This doesn't mean I won't be updating livejournal but homework has to take top priority. My mom has already warned me about this and has threatened to take away facebook and myspace. This is mostly due in part to the fact that I spent every waking moment when I wasn't at work on myspace or facebook (or onetruemedia updating my slideshows) and she doesn't like that i spend so much time on both of these websites. This means when school starts I will most likely be updating my livejournal once or twice a week or on the weekends depending on when I have time to get online. As far as myspace and facebook go I'll check both sites every so often during the week but will respond to commments on weekends.

* Cut back on the amount of clubs I am in so i can balance my time more effeciently.

Last year I found myself to be in far too many clubs for my own good. That was bitch for my schedule. Rushing around to meetings and trying to balance that and going to events on top of my homework.. Last year I was in 10 clubs on campus. As of now I currently in about 5 or 6.

The ones I had to drop out of were..

RHA

ISA ( well i haven't decided if i am quitting that yet but i am most likely going to)

Student Senate

Radio ( I'm indecisive about this one too because I am not sure if I am going to be able to to fit doing my radio show in between work and homework so I might end up not doing it just for this semester and pick it up in the spring)

and the ones that get to stay because I can't live without them because awesome people are in them....

TEACH

CAB

Henniker Review (though there reallly aren't any meetings for that.. or at least none that I was aware of last semester)

Volleyball (gotta stay in shape dontcha know? :) )

CTE ( Well, you all know how my decisicon to stay in this club has fluctuated over the past few months but for the most part I'm most likely sticking with it YAY)

New Englander



I am also considering starting up a poetry club. I am not sure how many people will join it or hard it will be to find an advisor for it but I am going to give it a shot and see how things work out. I am also considering joining yearbook because I was involved with that kind of stuff a lot in high school and I loved it. I actually don't really know if they even have a yearbook at our school. Last year I wanted to join but they never put signs up anywhere for meetings. We'll see what happens with that I guess.



I'm peacing out for now

Janine

Revised Lunch Article

What's In Your Lunch

by Janine Leffler

Summer is almost over. Time to trade swimsuits in for schoolbooks and sunscreen in for sharpened pencils. It’s also time to think about what to pack your children for lunch. Obesity is an epidemic on the rise. According to an internet source about 1.2 million people in the world are overweight and at least 300 million of them are obese. The Food Service Administration estimates that 30 percent of all public high schools currently sell Burger King, Dominos Pizza and other brand name fast food in their cafeterias along with federally subsidized meals and many dispense chips and sodas in vending machines down the hall. (http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/01_ma_207_01.html) So what are local schools doing to improve the kinds of food in the lunches that they serve? “All of our lunches are in compliance with the federal government. This year we implemented a wellness policy. Part of the policy is to make sure that food served in our lunch program meets the nutritional requirements of the federal government.” Director of Food Services in Milford Bob Supernant said in an interview. Amherst has a similar wellness policies in place which replaces food that contains a lot of fat and sugar with healthier foods. “Hopefully it will raise awareness of what is healthy. It needs to start at home so the kids can recognize what is healthy and be encouraged to try it.” Janice Bock, from food services at Amherst Middle School said in a recent interview. Recently AMS has made some improvements to make diets for students healthier. Examples include updating what is sold in the vending machines by changing fried snacks to baked snacks and more juice and water as opposed to soda. Janet Johnson head of food services of Wilton Lyndeborough Cooperative School District said in a recent interview that the methods they are taking to improve diets in their school district is “ Adding more whole wheat products, baked potato chips and having a trial process at the elementary school level which encourages young children to eat more fruits and vegetables.” She then went on to say the the implemented changes will improve the lifestyles of children in her school district because “ If they make good choices they will have a healthier diet..”The question of the day: What’s in your child’s lunch? Are their lunches healthier than lunches were 30 years ago?
Carl Anderson who works at the Color Shop on Main Street in Wilton said in an interview that lunches 30 years ago were by far healthier than today’s lunches. “There was a lot less around and a lot less portions as well as less sugary cereals and snacks.” One fact about today’s lunches is that they contain more processed foods. For example children these days are bringing more fruit snacks and things such as Fruit Rollups instead of bringing fresh fruit. Thus you never know what’s going into the food your kids are eating. In an interview with Diane Spofford, a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston she said that her favorite lunch to take to school as a child was cold meatball sandwiches, because the meatballs were homemade. She said when it comes to lunches being healthy “It depends on what kid you are talking about, my kids eat just as healthy as I did, others, I am not so sure.” To her, lunches of convenience such as Lunchables are not the healthiest thing for kids to eat. Lunchables are a pre-made lunches packaged by the KRAFT and Oscar Meyer companies. Through my research I found out that the contents of these lunches are less than appealing. They are filled with preservatives and fats. A recent study has shown that they are also high in salt containing nearly three fourths of the daily-recommended salt allowance. One particular Lunchables meal consists of mystery meat, which sounds kind of eerie because you don’t know what’s in it. There have been some pretty disgusting things served in lunches in the past and that hasn’t changed much today either. Carl Anderson who works at the Color Shop in Wilton said the most disgusting thing he ever had to take for lunch was “Spam, which was a spread able canned meat product.” I’m not one to complain about cafeteria food, basically because when I was in school I took lunch from home and only brought school lunch once or twice a week. It wasn’t till I got to college that I encountered something gut wrenchingly disgusting, so gross it made my stomach turn numerous cartwheels. This delicacy, if you can even refer to it as such, is called Tater Tot Casserole, something that my college’s dining common serves on occasion. It is basically the leftover tater tots from that morning’s breakfast baked up and doused in mushroom gravy. Needless to say, I try to avoid eating this at all counts. In collaboration with the USDA the UNH Cooperative Extension has created a program to help improve student nutrition in local schools called Changing The Scene. This program offers those who participate the following benefits:~ A tool for assessing their own exercise program~Guidelines for identifying, contacting and working with all of the groups that need to be actively involved with the school wellness team~Newsletters schools can send home to parents, with a blank page schools can use to promote their programsFor more information about this check out the following website: http://extension.unh.edu/news/changesC.htmWhen thinking about packing lunch for your child, try to avoid foods that high in fat and sugar, processed foods, fried snacks and any beverages which are high in sugar. It’s all about making healthy choices. Happy Packing and here’s to a great school year!

Wrapping Up

Well the summer is coming to a close and so is this internship. I can't believe how quick the summer has flown by and that I will back at NEC soon to start another year. Last week I was on vacation but this week and the week before I left for vacation were soley devoted to working on my lunch article and getting it primed for publication. Originally my focus for this article was supposed to be a comparison between lunches thirty years ago and lunches today. Since I was having trouble finding enough information I shifted my focus to school nutrition and what local schools are doing to improve the foods that they serve. I found much more information on that topic since that was a hot topic a few years ago. The week before I went on vacation basically consisted of making phone calls to people in various school districts in the local area to see what they are doing to improve school lunches and did some internet research about what is being done nationwide and globally. At first I had a little bit too much information about what was going on globally and nationally and I had trouble deciding what was reallly important but once I reread my information over again a few times it wasn't that hard to determine the information I needed and the information that I didn't need. Before I left for vacation I submitted my article for review to see if it would be publishable. When I got back on Monday I found out that it was nearly perfect I just needed to edit a few things and move a few things around. It is going to be published in the Back To School supplement on next week's Cabinet.

Overall I would most definitley say that this internship was very worth it. It helped to gain experience in my field and I learned a lot about what goes on behind the scenes of a newspaper. I hope to carry some of what I learned as far as ways to improve my writing goes in order to help improve the artilcles that I write for the New Englander even if the improvement is very small

Janine

Hour Log
Week 9 7/24-7/-26
7/24 10-4
7/25 10-4
7/26- 10-2:30
Week 11 8/15-8/17
Tuesday 8/15 10-3
Wednesday 8-16 10-:2:30

Lunch Article

What’s in your lunch?Are lunches today healthier than those of yesteryear?By Janine Leffler


Summer is almost over. Time to trade swimsuits in for schoolbooks and sunscreen in for sharpened pencils. It’s also time to think about what to pack your children for lunch. Obesity is an epidemic on the rise. About 1.2 million people in the world are overweight and at least 300 million of them are obese. Carl Anderson who works at the Color Shop on Main Street in Wilton said in an interview that lunches 30 years ago were by far healthier than today’s lunches. “There was a lot less around and a lot less portions as well as less sugary cereals and snacks.” The Food Service Administration estimates that 30 percent of all public high schools currently sell Burger King, Dominos Pizza and other brand name fast food in their cafeterias along with federally subsidized meals and many dispense chips and sodas in vending machines down the hall. (http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/01_ma_207_01.html) The question of the day: What’s in your child’s lunch? Are their lunches healthier than lunches were 30 years ago? One fact about today’s lunches is that they contain more processed foods. For example children these days are bringing more fruit snacks and things such as Fruit Rollups instead of bringing fresh fruit. Thus you never know what’s going into the food your kids are eating. In an interview with Diane Spofford, a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston she said that her favorite lunch to take to school as a child was cold meatball sandwiches, because the meatballs were homemade. She said when it comes to lunches being healthy “It depends on what kid you are talking about, my kids eat just as healthy as I did, others, I am not so sure.” To her, lunches of convenience such as Lunchables are not the healthiest thing for kids to eat. Lunchables are a pre-made lunches packaged by the KRAFT and Oscar Meyer companies. Through my research I found out that the contents of these lunches are less than appealing. They are filled with preservatives and fats. A recent study has shown that they are also high in salt containing nearly three fourths of the daily-recommended salt allowance. One particular Lunchables meal consists of mystery meat, which sounds kind of eerie because you don’t know what’s in it. There have been some pretty disgusting things served in lunches in the past and that hasn’t changed much today either. Carl Anderson who works at the Color Shop in Wilton said the most disgusting thing he ever had to take for lunch was “Spam, which was a spread able canned meat product.” I’m not one to complain about cafeteria food, basically because when I was in school I took lunch from home and only brought school lunch once or twice a week. It wasn’t till I got to college that I encountered something gut wrenchingly disgusting, so gross it made my stomach turn numerous cartwheels. This delicacy, if you can even refer to it as such, is called Tater Tot Casserole, something that my college’s dining common serves on occasion. It is basically the leftover tater tots from that morning’s breakfast baked up and doused in mushroom gravy. Needless to say, I try to avoid eating this at all counts.
So what are local schools doing to improve the kinds of food in the lunches that they serve? “All of our lunches are in compliance with the federal government. This year we implemented a wellness policy. Part of the policy is to make sure that food served in our lunch program meets the nutritional requirements of the federal government.” Director of Food Services in Milford Bob Supernant said in an interview. Amherst has a similar wellness policies in place which replaces food that contains a lot of fat and sugar with healthier foods. “Hopefully it will raise awareness of what is healthy. It needs to start at home so the kids can recognize what is healthy and be encouraged to try it.” Janice Bock, from food services at Amherst Middle School said in a recent interview. Recently AMS has made some improvements to make diets for students healthier. Examples include updating what is sold in the vending machines by changing fried snacks to baked snacks and more juice and water as opposed to soda.
In collaboration with the USDA the UNH Cooperative Extension has created a program to help improve student nutrition in local schools called Changing The Scene. This program offers those who participate the following benefits:~ A tool for assessing their own exercise program~Guidelines for identifying, contacting and working with all of the groups that need to be actively involved with the school wellness team~Newsletters schools can send home to parents, with a blank page schools can use to promote their programs For more information about this check out the following website: http://extension.unh.edu/news/changesC.htm
When thinking about packing lunch for your child, try to avoid foods that high in fat and sugar, processed foods, fried snacks and any beverages which are high in sugar. It’s all about making healthy choices. Happy Packing and here’s to a great school year!