Holidays around Chapman

The holidays at Chapman offer means there are a lot of fun things to do in the surrounding area. I chose to highlight my top 5 favorite places to visit. Not to mention each location below is but a 20 minute drive away from campus. If you don’t plan on bringing a car to campus, see my article on Zip Cars.

1. Disneyland – from lights, music, fireworks, and fake snow there is no better way to immerse yourself in the holiday season
   





2. Old Towne Orange Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony – Each year at the beginning of December they hold an event lighting all of the beautiful decorations in the circle. They have a guest speaker and many musicians. And the best thing is the event is FREE!




3. Newport Beach Boat Parade – several nights in December, boats in Newport parade around the harbor decked out in crazy light displays. It is free to those watching from the shore, but many cruise companies offer a dessert/ideal viewing package!




4. South Coast Plaza – A great place to shop, take pictures with Santa, and get those holiday bargains.




5. Naples in Long Beach – This community has many of their homes cover in light displays. A fun thing to do on any winter night.These are great ways to celebrate and relax during the hectic time of finals and the holiday season.

- Taylor

Pictures with Santa

Students today taking their picture with Santa outside of the Argyros School of Business and Economics

Furry Friends for Finals

Today Active Minds invites you to hang out with some friendly dogs and feel the stress of finals melt away! Active Minds will be hosting six certified therapy dogs from the non-profit organization BARK from 12-2 pm on the Argyros Forum walkway. There also will be a resource table with additional information related to mental health and well-being. Students can bring a children’s book to donate to help support BARK increase reading skills in children.

Dorm Life

When looking at various colleges, I was very impressed by the Chapman dorms, especially because of the private restrooms. With other colleges, I was dreading the concept of lugging all of my shower things down the hall everyday, worrying that I might forget something. When I received my housing information for this fall, I was concerned to see that I would be living in a triple, a room of 3 students, and sharing our restroom with another room, for a total of 6 students. I thought this would mean overcrowding and never being able to use the restroom when I needed to. In fact, I was soon to find out that these would not be issues at all.


The rooms are more than big enough to accommodate 3 students, without having to resort to bunking the beds. Also, there is rarely a wait to take a shower or use a sink in the bathroom. When taking to friends at other universities, I have come to realize how lucky I am with the housing at Chapman University. Not only are the rooms large and the bathrooms fairly exclusive, but the dorms in general are fairly new and in very close walking distance to rest of campus. Also, I came to find out that one of the restaurant options, the main dining hall, is a part of one of the newer dorms, meaning that it is only about a few minutes walking distance from my room. All-in-all, I can definitely say that I have been more than impressed by the housing here at Chapman, which has helped to enhance my experience here.

- Christin

Hands-On with Webisodes

One of my favorite classes this semester is a class called Byte-Sized television. It is a little-known gem in the film school and an optional elective of the TV/Broadcast Journalism program. In this class 15-20 students work on developing a pilot for a web series. After workshopping the scripts and troubleshooting production issues, the class votes on the best two scripts... and the chaos begins. We have three days and $1,000 to create it. Students are in charge of finding actors, locations, permits, props, etc. Fortunately, our weekend shoot went without a hitch and as Asst. Director I was in charge of keeping things in order on set. It was such a fun experience! Now that we have the footage that we need, the rest of the semester is spent in post production for the pilot, and pre-production for the next three consecutive episodes that will be shot in the Spring semester. It's hands on, real-life classes like this that make Chapman so unique. I feel so much better prepared for the real world now that I have both theory and practical-based curriculum under my belt. I am looking forward to the finished product that our class will have created and cannot wait for our project to be up on youtube and funnyordie.com!

- Annie

Fish Tacos

Chapman strives to educate students through events outside of the classroom. On December 1, entrepreneur Wing Lam spoke at Chapman University. Lam, the founder of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, was the first presenter in an entrepreneurial lecture series. He was an enjoyable speaker, very relaxed and humorous. He mentioned that being in college helped him prepare for his future, but not in the way you might imagine. He was involved in a fraternity so his week consisted of planning for the pre-party, the party itself, and then of course planning for the post-party. The rest of his week was spent recovering from the events. There just simply wasn’t time for school. He was placed on academic probation for his first year because of his sizeable 0.2 GPA. I didn’t even know that it was possible to have a GPA that low. After joking and sharing stories for a bit, he talked about some of the struggles he faced opening up his own company. The most valuable lesson I learned from his talk was to “be a good host.” In any business, restaurant or other, you have to learn how to be a good host by looking out for your customers. Anticipate their needs before they ask for something. Treat customers as friends, not clients. He has been successful because he builds relationships with people and has worked to keep company culture the same even as he now has 58 restaurants in 4 states.

Chapman has so many resources for students, and attending lecture series is a good way to expand your knowledge and to network with people. (Plus some teachers offer extra credit for attending so that is always a plus). Other departments besides business invite guest speakers to campus as well so you can usually hear a speaker who will discuss something you are interested in.

- Jenna

Destination Africa Film Screening TONIGHT!

Come to the Folino Theater at 7pm for Destination Africa: 2010, a special screening event and free reception open to all.

Join us for a screening of short student documentaries filmed in Botswana, Zanzibar and Tanzania this past summer, and then enjoy Q&A with the students, followed by a reception with African food and live African music!

For those unable to attend the screening in person, you can follow this link (http://www1.chapman.edu/ftvtutorials/stream/stream.html) to watch it, starting at 7 PM. The site allows you to sign in at your leisure before the stream goes live, and it will notify you when the feed begins.

The feed can be watched directly on the internet, as well as on Justin.tv’s apps for both the iPad/iPhone and Android mobile platforms; all these options are free. Additionally, the player is much higher quality than the one used for last year’s Thesis webcasts!

Please feel free to share this link with friends, family, and documentary lovers everywhere: http://www1.chapman.edu/ftvtutorials/stream/stream.html

For more info on the screening, visit our blog, or our events calendar (http://ftv.chapman.edu/about/event_calendar/destination_africa_2010/), and feel free to share your comments with the community.

Thursday, December 2nd at 7pm.

Folino Theater, Dodge College of Film and Media Arts

- Taylor

Greek Week

Greek Week is amazing! Every fall all of the Greeks compete in a variety of events. Some of the events include water toss, tug-o-war, creating sculptures with cans, and even Rockband. On the last day the competition ends with banner and chant. My favorite part of the week is chant. Chant is basically a cheer and stomp routine to a certain theme and this year's theme was fairy tales.

My sorority incorporated topics about each house in mother goose rhymes. It is great to see the friendly competition and passion among all the Greeks. The spirit and creativity during this week is why I am a Chapman student and a member of Greek life. Not only is it great to participate and cheer on your sisters but it is amazing to see what the other fraternities and sororities create. It is my sisters and rest of Greek life that inspires me to go the extra mile. To anyone interested in Chapman Greek Life I suggest you research Chapman University chants on YouTube.

- Stephanie

Shower Shoes

I’m a sophomore who still lives in the dorms, so I’ve been living on campus for two whole years! The dorms at a lot of schools usually can be summed up as: small and dirty. I am a huge fan of good hygiene so these were a problem for me. I didn’t want to live in a closet-sized room with two - maybe three – other people who (1.) I don’t know, and (2.) leave their dirty underwear all over the floor. I didn’t want to use a bathroom with twenty other strangers. Most importantly, I didn’t want to have to wear the dreaded, horrible shower shoes.

Ick, right? You have to wear them at communal showers so you don’t get fungus and whatnot from other people’s dirty, disgusting feet! It is traumatizing.

Of all the things that I loved about Chapman, I have to say the huge dorms and private bathrooms were the most amazing icing on the cake. I had the absolute best dorm experience at Chapman. I was lucky enough to only have one roommate who thankfully kept her underwear to herself. The room was big enough to fit an entire full-sized couch into. We had enough floor space, even with the couch, to probably host a dance party. Best of all, we had our own bathroom with a clean shower that only we used! If you didn’t have your own bathroom at Chapman, then you had a suited bathroom. That means two rooms shared one bathroom – so at the very most, there were four to a bathroom. To make up for this, those suited rooms also had walk-in closets! I was pretty jealous when I discovered that.

If you’re a freshman who is terrified of living the dorms, trust me on this: Chapman dorms are totally livable. Not only that, I opted to live in them again! It’s really nice to not have to worry about bills, cleaning a whole house/apartment, or cooking. So if you’re coming to Chapman, relax and enjoy your huge rooms.

Pre-Decoration, but look at all the floor space!!! :)

- Holly

PR Panel with Professionals

Going to Chapman has a ridiculous amount of advantages. Last night I attended a sports PR event with a panel of professionals from all over Southern California. When I saw the flyer of the speakers attending my jaw dropped. Josh Rawitch of the LA Dodgers, John Black from the LA Lakers, Joe Safety from the LA Clippers and Time Tessalone from USC football. As if that was not incredible enough Reed Dickens who has worked as a White House Asst. Press Secretary, the Jonas Brothers and MLB joined the list. Last but not least Melinda Travis, has worked with NBA Orlando Magic and MLB Internationals. Talk about people with impressive resumes! They took time out of their busy schedules and drove down from LA to come speak to us about the industry. For two hours they gave us the inside look into the industry and made it real. It was awesome to hear how they got to where they are now as well as the advice they had to share. My dream is to be a sideline reporter for the NFL, but also a PR minor working for a professional team and athletes. Last night was so epic, I feel so lucky to be able to have met and chatted with them. After the panel I got some business cards and contacts-in this industry it is all about who you know! Thank you so much to Doug Aiken and Dodge College for putting on this spectacular event!

- Krystal