Hey again
So exciting news! Tomorrow we're headed to NeoCon!! yay!! If you don't know what NeoCon is I'll explain it to you a little bit so you can partake in my excitement. NeoCon is one of the biggest trade shows in the interior design field. All kinds of manufacturing companies will attend along with professional designers. It happens every year and this year it is located in Baltimore! It will be a great opportunity to see what's out there as far as products and get some samples of things to use in my projects. We also put together our portfolios and resumes to hand out to professionals in hopes of maybe getting some summer internships. Either way it will be a great networking and research opportunity and I am very excited. I have my new business casual outfit picked out and everything. On our trip we're also going to go to DC and tour some interior design studios which will also be fun and informative. We get to stay over in Baltimore too so that will be fun of course. Other than that I've just been working steadily on our projects! I've been trying to get everything done early since I'm leaving tomorrow and then its Halloween weekend! yay!! well I hope everything is going well for all of you! Until next time!
Leeanna

Hello! So exciting news! My friend Lauren and I are starting the ASID student chapter of Syracuse University! ASID stands for American Society of Interior Designers and it is a national organization that includes both professionals and students. It offers a lot of benefits for joining as well. You can receive discounts on all the major interior design and architecture magazines as well as text books. There are also a lot of events hosted by ASID as well and through the website you can network with professionals which can help with job opportunities and internships. So far for our chapter we've found a faculty adviser and have started working on becoming part of SGA which is the University organization that sponsors clubs. We've also made some brochures to advertise and attract members so we can start putting on events and hosting speakers. I think this club will be a great way to get professionals to be a bigger part of the university. We plan on hosting guest speakers and events to get manufacturers and professionals to come speak to students. These events would be open to all interior designers and could even expand to include the entire design department once we get started. I think this club is so exciting and a great opportunity. I can't wait till it gets off the ground.

So I finally passed my Study abroad application in!!!! Yay!!!! I'll hear back in a couple of weeks whether we got in the program or not and I'm so excited! I really hope I get it, going abroad to London would be an incredible experience. Actually I had a really good experience with the design department yesterday that I thought you all might want to hear about. So, I was trying to finish my portfolio last minute, irresponsible I know, and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't exporting from indesign to a pdf file! I had never used indesign before, which might have been part of the problem, but even still I was really starting to worry that I wouldn't get it finished in the proper format. I had scheduled a meeting with the Chair of the Design department earlier that week to go over my portfolio to make sure that I had everything correct before I submitted it, unfortunately I had to go to the meeting without it being finished. Well, even though she had warned me ahead of time that she couldn't meet for a long time, during the meeting she spent twenty minutes trying to help me figure out my portfolio format. Then, after that was unsuccessful, she tracked down the computer professor and went with me to help me fix it! Through the whole process, not only did I get my portfolio finished, I also learned a lot more about indesign. I was so thankful that she took the time to really help me. In a school as big as Syracuse it really is unique that the chairperson of the entire design department would spend so much time out of her busy day to help a student with a simple computer issue. It really was impressive. In fact after the meeting she followed up with me to ask if I thought a computer seminar would be beneficial to not only me but my entire class. This was a great experience working with the design administration and really is such a benefit to coming to VPA, students on average feel like they get a significant amount of individualized attention. Well I hope you are all doing well! Talk to you next week!