Christmas Break and 2nd Semester

After spending 3 weeks in the freezer, also known as Illinois winter, I was excited to get back to Myrtle Beach. While the temperatures in Illinois were miserable, I still managed to enjoy my time back with the family and friends. Living on my own for the last 4 months made things different when I got home. I became accustomed to waking up and eating breakfast and getting ready without seeing anybody or talking to anybody. Or when I would go out somewhere, I would always return home and hang out by myself in the apartment. So being back home with the family was different in a way I hadn't experienced before.

Living in a warmer climate made me miss the snow that comes with winter in the Midwest. So I was excited to get home and get my first snow of the year (after all, it just isn't christmas time without snow). But while I was home, we only got an ice storm and maybe 2 inches of snow. That was dissapointing, but the frigid temperatures made me forget my craving for snow.

Christmas was awesome. The Wii that mom and dad got for the family was pretty sweet. Whenever we were bored, we just turned on the Wii and played Wii Sports for hours on end. I even became a Pro at Wii Bowling (I better still be a Pro when I come home again). I made a vow on the drive back to Illinois that I wasn't going to touch a golf club the entire time I was home. Playing golf into December was something I had never done before, so I was pretty burned out. I figured if I took a complete break from golf over break, I would have a renewed excitement to play again when I got back to school. The three weeks came and went, so I made the trek back to the Beach on Sunday. I woke up on Monday morning with that renewed sense of excitement to play golf again.

I went to school on Monday to pick up my new schedule and Driving Range card, but the Range cards weren't there yet, which made me angry, but they came in on Thursday. So classes started on Tuesday, and my first class was Verbal Communications, or Speech as it is commonly known in the college world. The teacher is the same guy who taught my Business Writing class last semester, and he's a cool guy, but he's extremely tough as a teacher. He explained the syllabus, and it seemed like he was winding down so we could leave. But then he said that he wanted us to give an "ice-breaker" speech. So we got into groups and were told to give a 2-3 minute speech on a current event not related to golf or sports in general. We were given 30 mins to do so. I partnered up with the girl who's been in my classes, and that was a bad choice. We went to the computer lab to find an article to do our speech on, and she just sat on facebook and texted her boyfriend the whole time. So I found an article, figured out what I was gonna say, and just left her there to do whatever she wanted to do. When it got closer to our time to give the speech, she started freaking out about how I wasn't helping her and how we weren't given enough time to prepare and blah blah blah. I just laughed and told her tough luck. I gave my part of the speech and she crashed and burned. I enjoyed it. While I didn't appreciate having to give an improv speech on the first day of class, I appreciated watching this girl struggle.

Wednesday consisted of Sales, Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing class with a teacher who I'd never seen before. He seems pretty cool, so we'll see how that goes. And then later in the day I had Golf Facility Management with one of the Pro's who I'd seen around the building and he seems like a really cool guy. Thursday consisted of History of Golf 2, just a continuation of the history class I took last semester, and Short Game 2, again, a continuation of Short Game 1 we took last semester. And Friday consisted of Club Fitting/Repair Marketing with our club repair guru, and then Planning and Organization of Tournament Golf with our British Pro who played on the European Tour. We didn't have class on Monday, but I have Calligraphy class on Mondays.

Having gone to all these classes once (minus Calligraphy), I am really excited about this semester. Last semester was basically getting the general ed classes out of the way, but now we're really getting into things that I'll be doing in my golf career. Learning how to fit people to their golf equipment is a huge money-maker, and I've always wanted to know how to do those things. Planning and Organization of Tournament Golf will be enjoyable, too. The teacher basically sat there and interacted with us, if we had questions about the tournaments or the courses we play, he answered them. He told us that we'll be in charge or marking the golf courses we play for tournaments. That means we'll be spray painting the water hazard lines, out of bounds lines, drop zones, ground under repair, etc. He said that the First Assistant Professional at a given golf club is usually responsible for marking the golf course before any club tournaments, so we need to know how to do it correctly. We'll also be working on the tournament committees for our golf academy tournaments. Each Tour plays at a different course, so there's 3 students and one pro at each course running the committee. Each player has to check in with the committee 30 mins before their tee time to get their scorecard, get a local rules sheet, and sign in. So I'll be sitting out one tournament this semester so I can work on a committee.

We were also informed that the academy graduated 126 students in December, the largest graduating class of any campus ever. But we only had 70 students start their first semester this week. This is a common occurence, simply because the majority of students start in the fall, not the spring or summer. But the 56 student loss means that we don't have 10 Tours this semester for our tournaments. So now we're down to 9 Tours, which is good. Also, more than 50% of the graduating class had a handicap of 2.0 or lower, which is amazing. So that means that there is more oppurtunity for me to move up in the tours if I keep lowering my handicap, because there are a lot less people with lower handicaps in front of me. So I'm excited about that.

I think I've rambled on enough for this post, if I left anything out that you wanna know about just let me know.