The Saint Michael's College Bloggers Facebook Group has been busy. Check it out here!

Conor and Maria and I have been working hard to create a replacement for the old, and busted, message board.

The technology just got too old and there were too many bugs with it. Plus we were limited by what we could do. It was really just posting text and discussion threads.

The new Parent Network has a bunch of neat functions. We still have a function similar to the message board in the "forum". We can now post images, link to the blogs, post news clips, and create real connections between prospective parents, parents of current students, and admission reps. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get some of our Saint Michael's College Bloggers on there as well.

I think it's going to be a great tool to help parents get through the confusing admission process and provide insight into the Saint Michael's College experience through the eyes of a parent of a current student.

Here's the link: http://www.smcvt.edu/prospectiveparents

Check it out. Log on and have fun with it!

Burlington was featured in the NY Times Travel section. Check out the story here.

I'm still cleaning up from my travels over the last couple of months, and I found this photograph from the first week of travel.

I stopped at Cafe Beignet in Scranton, PA for breakfast and it's an absolute must if you find yourself in the home of "the Office."



The beignet were awesome and the coffee was great as well. I was most impressed with their commitment to MSSC, the Milk Saving Starving Children Foundation. All of their profits go to MSSC which provides milk to starving children around the world. Great food and great coffee and supporting a good cause.

I'm not even going to bother to apologize for not writing in such a long time. It would be nothing but a lame excuse. I've just been lame. I played around with my template and went for something a little less boring and, well, blah. I'm sure it will help to keep the creative waters running.

So, there's been a couple of new developments over here. For one, I'm here., off the road and back in the 802 & psyched.

It's been the first full week of coaching the swim team, and so far that's been great. We have our first home meet of the season this Saturday and i'm very much looking forward to it.

We rolled out the first meet the bloggers email and will have a couple of surprises coming soon as well. The Bloggers are all up on the page (www.smcvt.edu/blogs) and writing some great stuff. My next goal is to help people connect with them on the Saint MCiahel's College Bloggers Facebook group.

If anyone out there has questions that they'd like to ask or comments, the Bloggers Group would be a great place for that.

That's about it from me here. For the first time in a long time, I'm totally unpacked and all my materials are put away. I can see the carpet in my office and I can almost see my desk! I haven't seen either since I moved into this space!


Oh, and in celebration of Halloween, totally rocking my orange Halloween socks!


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Now playing: Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
via FoxyTunes

The battle with writer's block continues. Perhaps it's the 5 weeks of hotels, rental cars, and airplanes that is inhibiting my creativity? Whatever it is, I've got some content to create for some admission office emails and need to get the juices flowing. Blog, please help me out.

I'm driving around in a Prius for the next two weeks. I feel very pretentious and am enjoying looking down on all those people who are killing the environment with their traditional cars. For a car that is so revolutionary and marketed, the interior stinks. There's an obnoxious beep that turns on when you put it into reverse. The radio controls are on a touch screen which is cool, except there's an area on the dashboard that looks like a radio should be there. In fact it is there, it's just covered up by a tinted piece of plastic. Forget the touch screen, just put the radio controls where they belong. My only other complaint is that the seat is killing my back. It's like having a seat with lumbar support and having that lumbar support cranked all the way up. Maybe some people don't mind that, but my back is feeling it and it's only been two days.

Just found out that F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in Rockville, MD, not far from here. He's one of my favorite authors and I definitely plan on visiting and paying homage when I get some down time.


Bought Weezer's Red Album. Awesome.

Everytime I've worn either a Red Sox or Patirots article of clothing durring one of their respective games, they've lost. No more. Sox and Pats stuff is in the closet till the off season.

Okay, I've loosened things up a bit. Time to get some work done.


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Now playing: Weezer - Troublemaker
via FoxyTunes

Some may have heard, but Dr. John Reiss was accidentally shot and killed in his home. Dave also posted about Dr. Reiss today.

I had Dr. Reiss for American Literature I my senior year at SMC. I loved that class. It wasn't only the material that we covered, but it was Dr. Reiss's dry wit that I appreciated.

I'll never forget the day that Dr. Reiss called me after one class. He recognized my enthusiasm for literature and said that he had recommended me for an Honors Irish Literature class. He said he knew I wasn't in the Honors Program at the time, but I was talented enough and had displayed such a love of literature that he thought I would enjoy it.

That Irish Lit. class was the best class I had at Saint Michael's. I loved every single class. It's one that I honestly looked forward to going to every single day.

I never thanked Dr. Reiss for that. I should have, but he retired that semester, and I would occasionally see him in the hallway from a distance, but for some reason, I just never took the time to say, "thank you."

Dr. Reiss, thank you.

I'm very excited, and a bit stressed because there is a lot happening right now on campus and specifically in the Office of Admission.

We've got our first Saint Michael's College Bloggers meeting coming up. At the end of the semester, I had about 9 or 10 students who were interested in doing it. I'm up to 12 now. Might be 13 or 14. I'm not sure how we'll handle all that, but if one of our students is excited to spread the word and share their experiences, I'm not going to turn them down.

One idea of mine is to have Saint Michael's Bloggers take on different media. I've already had someone express interest in doing a photo blog. I love www.boston.com/bigpicture. If we could do something like that, I'd be pumped. I also think it would be great to have students doing videos on YouTube. It's much more time consuming than blogging, but it's really cool if you can pull it off.

This year is going to be very much a let's see what we can do year. How many toys can we implement and it will be a very fluid year. If stuff isn't working, we'll drop it right off.

So I was walking to my car today after work (and I had plenty of time to think durring that walk now that school is in session and the employee parking lot fills quickly). Anwyay, I waas thinking about all this stuff ad my blogging and I can't help but wonder if it isn't time for me to step aside and let another staff member blog. I've certainly enjoyed it, and writing for me is an important exercise, but I am afraid that I'll get a bit stale here and keep writing about the same topics.

I think I'll throw it out there to the group and see what they think. I thin the chances are good I'll be coming to you on this same Bat-channel at this same Bat-time.

Peace,
Drew

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Now playing: Foghat - Slow Ride (Single Version)
via FoxyTunes

My name is Drew Millikin and I work in the Admission Office at Saint Michael's College.

I graduated from SMC in 2001 where I majored in Business and minored in Journalism. I grew up in Massachusetts, and after graduating, I found I couldn't leave Burlington. This has to be the best place in New England, if not the whole east coast.

Anyway, I worked for a bank for a few years. Although I eventually left, it was a great experience and I learned a lot about banking - everything from mortgages to multi-million dollar bond issues. It was pretty cool stuff. When I left, I was in a job that had me moving millions of dollars a day.

Then in 2004, I came back to campus, and it's really great being back here. I've got to admit that it was a little weird at first. Weird because so many professors remembered my name and some even remembered where I sat in their class!

It's great being back here though. I'm lucky in that I work for the college that I graduated from (and loved) and live in a state as great as Vermont!

I live in a town called Fairfax (which is about 30 minutes northeast of campus) with my wife Maria (also an '01 grad) and our two pugs,
Dewey (named after my favorite Red Sox player ever, Dewey Evans) and Rosie (she came with that name). Well, that's probably enough for today. It's at least a little introduction. Keep checking back. I'll try to post a few times a week.

Later!
Drew