Work and My Address

Well work has been crazy. In 3 days I worked 33 hours. We all had been working too much so today we had a half day. The pay period ends today and I earned 39.5 hours.
Thus far my duties have included: spot spraying weeds in pine straw beds, mowing greens, mowing tees, walk mowing a fairway, mowing "2 pass" around the greens, spreading "starter" fertilizer around greens, and blowing grass clippings from the rough.
Yesterday as I was mowing the fairway, I spotted a disease, I think it was yellow patch, the boss said it is fusarium blight or pink snow mold. This was the first time I felt like my education was worth while.

My new address is: 1910 Sharon Oaks Lane Apt #304 Charlotte, North Carolina 28210

Home Sweet Home

I made it to Charlotte, NC at 12:30 this afternoon. I am living with Mike Stanton, one of the guys I went to Rutgers with. We live about one mile from the golf course in a really nice three bedroom apartment. I will be sharing a room with another guy, but for the time being I have my own room. We (Mike and I) start work tomorrow morning. The trip down from New Jersey to North Carolina was fairly uneventful. It was interesting to see the evidence of spring as I drove further south. Here in Charlotte some of the trees have bloomed, but for the most part the trees remain dormant. It is currently raining, but it is a nice, warm, spring rain.

Nice television, probably at least 32"

Nice kitchen, stocked with everything??? well at least a fridge full of beer...
Shared bedroom, my roommate is not here yet

Nice walk-in closet

Bathroom

Turf School Day Forty-Seven a.k.a FINALS WEEK-Day Four and Closing Celebration

Today was our last day of turf school. We had our construction, surveying, and soils exams. I feel that my studying last night and discussing concepts with Jeff paid off and I understood all the material we covered.

After our finals we had a luncheon and sat around talking and saying our farewells. It is going to be an exciting summer and it is going to be good to get together again in a year to discuss our various work experiences.

I am now headed off to Covington, Va!!!

I will post my grades as soon as I know how I did.

Turf School Day Forty-Six a.k.a FINALS WEEK-Day Three

This morning we had our finals for both our tree identification class and our weed management class. On the tree id portion of the exam I missed one tree out of ten. I think I did alright on the written portion of the tree class.
The weed identification was another story. The test had 20 true or false questions, but if the statement was false we had to correct it and make it read true. I think I did fine on this exam as well, but only time will tell.

Tomorrow I will not have a chance to blog, but we have a final in our construction and surveying class followed by a final for our soils class. After our finals we will be having a little luncheon and then I will be heading to Covington, Va to stay with a family from my mission. I am planning on staying Friday and Saturday night, then attending church on Sunday and heading down to Charlotte, NC after church.

Thank you everyone for following me through my adventure at Rutgers. More posts will follow when I arrive in Charlotte

Turf School Day Forty-Five a.k.a FINALS WEEK-Day Two

Day two of finals week went fairly well. I focused most of my time and attention on the material for our Pest Management class and did VERY well on the exam. I woke up early this morning to get some study time for the other exams we were going to have. I felt good about the information for our irrigation final and we had a review before the exam which really helped. I then looked over the material for our landscape management final and our plant hormone final.
You would think that having a major in landscape management the class would be really easy, but i have my worst grades in that class. The teacher asks true and false questions that could be both true and false. Then he grades them and does not give them back to us to look over, so I do not have the opportunity to argue my answers. At the beginning of the year he was my favorite teacher, but now he is my least favorite teacher. After our landscape management final we were given our plant hormone final. I have no idea how I did on this test either. I tried to learn the material, but what I comprehended from the powerpoint slides we were given was very different from the test.

Results from day two: 2 A's and 2 B or C's

Turf School Day Forty-Four a.k.a FINALS WEEK-Day One

Today was our first day of finals. We had our turfgrass management final and our turfgrass disease final. They were both relatively easy thanks to my knowledge and the study guide I put together.
My predictions for today's exams: two A's.

Now I am back to studying for more tests tomorrow.

Turf School Day Forty-Three and Quick Trip to Michigan

Friday was our last day of classes. It was a great last day. We had 2 quizzes, and the day was cut short due to rain.

After class I went to the airport to fly to Michigan to surprise my sister, Christina, as a belated birthday gift and for Kyla's baby blessing.

It was a great trip and the baby is precious!!! I had a great time with my family, and can't wait until we all can get together again.

Turf School Day Forty-Two

We started out our day with a landscape plants class. We learned about some shrubs that can be added to the landscape that will be easy to maintain and add beauty to the site.
We then had our weed management class. In groups of two, our whole class gave short presentations about herbicides and their uses. It took the entire class to give the presentations and I do not think we got graded or will receive a grade for the presentation. I wish we would have received a grade, it is one of my worst classes and we only have a quiz and a final. Hopefully I can improve my grade through my final exam grade.
About half of our class took off at lunch time, because they did not want to have to sit through another botany lecture with Dr. Tom. His lectures are very boring, but today we had a review for the final. It made it worth the boredom.

Turf School Day Forty-One

We started our day with our botany final. The final was scheduled for next wednesday, but we were supposed to take all the tests (3) for the classes taught by that instructor in a 2 hour time period. We discussed it with him during class and he told us we could vote on taking the final early and we did. I think I did fairly well on the exam. Since I have been here at Rutgers I have really been working hard to get good grades, and it is aggravating when I screw up. I was talking with a friend about it, he is probably the top student, and he told me he treated class like a contest against himself. He wanted to exceed his expectations all the time.
After our botany final we had a landacape management class in which we discussed planting trees and making planting beds. We also discussed proper pruning techniques and why pruning trees is necessary.
Our last class was an irrigation presentation put on by a TORO supplier. He came down from Long Island and taught us about how a sprinkler works. It was interesting to see cut-away sprinklers to see exactly how the pressure changes in the head to both turn on and off the water.

Turf School Day Forty

We started out our day with another botany class. This was not the boring class about hormones, it was about the plants ability to survive through stressful times.
We had another final today, this time in our disease laboratory. I did well, I think I only missed one question. I might get the question marked right because they do not grade too strictly and the answer was about 80% correct.
We ended our regular day with a turf maintenance class. We talked about the use of growth regulators, which is the same thing that we talk about in our "boring" botany class, but when we are learning why and how to use growth regulators, it is a much more interesting subject.
After class I stayed to listen to some of the "Regional Concern" speeches that were given after class. We are now finished with our extended days to make up for our snow days. The speeches went well for the entire class. It is interesting to see how nervous individuals get when they have to speak in front of other people.
Three days of classes left, one more final (wed) before FINALS WEEK!

Turf School Day Thirty-Nine

Monday is the day we have two big quizzes for our disease and pest management classes. Those quizzes are in the classes that sandwhich our lunch hour. So whatever class we have Monday morning, is usually used as a study session for the first quiz.
Today that happened to be boring botany, learning about hormones and plant growth regulators. We will be having a quiz soon, so I need to go through the material and teach myself everything we have been taught about in class. The teacher is just very monotone and he uses the laser pointer way too much.
In our pest management class our quiz covered biorational/botanical insecticides. Basically trying to choose pesticides that will be effective, but will not harm the environment. Afer our quiz we had a discussion on disease diagnostics. It was a basic review of the entire year and helped me to see how much I have actually learned. It is interesting going back and looking at presentations we had in the first weeks, and remembering how nothing made sense to me. Now about 99% of the information makes sense.
In turf diseases our quiz was rather unexpected. The teacher gave us our review material about a week ago, so we had past quizzes, and so I prepared a list of possible questions, and the quiz was completely different. Our lecture covered rusts, smuts, molds, and mildews.
Today was the last lecture for both pest management and turf diseases. A lot of my class mates are glad the classes are over becasue they were hard and they did not like the professor, but I thought they were two of the most important classes we will have in this program.

Trip to Philadelphia

Saturday we (two friends and I) decided to go to Philadelphia. I wanted to see some of the sights and eat a cheesesteak. We ventured out about 60 miles from our apartment to Geno's for lunch.
After lunch, we walked down to Liberty Hall to see the Liberty Bell, I wanted to go inside liberty hall to see where the Decleration of Independence was signed, but a ticket was required and they were all out of tickets when we arrived.
After strolling around the Liberty Hall, we walked down to the Delaware River. WE walked around for about 3 hours down town and then decided to drive to see the Rocky statue. We got the address from a tourist magazine, and the city is built in a grid system, so I figured it would be easy to find the statue. Unfortuantely, we got to a few dead ends, and had a crazy time trying to find the building. After much "recalculating" we arrived at the Art Museum where the famous stairs are. The statue used to be at the top of the stairs, but now it is near the road and the sidewalk.
It was a really fun trip. It was neat to see all the old building and imagine what took place in Philadelphia hundreds of years ago.
Walking through the streets of Philadelphia reminded me of the scenes from the movie Invincible. All the streets we went down had houses just like the movie.

Turf School Day Thirty-Eight

FRIDAY!!!!
We had our landscape management class again today. We learned about the proper way to plant trees. The class was good, the information was useful. The one thing that I do not quite understand about this program is the way everything is scheduled. We will have the same class a few times a week then we will not have the class again for a week. It makes it hard to stay organized and on top of all the information.
After out landscape management class we had another FINAL!!!! Today our final was on mowing and calibration- both dry and sprayer spreaders.
Our day ended with two soils classes. We learned about the purpose for the USGA spec greens, and about soil and water relations. It was a lot of talk about soil and I am glad that we only have one week left.
We are going to Philadelphia tomorrow. I am pretty excited to see some of the historical sites and eat a real cheese steak.

Turf School Day Thirty-Seven

Today we had our landscape plants and weed management classes. We learned 7 or 8 new trees and discussed application of post emergent herbicides. The two classes were pretty boring. I enjoy learning about trees, but the teacher is not very exciting.
We ended our day with a botany class. We discussed how water moves through a plant.
My idea for a class study sheet was a big hit. Everyone was assigned two questions and I am going to put all the answers together and re-distribute the list out.

Turf School Day Thirty-Six

Today was great. We have a disease lab where we look for diseases through microscopes and learn more about the diseases we were taught in our turf disease class. Because the number of microscopes we have for class is limited, the class is split into two groups. My group had the early session so after our early class, we took a 2.5 hour lunch before our next class. It was nice to go home, watch some tv, and have a nice lunch.
After lunch we returned to school and had a class on landscape management. We took a quiz in this class and it was weird. The quiz had 20 questions and we were to use a 28 word-word bank to answer the questions. The words in the word bank were very different than the words i would have used to describe each situation, so it took me a little while to do the quiz. Luckily I only missed one question. While the teacher was going over the quiz, he would basically accept any answer. So I do not know why we were even given a quiz if every answer was the right one.
After class I invited a classmate and his wife over for dinner. It was the guys birthday and his first birthday away from home. I remember my first birthday away from all my family on my mission, so I wanted to make this a good day for him. We had cubed steak, mashed potatoes, and english peas.
When dinner was over I made a study guide for our turf disease final. OUr teacher gave us a pdf that was about 143 pages that we were supposed to use to prepare for the turf disease and pest management classes. I read through the past test he included and made one single copy for our class. Hopefully everyone will work to get it filled out and we can all do well on our final exam.

Turf School Day Thirty-Five

Today we had a test in every class. This usually is not that big of a deal, but due to weather we had four classes today instead of three. It does not seem like that big of a deal to have an extra class added onto our day, but it has not been really fun.
Our first class was turfgrass maintenance. We had a quiz covering three chapters from our textbook. The quiz was worth 30% of our final grade. It was not a terribly difficult quiz, but when coupled with all of our other quizzes it was just added to the madness.
Our next class was pest management. We had a quiz covering 14 insecticide classes, and it was a combination with our last class about fungicide classes. After our quiz we talked about least toxic approaches to managing pests.
After lunch we had our turfgrass disease quiz. The quiz covered both anthracnose and dollar spot. After our qiuz, we learned about gray leaf spot and other leaf spots. Our teacher is a big time cyclist, so we rushed through our material so he could go out for a ride. It was a nice afternoon, so we all understood. We also discussed that we should allow him to do what ever he wanted so that he would be in a good mood while grading our quizzes.
Ou day ended at about 4:30 with a math final. There were a lot of people who were worried about our final, but it was open book and I am pretty sure that I did AWESOME!!!!
Everyday we get closer to finishing and I get more excited and nervous about the summer.

Turf School Day Thirty-Four

We began our week with an irrigation class. The class covered central computers, which control the irrigation system. We discussed improvements that have come about as a result of new technology.
We then had two calibration classes. One class covered fertilizer spreader calibration and the second covered sprayer calibration. These classes were basically review from our previous math classes.
We ended our extended day with a class on bunker construction. We will have 5 more "extended" days due to recent storms. So instead of getting out of class at 3:00 we are getting out at 4:45 or 5:00.
School is going good and I am glad it will all be over soon.