“I Smell Like Coffee and Fear.”

Hi – I’m Brittney, and I manage our New Student Welcome Center at UT Arlington. I get the most awesome privilege of working with our MavElite – the campus tour guides and telecounselors that help us in recruiting new Mavericks to UTA. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it – and I’m glad that it’s me. Over the next months, I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know some of our MavElite members through their blogs! They’re incredibly talented and fun people and really showcase one thing that UTA is all about – individuality.

So, everyone has come back from Thanksgiving, and finals season is upon us! My newsfeed on Facebook is filled with statuses about sleeping in the library or writing those last few papers before the end of the semester. I’m always reminded at this time of year of the quote I titled this post with, spoken by me moments before my Astronomy final exam several years ago. Needless to say, I never became an astronomer – I was right to be scared. But it’s fun to relive the days of cramming with your friends until 3AM (although there tends to be more conversation about other topics that the one that really matters – your coursework), making repeated coffee runs until the Starbucks barista learns your name (and your order), and doing last minute calculations of what you have to make on the final to get a passing grade in the class (sorry, Mom and Dad).

If you haven’t come before to visit the UT Arlington campus, come out and see us. We do daily campus tours every Monday through Friday at 9AM, 10AM, 1PM, and 2PM – although we’ll be limiting our tour times to 10AM and 2PM starting on December 7th to honor our very stressed out tour guides’ studying schedules.

To register for a tour, visit us online at www.uta.edu/admissions/visit. Maybe you’ll bump into some of those students on their way to a final while you’re here. Hopefully, you’ll be able to smell hope or dominance in the air instead.