Lady Gaga has been most famously noted for her zany pop and out of this world outfits that have made her an icon. Since her 2013 album “Artpop,” Gaga has moved on from this cliche and has matured her craft with her most recent album “Joanne.” Gaga channels her spirituality and passion with her music, creating compositions, ranging from country to RnB, that truly encapsulate the talent and excellence of her most recent album.

She opens up her masterpiece with “Diamond Heart,” which mixes acoustic guitar and fast-paced drumming, starts as a country piece but soon turns pop. The catchy chorus drops at the most perfect time in the song, making the transition smooth. The strength of Gaga’s vocals and rock background are a great way to start her album and gives listeners a positive taste to progress through the album.

If “A-Yo” had to be categorized, it would be country-rock. Throughout this song, Gaga drags out her vocals to be synchronized to the fast paced rock beats of her guitar. This track is perfect if you are having a night out at a local bar.

In “Joanne,” Gaga channels Dolly Parton during the early stages of her career. The song provides an intimate setting for this track to be played. This personal ode to her aunt who had passed away before Gaga was born touches listeners personally whether or not they have dealt with a personal loss. Her vocals weave smoothly throughout the song, providing a beautiful chorus that is the most noteworthy part.

Lady Gaga’s collaboration with Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine opens a new chapter for both artists in the RnB-rooted song. The song is conversational as if both artists are discussing love with one another. Though both singers rip each other over the loss of their love, Gaga and Welch make it easy to sing and dance to this song.

Death and transition could be described as the main topic of this album, especially for “Angel Down.” The organ background and Gaga’s references to angels provides a whimsical background and a sense of sadness in this song. Gaga discusses the death of her aunt further as the angel who was shot down due to her death. Usually, Gaga hardly discusses spirituality in her music. But this is the first time, as listeners we are seeing Gaga in a new light.

“Joanne” is one of Gaga’s best works yet. This album shows her versatility as an artist as she experiments with many different genres. Her range of vocals and choruses show her maturity as an artist and they humanize her when discussing death and spirituality. Every minute of listening to this hour-long album is truly worth it.

The post Lady Gaga moves on from cliche pop appeared first on The Retriever.

A new REX guided report has been developed to compare enrollment capacity for a term to the same term in the prior year.  Some of the questions you can answer  ...

• How do our seat counts for the selected term compare to the prior year? Are we offering more or fewer seats?

• How do our section counts for the selected term compare to the prior year? Are we offering more or fewer sections?

• How much did course enrollment capacity change the prior year between advance registration and begin term census (BTC aka Day 10)?

The report can be found in

Home > Curriculum Management > Course > Course Enrollment Capacity Comparison to Prior Year

Hey all my Future Retrievers!

Happy November! Believe it or not, we have a few visit opportunities left for those of you who are still deciding if UMBC could be your home for college!

This coming Monday, November 7th, is our last Retriever Day of the fall. This is a great opportunity for potential students to see what our amazing university has to offer. You can meet with students, faculty, and staff from all over campus and learn more about our community!

UMBC will also host a Transfer Open House on Friday, November 18th. This is a great time for all of our transfer applicants and prospective transfer applicants to come to campus and get a feel for what life is like as a transfer student at UMBC. Learn about the transition and social atmosphere on campus, the academic offerings provided, and the support around campus to assist you in succeeding and achieving in a major way!

Make sure to register to attend on our website.

See you all soon!

ED

As host Chris Trew announced before the event started, “This is not the dry humping championship – that show would be lame as fuck” and he was right. The first annual Baltimore Air Sex Championship was not at all lame. Air sex is an art and is something that takes years of intensive and rigorous training to master… or not.

Air sex has been around for a while, touring the U.S. and culminating in a national final championship, this year in Dallas. This season however, was Baltimore’s first time hosting a regional championship and sending a contestant to the finals.

At the Ottobar, contestants, both seasoned veterans and first-timers, gave it and took it (to and from imaginary partners – sometimes multiple at once) all night in front of a panel of judges comprised of Baltimore comedians.

While some of the contestants have competed in air sex before and seemed to be practiced at pretending to have sex with themselves, for others this was a last minute decision and they jumped up on stage without a thought and began humping the air to their hearts’ content.

Runner-up Jason Steinberg created his air sex character as part of the Charm City Comedy Project. While he came in second, he gave a great first performance where he pulled a seemingly infinite partners out of thin air.

The contestant that came in third, Magic Mike, gave a great first performance culminating into what judge and host of the Laughfinder podcast, Tommy Sinbazo described as a “seizure of semen.”  Magic Mike brought a lot of energy and was giving a great performance until he quit in the final round, jumped off the stage and just started dancing in a puddle of spilled beer in the middle of the audience.

The winner of the Baltimore air sex competition and the only woman competing in the contest, Queef Pantry, put on a bizarre but captivating performance to Shania Twain’s “I Feel Like a Woman.” It was obvious that there was a lot of thought put into this performance, one that added a new level to air sex and showed the men of the competition all of the hard work that woman put in before giving their air partners some air lovin’.

She put on an outfit, put on some lipstick, some makeup… and then a clown wig – and not only on her head… The trench coat came off, revealing a skin tight leather outfit, the whip came out and the crazy clown air sex commenced. This performance made her a shoo-in for the finals and her air fellatio in the final, audience judged round is what won her ticket to the finals in Dallas (as well as a gift card to Hampden’s premier sex shop, Sugar).

Overall the night was a fantastic time and all of the contestants gave enamored performances that left them exhausted, their imaginary partners satisfied and all kinds of imaginary fluids on the stage for the air janitorial staff to clean up.

Here’s to hoping that we see Air Sex in Baltimore again next year as it it a fantastic addition to our city that we should look upon proudly.

The post Air Sex Champs thrust their way into Baltimore appeared first on The Retriever.

Jess Willis took eight classes during a seven-period day by staying after school at Calvert High. She had a habit of completing projects a month before the deadline. She is now a first-generation college student.

“Growing up, it was always assumed that I was going to college,” said Willis, a senior linguistics major. “My dad had saved up his whole life. That was him dream: that his kids would get a degree.”

Willis began looking at colleges in eighth grade. After searching online, she made UMBC her top pick due to its size, location and impressive national rankings. Thanks to her college-bound peers, she found resources and advice about the application process that her family was unable to provide. She has various positions on campus, including Resident Assistant and Tour Guide Team Lead. These jobs, combined with her scholarships, help keep her cost of education manageable.

As Team Lead, Willis serves as an ambassador of the school for prospective students, and supervises her fellow Tour Guides in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Willis applied to be a Tour Guide at the end of her first year. Once she started giving tours, she came to realize her love for UMBC and for interacting with prospective students and their families.

“[There are] definitely days where I leave the office or leave giving a tour and feel really fulfilled,” she said. “I think you could ask anybody and they would feel the same way.”

Her dedication does not go unnoticed. “Jess is an exceptional leader, student, and employee,” said Lisa Romeo, Campus Visit and Experience Coordinator in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. “We feel very lucky to have her working in this office and we are continuously impressed by the work that she does.”

Despite the guidance she provides to other students, Willis wasn’t always sure of her path. When she first arrived at UMBC, she wanted to be a music major. After realizing she was not interested in spending “the rest of her life” in a practice room, she switched to a French major with an education certificate. As is required for all MLLI majors, she enrolled in MLL 190, an introductory linguistics course. All it took was one course to find her passion. Willis has been a happy linguistics major ever since.

Since the switch, she’s gotten heavily involved with her academic discipline. She assisted Linguistics and French Professor Thomas Field, Ph.D with his research last year by verb tagging a body of text in Gaskin, an ancient French language.

“The combination that she demonstrates of high intellectual ability, conscientiousness and meticulousness suggest to me that she has an extremely bright future ahead of her,” said Field.

Outside of UMBC, she has an internship in Natural Language Processing at redShred, located in bwTech. The company is owned by Jim Kukla, a professor of computer science at UMBC, and his wife, Jeehye Yun. In her position, Willis trains a federal grant search engine to provide relevant and helpful answers to queries. She heard about the position through Caroline Davis, a UMBC alumnae and redShred Project Manager.

“Jess works independently and is eager to apply her class knowledge to our work,” said Davis.

However, now the research is in her own hands. Willis is writing her departmental honors thesis about the pragmatics of verbal and emotional abuse. She gathers samples through informants and analyzes them in various ways. She hopes that, beyond the thesis itself, the research will convey that an outside observer cannot determine if someone is being verbally abused because it is very much determined by the context of a situation. As she cares deeply about this topic, she hopes that her work may help to validate others who feel they may be a survivor of abuse.

Outside of academics, Willis is an avid outdoorswoman. She enjoys hiking and kayaking in nearby Patapsco State Park and elsewhere. Her outdoor adventures provide a release when schoolwork becomes overwhelming. She also enjoys painting, and has received pointers from her mother, an artist.

The post First generation college student is destined for success appeared first on The Retriever.