Come Holy Spirit

On Tuesday, Rockhurst had the annual mass of the Holy Spirit on Tuesday September 11^th. This year it just so happened to coincide with the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. It is the one time a year when President Father Curran cancels classes so that everyone who wants to can attend the mass. Plus as an added incentive for attending the mass, (as if anyone needed one) there is a free lunch after the mass. It was a really nice mass bringing together staff, faculty, students, alumni and Regents. The mass was held at St. Francis across the street where the student mass is on a weekly basis. All the Jesuits who reside in the Jesuit residents and were able to came to concelebrate at the mass. We also had a special visitor; the President of St. Louis University came in for the mass. Mass of the Holy Spirit is one of the events celebrated at every one of the Jesuit colleges and universities to celebrate the start of a new school year.

                The music was awesome. The Rockhurst choir did the music. The choir is composed of students, staff and faculty members. I really enjoyed the selection of music that the choir sang. The homily was also really nice. All around it was a great liturgy and a celebration of the Holy Spirit.

                Unfortunately I had class starting shortly after mass so I was not able to stay around for much of the lunch. One of my personal philosophies is that as a college student you never pass up the opportunity for a free meal. College students will wait in long lines for free food.  It was a good lunch of fried chicken, vegetables and baked beans.

                Last week started my first round of exams. I had a quiz and an exam last week and next week I will have a few more. It is crazy to think about that it is already time to have exams. One of my interests is studying poverty and with the new poverty numbers that came out this week. I want to end with this quote: 

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”-Mother Teresa

Well last weekend was Labor Day weekend. Hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day weekend and their last big parties of the summer. Additionally, I hope that it has been a great summer for everyone.  My labor day weekend was spent doing homework for the most part. For a lot of Rockhurst students Labor Day weekend serves as a time to go back home enjoy some home cooked food and get whatever they forgot to get before they moved in. Now that Labor Day has passed it is time to buckle down and get to work with classes for the next month and a week till fall break which is the midpoint of the semester. I am taking 18 hours this semester so it is sure to be a busy semester for me. My classes are pretty reading intensive this semester. My classes include two intermediate accounting classes, Developing worlds economics class, Community Engagement (nonprofit class), Finance, and Management and Organizational Behavior class. All my professors are really good and my classes are really interesting. So I am sure it will be a challenging but interesting semester.

        Over labor day weekend the campus got a lot of rain which was much needed in the Kansas City area. It was a good motivator to get homework done also because it was not tempting to go outside. Additionally I spent Saturday morning enjoying the Notre Dame football win from Ireland. They played Navy over in Ireland. I am a big Notre Dame football fan and so it was great to see a Notre Dame football victory. Hopefully Notre Dame will keep the winning up. I am probably going to go to one of their football games while I will be home for fall break in October.

“Have a bias toward action - let's see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Start of my Junior Year

I cannot believe that I am over half way done with my undergraduate education. Last week I finished up the work for my summer practicum class for the nonprofit program. The class was to go along with the internship that I did this summer at Northern Illinois Food Bank in Geneva, Illinois. I interned there for over 450 hours this summer. For the class I had to do a presentation to my peers in the nonprofit leadership program here as well as write weekly journal entries. My tasks included grant writing, volunteer recruitment, coordination and appreciation. In addition this summer our family went on a family vacation to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. While we were there it was very nice weather and we hit all four of the theme parks as well as downtown Disney and one of the water parks (which I was not very impressed with to be completely honest). I must admit staying on Disney property but not in a Disney hotel is the way to go because of the free transportation. Going early in the summer was nice too because the parks were not as crowded as they are as it gets later into the summer.

                Additionally this summer I went to my cousins wedding up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was fun because the rehearsal dinner was at the Milwaukee Brewers stadium. It was a great weekend to catch up with my extended family.

                Anyway now back to Rockhurst where I am at now. For those of you who are just starting to ready my blog welcome! Thank you for your readership. I hope you enjoy my weekly blog which will focus on the happenings of my life and the student life around Rockhurst University. This year Rockhurst welcomed their biggest freshman class in the history of over 450 students.

                I am Josh, a junior at Rockhurst University studying nonprofit leadership studies and accounting. This year I am a Desk Manager in XL hall, a Supplemental Instructor for accounting and I am involved in various activities such as a small faith sharing group, the HSOM Social Entrepreneurship Initiative and more. Finally, I am from Naperville, Illinois (outside of Chicago).  Have a great week. I will be posting again soon about my life at Rockhurst.

This is me and my two sisters. Hannah is on the left and Bethany on the right.  

Northern Illinois Food Bank... best internship ever

Hi Everyone,

Sorry it has been so busy for me these last few weeks. I have put in over 350 hours so far this summer with my summer internship. My internship is with a food bank which is a member of Feeding America. The food bank I am doing my internship is Northern Illinois Food Bank which is headquartered in Geneva, Illinois. They help to feed 61,600 people a week in the 13 counties surrounding cook country (Chicago). In the fiscal year ending June 30th we moved over 40.8 million pounds of food last year.

I have done a little bit of everything for them. To be continued

Sorry for the Delay...

Hi All,

I want to apologize for not blogging more consistently this summer. It has been a crazy summer for me so far.  It is hard to believe I have to be back at Rockhurst in just over a month for Residence Life training before all the students come back to campus. This will be my second year being on the Residence Life staff at Rockhurst.

Part of the reason I have been so busy this summer is that my family took a five day vacation to Disney world a few weeks ago. It was an awesome time and the weather was over all pretty good. It did rain more than it normally does down in Orlando but that did not really stop us. Over the short period of time we were in the parks my family visited all 4 theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios) as well as one of the Disney water parks.

There is just something magical (not to sound cheesy) about being down in Orlando. When you walk down main street at the Magic Kingdom you suddenly forget about the outside world and just see the magic all around you. Thanks to my sisters encouragement I went a lot more of the Disney Roller-Coaster type rides this time. Disney's roller-coasters are not that bad at all. 


It was fun to spend the quality time with my sisters. One night my sisters and I stayed at the parks later than my parents did. It was fun running though the park with them hopping on whatever ride had the shortest wait (including the little kid roller-coaster which lasted less than a minute).


One of my favorite parks has always been and continues to be Epcot. There is one ride that takes you on a tour through all this research Disney is doing on growing different types of fruits and vegetables. So they have their own green house inside the park and even use what they grow at the restaurants in the park. Also at Epcot my sisters and I had our picture taken with Mary Poppins (I will have to find the picture and post it next time). 


A final thought on Disney we stayed for the fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom one night. The extensive fireworks show is amazing. What even makes it more amazing is to think that they do it day after day to ensure that all their visitors can have the same magical experience.

Here are two good quotes by Walt Disney: "I don't want the public to see the world they live in while they're in the Park (Disney Parks). I want to feel they're in another world."


"You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality."

It has been too LONG

Hi All,

Sorry for the month since I have blogged last. It has been a fun but crazy last month. Looking back it is hard to believe all the things I have done over the last month. In the last month I finished all my classes and finals. (which all went very good). Additionally I said bye to all my friends at Rockhurst, helped to close down all the residence halls for the summer, hung out for a few days at Rockhurst when it was just the Residence Life staff and the seniors there, and then had an awesome end of the year celebration at Dave and Busters with the Residence Life Staff. Finally after our Res Life party we came back and had mass in the Jesuit Residence and got a tour of it! So that was pretty awesome.

Through that crazy week I had been trying to pack myself up because they day after we moved the seniors out we had to move out. One of the best parts was that last night a much of us stayed up and watched Sawshank redempttion (which is awesome movie). It was just a fun evening though because a bunch of us all just hung out and had fun enjoying the movie and enjoying the friendships we had made with eachother over the last year.

The next morning after only 4 hours of sleep or so I got up and drove 8 hours back to home sweet home Naperville (the bubble as the local kids call it sometimes).

Some of my friends are staying at Rockhurst this summer and working in the Office of Residence Life as Conference Assistants. Basically what they do is help to get the campus ready for various conferences that come over the summer. There was a Mensch Management Business Camp that one of my friends participated in and she really liked it. It is designed for non-business majors or want a quick taste of the business world which can be benefical in whatever field they major in.

Here is picture of the Residence Life staff at our party!

Final Weekends

Hi all,

Hope everyone had a good week. The end of the school year is drawing closer and closer. This past week we had our swearing in of the new Student Senators for the 2012-2013 school year, the Honors student association had our officer transition meeting and yesterday the Residence Life staff for the 2012-2013 school year had their first full staff meeting with all the new Resident Assistants and Desk Managers. It was also a week of realization I think for the seniors as classes are basically over and now we only had two days of classes then finals left. This weekend is the annual Rockstock concert put on by the Student Activities Board every year and then this Wednesday is Student Senate’s Annual midnight breakfast.

            This past Thursday night was Student Senate’s annual BINGO. I will have to admit I have never seen more college students playing BINGO together in one place before. The grand prize for the final black out round of BINGO was an IPAD. Prizes for the other rounds included a 32 inch LCD TV, game system and other great prizes. It is really an awesome event put on by student senate the brings the student body together as one. After the concerts and maybe the midnight breakfasts it is probably the largest gathering of Rockhurst Students in one place.

            This week will be an exciting but stressful week around campus I am sure. Last year I really enjoyed the last few weeks of the year, it seems like everyone is just happy even as finals are on everyone’s mind and in an odd way the common stress of finals really brings the campus together I feel like.

            Finally the wacky Kansas City weather continues it was 90 one day earlier this week and yesterday the high was around 60 degrees. Hopefully there will be some nice weather in store for us this final week.

Hope everyone has a great week and as always thanks for reading!