Back At It...

Hi All,

Hope your month of March has been going great! Sorry for falling off the blogging sphere for a little while. As you might remember from my last post. Spring break was ended exactly one week ago today. So in the theme of "break" I decided to take a short blogging break. However, nothing to fear I am back to at it, to keep blogging through the end of the year. It is amazing I was looking at my blog count. I have almost done 100 blog entries. I find that so hard to believe.

...When people say the 4 years in college are the fastest years of your life...believe them because they are telling the truth. I am ready though. Ready to be done with college...now all I need to do is find a job. With spring break being later this year we come back from spring break and are almost at the 2/3rds mark of the semester. Crazy huh? Three weeks from now is the long Easter weekend we get then it is truly time to wrap up the semester.

Anyway, I decided to make this blog post a bit of a reflection on the past two weeks then next week I will blog about more of the happenings around Rockhurst. (Hint...A lot of exciting things are going on :) )

So, I was so blessed to get to spend my spring break with my amazing friend Lauryn. We had a blast just hanging out in Chicago and seeing the sights. Additionally, we did some interviewing for jobs and also took some time to relax. After all, it is spring break. We also got to see the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. If you have never seen it...I HIGHLY recommend it!

Then last Sunday-Monday I went down to San Antonio Texas for the International Fundraising Professionals Conference. It was a great experience and I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to cover my registration to the conference. I just had to pick up my other expenses. It was an amazing experience. Next week I can include some more information on the conference. I really enjoyed the time I got to meet people from all over the country.

Here are a few pictures from over break :)
Have a great week everyone!

Sunrise from the trip on the way there. 

Chicago Pic :)

Chicago Pic :)

1 Week Till Break........AHH!

Hi Everyone,

Happy Sunday, Happy First Sunday of Lent! Hope everyone's lent is starting out well, for those who are Catholic. For me lent is a special time and an extra special reason to do some additional self reflection and discernment.

It is super nice here today, all the snow has melted and the sun is out! :) ...just maybe we are finally out of winter. We will see if that holds to be the case.

For me this has been a really productive weekend. I have finished (at least the rough draft) of a paper I needed to do for my American Novel class. I really do enjoy reading and discussing American Novel's. I am just a slow reader so reading novels is not something I do as much as I would like to. Two of the novels we have read and discussed so far are The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. I might have mentioned before that this class is a night class so we just meet once a week for 2 hours and 40 minutes but in a way it is my fastest night class that I have had. Reading novels makes night class go really fast. When you have that long of a class you are able to have some great in depth discussions.

Last week I got two exams knocked out so that is a really great feeling. The first round of exams in every class are always the ones I feel the best about when I get them done. It is nice to finally get a substantial portion of your grade set in the grade book. I am still coming to grips with that this is my last semester... most of my classes now I only have one more round of exams left in them... the final exams (some classes I have 2 rounds). I haven't but I could probably count the number of exams I have left on one hand (pretty crazy to think about).

I am so excited for spring break too which is coming up in a week. More on that to come in the future. But for now I am off to keep plugging away at homework and go for a run enjoying this awesome day.

A great quote I found the other day was:

" “All of us have a voice. All of us deserve to be heard. All of us deserve to be okay. My wish for you is that no matter where you are in the journey, that you take one more step.”- I do not remember who said it. 

Incase we forgot what snow looks like. This was a picture from campus last month when we had the snow days. The sky looks the same. The ground doesn't though ;)

A snowy Sunday...we missed the worst

Hi Everyone,

HAPPY SUNDAY (the last sunday before lent starts in the catholic church)! To all those across the country who have bad weather today be safe and stay warm... Here at the Rock we were supposed to get 5-8 inches of snow. I think we only got like 3 inches so far here if that (I have honestly not been outside yet today). That is my snowfall estimate from my window. I know most of the snow missed us and went south.

I cannot believe the amount of snow that has fallen across the country this winter. It seems to me to be a lot worse than normal.

Anyway, this is entering the two weeks of the semester that students call midterms. Its everyone's favorite two weeks of the semester..................I hope no one believed that. It is most definitely not. Anyway, so this week I have two exams and next week I have an exam, a paper and a project due.

In the mornings (Tuesday-Friday). St. Francis has daily 7am morning mass. I have been going almost every day since I came to Rockhurst four years ago. Here is a picture of the sunrise as I was walking over there. One advantage of getting up early is that you get to see some pretty awesome sunrises and get to experience the campus in almost complete stillness. I have experienced the campus in just about complete stillness this week also when I got up at 5am to workout with my roommate on Thursday.



Also, for all you country music fans Flordia Georgia Line was in concert in Kansas City on Friday night. I did not get to see them in concert but I did get to see their tour buses and trucks on the way into work. 


Have a great week everyone! Good luck to all students who have exams this week!

The Calm Before the Storm

Hi All,

This week is the calm before the storm of midterms and projects. Some people talk about having a midterm week where all their classes have exams the same week that is not the case for me this semester nor has it ever been the case for me. I am really lucky in that regard most teachers don't want us to have them all the same week and work around when others are. For most of my classes we either have 2 or 3 exams a semester in them. I have never had a class at Rockhurst with more than 3 exams.

Also, this week weather wise we have seen all seasons I am pretty sure from 30 to 70 and back to 30. Almost all of our snow has melted. We will see what this week has in store for us. I have a feeling we are due for at least one more winter storm at some point. We shall see though! Today I ran the most I have ever run in one day in my life 15.7 miles. I ran 3.4 miles then I had to go do an SI session for Managerial Accounting that I do then I went back to. Then I ran 12.3 miles with a friend. It felt great.

On Friday at my internship my boss gave us all little snow globes because of how snowy the conference I planned was. Here is a picture of mine. We also had a pizza lunch. I had a pizza craving I had not had pizza in such a long time! It tasted so good! I also, went to the Y for a swim that evening. That felt nice I have not been swimming much recently but I have been going more than I have the past few years.




Also, because it is the month of love to all who are in a long distance relationship here are a few quotes:

The ups and downs of life

Hi All,

The semester keeps flying by week after week. Pretty soon it will be spring break then before long it will be graduation. This week there is the graduation fair. It is crazy, but also exciting to start thinking about it. We get fitted for our gowns this week as well as make sure everything is in order to graduate. It has started to warm up... it is supposed to get up to 60 this week! We will see if that actually happens haha. I am not convinced we are out of the snow and cold weather yet

This week is when the first tests of the semester happen. I have my Christian Mysticism test this week. Christian Mysticism is so interesting of a call taught by an awesome teacher. It a really interesting subject to dive into. I was supposed to have two other exams this week but they got pushed back because of the snow days we had.

Last weekend I had an amazing weekend. I drove to Des Moines to see a friend of mine I had met at a conference. She is amazing. We are both majoring in Nonprofit so it is fun to share that as well as a lot else we have in common. It was so much fun to do something out of the routine and go spend the day with her. We went to see the movie Labor Day which was a really interesting moving. It dwelt with some interesting moral decisions. But for most of the day we just spend talking, enjoying each others company and wandering around the mall (The mall is West Des Moines is one of the biggest malls I have seen in a long time). On the drive to Des Moines I got one of my class.

To all those who were at competitive scholars day last week best of luck! Good luck to everyone making college decisions in the coming weeks.

The down side of life is friends who you have a really short string with. You feel like anything you do you say one wrong word or they take one thing the wrong way and run away before you even have the time to explain it kind of frustrating. But hey thats life. I guess you cant take anything too personally.

So true. Have a great week!

SNOW DAY!!

Hi All,

Happy snow day to all those in Kansas City! Hope you stay safe and enjoy playing in and shoveling the snow.

Snow days in college can go one of two ways:

--You are super productive and get ahead in all your classes

--You are not productive in anyway at all. You go outside play in the snow and enjoy life.  Sliding is such a big thing to do in college. So many college students love to find a piece of card board and go sliding. I never thought till I got to college that it would be such a big thing to do.

--When you live in the dorms snow days are huge movie watching days. I, a person that like to be productive whenever I can, watched at least two full movies while I was living in the dorms one snow day.

For me, snow days serve as a great opportunity to get caught up and get ahead on assignments. In this final semester on top of the regular class work, I also have to be job searching. That is what I have been doing this morning. There are so many job boards out there to search and so many leads to follow.

The funny thing is when we woke up this morning there was not hardly any snow on the ground but by the end of the night we are supposed to have 10 inches of snow. Which is a small amount when compared to how much snow I have gotten back in my home town of Chicago. Chicago has gotten more snow this winter than they have for years past. I do not remember a winter when it was this bad in Chicago. Anyway, we are in Kansas City (where they are a little slower at plowing snow than in Chicago).

...Exciting news this Friday is competitive scholars day here at Rockhurst. I remember coming for competitive scholars day 4 years ago. I am still friends with some of the people I met 4 years ago at competitive scholars day. Good luck to all those who are coming in for it!

Focus

Hi All,

Hope everyone has had a great week! I just went for a fantastic 6+ mile run. It was a perfect day for a run, 45 degrees and jammed out to some great Christian music.

I have had a great day and had the occasion to run into two friends who I have not run into in a while so it was great to see them! It is a great feeling to be done with classes on Thursday. Thursday's this semester I only have one class as well so it is a great way to end the week. I am becoming more and more of a night student this semester. I have 3 night classes this semester. All of them are very interesting I have to admit.

The night classes I have this semester include Auditing, the American Novel and Individual Tax. I already do taxes but this will have some more knowledge and not having to just rely on the tax software!

I am finally getting into a rhythm of the semester which is great because that is the biggest thing for me each semester! It is definitely my key to success! How about for you? Is finding a rhythm vital for you?

Everything is getting up and going here again at Rockhurst for the semester. The Greek organizations have their new classes and all the organizations are up and running again! It is exciting.

Oh! Exciting things were going on in the cafe today! It was vendor sample day! We have never had one before according to my memory but a lot of the vendors who sell products in the cafe were offering free samples of their products. It was a fun way to get a little dessert after lunch. Fun fact from high school we actually had the same cookie vendor as we do at Rockhurst. They do have the best cookies!

Here is a fun quote for the week!