Oh hai thar!

Fancy seeing you here, have you noticed how beautiful it is outside? Well, erm, at the moment it's kind of raining and not entirely pleasant but the tree's are gorgeous! The trees of Transy were a major selling point for me, I mean I enjoy walking around and feeling like I'm in a park, and a lot of our campus seems to be just that. There's families that bring their children/dogs to walk around campus and in fair weather students linger outside, less recently in the past couple of weeks but we all enjoy the beautiful views of campus throughout the different seasons.

I unfortunately have not gotten a lot of opportunities to enjoy trees this fall expect for when I'm hurrying across campus for class or on my way to work on Sundays (I work in a nursery at a local church.) I've done a lot of fun things that I haven't gotten a chance to blog about so I'll do the rundown. :)

Fall Break!

Fall Break was a couple of last Monday and Tuesday, so I got to go home for the first time since RA training and it was glorious. I got to spend four days with my family, four nights in my (full size) bed, four days with my pets, and two extra days without classes. Now don't let that lead you to believe that I was without work for those four blissful days, I had a program to finish for my Theory of Programming Languages class and a test to study for and a book to read for my Gender and Communication class. It wasn't easy to make myself work during break, but I did and was thankful for it because as soon as class started Wednesday the professors were on their A game and I haven't stopped running.

I snapped this picture in Indiana on my way home, yay trees!

A Halloween Dance!
My sorority throws a "informal" (dance) for our pledges, where they get to decide the theme and then a group of active members sets them up with on a "Blind Date" from a list of names the pledges give the active members, the "date" usually ends up being a group outing with the active members, their dates, and the blind date. This year, opposed to taking my non-dancing boyfriend I opted for my ex-roommate and best friend, Erica and we dressed up as Cat Woman and Poison Ivy. It was a lot of fun, but I had been on RA duty the night before and I was exhausted and she had been up since 6:30 for a speech and debate tournament in Berea so we didn't stay very long but we had a lot of fun.

Me as Cat Woman and Erica as Poison Ivy

Midterms
Midterms as in test have been happening and quickly approaching (if I wear a costume to class for my midterm on Friday I get 10 extra credit points!) The report we get is reminiscent of elementary school, with the only possible outcome is either a "S" for Satisfactory of a "U" for Unsatisfactory. It's all S's for me! :)

I hope you all enjoying the trees more than I am!

You are beautiful in every single way...

Hello there! I hope you all have been doing well since we last talked, I know I've been crazy busy. It turns out that as time goes by it doesn't get any easy to juggle all the things you do in college because you typically get roped into more and more things.

One of the new and really cool things that I'm doing this year is working with groups of middle school girls from LTMS on their views of beauty and how they can learn to see themselves as beautiful. I had planned on doing this as an after school program, but working with the school psychologist I'm going to be doing sessions during the day. I went over to LTMS after class this morning and worked on mailing out permission forms and hopefully I'll get to start working with the girls in two weeks.

This whole program has grown from a series of workshops I did two summers ago that were inspired by the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and I was motivated to get involved in this type of community service by the Phillips University Legacy Fund, which is an outside scholarship I recieve that requires all of its recipients to complete a service project where we take on a leadership role. The Phillips University Legacy Fund is a unique scholarship because it's a fund create by the alumni of Phillips University, a university that went bankrupt and had to close but since then has paid off all of their debts, and is given only to students who attend Disciples of Christ affiliated universities and colleges. Every year they send us somewhere new and exciting, my first year we were outside of Santa Fe, NM, last year we were in Davis, OK and this year we're going to a Ranch in Van, TX.

The other Transy students at the Conference in OK.

I know that Transy isn't known for its religous affiliation but that affiliation did play a major role in my college decision, as a Disciple I had a special Disciple admissions counselor and I became eligable for outside, Disciples scholarships. Now don't get it wrong, Transy may have a good core group of Disciples students but the affiliation doesn't require you to go to worship everyday or anything, it's just a little friendliness between the university and the church. If YOU'RE a Disciple and you're interested in finding out more about the Transy DOC connection, shoot Betsy Pigg and email at bpigg@transy.edu, she's really awesome and can answer pretty much all of your questions.

Find some time to enjoy the fall!