Balance: The Key to Enjoying College Life

This break has flown by! Every year I always make these extravagant plans of getting so much work done and every year, I get sidetracked and it doesn’t happen. I wish I could be like some of my friends who can plan their week and actually stick to it! Alas, I just have to make do with my extravagant planning self. This week wasn’t a total bust, I did finish my event hours for ambassadors this weekend, showing prospective students why I love Rockhurst so much made up for the lack of things crossed off of my to do list. I did enjoy being able to wake up on my own time schedule and the break from classes, and the demands of majority of my time commitments. Another good thing that came out of my fall break was a realization that I don’t sit and smell the roses. Usually, I rush past them, note their coloring and then think of the twenty million things that I have yet to start and needed completed yesterday. Therefore, I made a pact with myself this week that I need to start making time to sit and smell the roses or read a book. This is my senior year, and I want to look back on the good time as well as the times that I just sat down and wasted two hours lost in conversation. Honestly, I would rather have things like that filling my memories of Rockhurst than of the sleepless nights I spent doing homework or studying for a test. I wish I had made this realization sooner, so I hope some of you can learn for me. Take time to smell the roses in the time that you have free from doing homework. The life of a college student can be busy but it also should be fun. Balance is the key word to a great college life. Never, putting too much of one thing on your plate so that you can always keep the balance that will keep you sane!

Picture: http://blog.frontrange.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/School-life-balance-230x173.png

Servant Leadership: The Call to Service

As a Jesuit University, Rockhurst has inspired me to do many different things and to explore myself to a deeper level. The lesson that has had the biggest impact on me so far has been the call to being a servant leader. I feel like this is one of the ways that I can give back to others. This is something that is important to me because I have been blessed with so much I feel the need to give back. I applied for a service trip and had my interview this past week. I am excited to see where I am placed and whom I will get to help. This year has helped me to see where my potential lies. I am very motivated when it comes to helping people and I am excited every opportunity I get to help someone. I think the thing I am most excited about is possibly getting to go on a service trip. I really want to go to a country and help for a change. Every time that I have been out of the country, it has been for enjoyment or education. Never to help someone who might need it. I think the service immersion trips are the perfect example of servant leadership. Thinking on the reasons behind wanting to go to one of the under served regions is to help people and to teach them to become self-sufficient. I think that this idea of servant leadership also ties in with my desire to be a physical therapist. Recently, I have been bouncing around the notion of joining the Peace Corps after I graduate and working with that for two years before returning to school to complete my physical therapy degree. This path seems like it would suit me just fine, and I get excited thinking about the freedom that, I would have to help others by spreading friendship and aide to countries that need the help. I think that everyone is called to be a servant leader, but not all accept the call. I want to be one of those that accepts the call to service.

Midterms: The Delicious Ice Cream Center of your Semester

October is here and is almost gone and subtly my midterms have blown right in with the chilly fall winds. As my residents paced back and forth in the hallway wondering about the outcome of their tests, I just chilled out in my room. Going about my day-to-day activities not worried about tests or projects. I didn't think too much of why they were pacing back and forth and then it hit me! Midterms were here. Fall break was upon me and I had not even begun to study. I proceeded to throw myself in my studies, reviewing for this test, going to that professors office hours. I was doing everything and anything that I could to feel like I had control over my situation. It is enough to say in the end I was adequately prepared, but I feel like this happens to me every semester. I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but I feel like during the beginning of the semester I have so much free time and I don’t know what to do with it. I just go about my business happy as a fat cat, and then midterms hit and it all goes down from there. Suddenly, I’m not finding enough time to get everything done, I need to get done, including studying, talking to my residents, having somewhat of a life. It all becomes too much, and on top of all that midterms, which are both good and bad because of the amount of extra stress they put on me, but good because they make me feel accomplished when I get my grade back. Once, midterms are over there are big projects to complete, pumpkins and turkeys to carve and then come back and it’s time for finals. Then Christmas break! The semester flies by after fall break and I feel like it is a bittersweet end, because it was over too soon. Oh, well I always have the spring semester to look forward to and graduating!