Hello Finals

I had my last test today!!!!!!! Woo-Hoo!!!! Too bad I have a fifteen page paper to write by Friday. I only wish writing a paper was as easy as blogging or chatting on facebook. I cannot believe the semester is already over. I have been so busy that I have not even realized how fast things have been flying by. This has been my favorite semester so far at Iowa State. Being a Hixson peer mentor is one of the best experiences that I have had. It also made me realize that teaching is something that I care a lot about. This semester I officially declared a second major in AgEd and I am very excited to see what new opportunities I am going to encounter with that. I am very excited for winter break, but I will spend sometime studying because I will be taking the Praxis on January 15th. I want to wish everyone a very Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

First post in a really long time!!!!

I just thought I would let everyone know what was going on with my life lately. I think October has been a very stressful month and I am quite excited for it to be over. This year is flying by and I cannot believe mid-terms have already pasted. This year has been full of very wonderful things. The opportunity to be a Hixson mentor has been one of the best things I have been involved with since I have been at Iowa State. The experience is something I would not trade for anything and it has really helped me make some really important decisions about my future. I have recently added a double major. I will be majoring in Horticulture AND Agriculture Education now and I am very excited about it. I have been thinking about adding this major for some time now and I have decided it is definately something I want to do! Teaching has always been an interest to me and I am just adding another opportunity to my future. I would have been graduating next December with a Horticulture major and I am not ready to be out in the real world yet!
This semester I have also been taking some classes that are really getting into the details of my major. This making class a lot more interesting to me and making it a little easier to get motivated to study. I have been very busy this semester with Hixson mentoring, school and work but being so busy has made me be more focused and get things done quickly. This fall, some of my friends and I played intramural flag football and we are now playing volleyball. This has been a lot of fun and has helped me realise some of my everyday stress. I am having a great semester and am looking forward the other opportunities that will come my way.

FINNNAAAAALLLLS

So finals week is almost over for me! I am very excited to get summer started. I am working at a flower shop in a town near my house. I am looking forward to the experience I am going to get with this job and of course making some money. I am also doing some work for Pioneer this summer and possibly working at the Iowa State Fair. It is going to be a very busy summer and I am looking forward to it. I am also looking forward to next year. I cannot wait to meet my students and learn all about them. I am sure they are going to teach me even more about myself that I did not learn this year in class. I have noticd towards the end of the semester, even though I have been extremely busy, how much more organized I have become and I still have some work to do but I am getting a lot better and I am so happy about that! I hope everyone has an awesome summer!!!!! See ya next fall!!!!!!

ISU Resources

Last week was a great reminder of all the resources we have on campus. I think it is very important that we keep up-to-date on the resources that we have. Especially next year when students are coming to us, we should have a good idea where things are located. I agree with what Randi was saying, that sometimes we know what it is or where it's at but we have a hard time telling someone else about it because we do not know how to explain it. This is something I need to brush up on before next fall. This past week I have been reflecting on everything this past semester and I am amazed at how much I have learned about myself and everyone else in the class. I am getting so excited for next fall and meeting all of our new students. I cannot believe I only have three weeks of school left. I think the next few weeks are just going to fly by because of all the things I need to get done between now and then. It is crazy how fast time flies by! Have a great week everyone!

Team Work

I really enjoyed last weeks class about team work. I thought Matt and Chelsea did a great job leading the class and the activity was a lot of fun. To follow up on the topic, we were supposed to talk about what we do best when working in teams. I am the person who is the peacemaker and the mediator. I do not like conflict so I would rather have everyone get along because then everything works out better anyways. I can be a leader at times but if there are more outgoing people in the group they usually become a leader over me because I am usually kinda passive. I like to do behind the scenes type stuff. In high school, I was the co-director of our high school plays/musicals for four years. I was the person who was incharge of changing all the props and making sure everything was going right backstage. That is just an example of the kind of role I usually play as a team member. Sometimes I do find myself being the leader especially when I am very interested or care alot about the situation, but I also like to have a co leader so they can be the dominate one and I can do the detailed work. Every week I just get to amazed at how much I have learned about myself in the class and it makes me excited to go to class again the next week! Have a great week everyone!

Hixson Retreat

I cannot believe how fast this year is going! I had a great time at the hixson retreat over the weekend! It was great to spend a little extra time and get to know everyone a little better! I thought that last weeks session on how to create a lesson plan was very helpful and will be a great tool when preparing for next year. I really feel like im getting to know myself better which is something I did not first expect to get out of this but I am so glad that I am. I am getting so excited for next year and getting the chance to work with new students!!!!!!!

ISCORE

I thought that ISCORE was an awesome experience. I attended the opening speaker session. The Dean of the College of Design spoke and talked about bridges. He talked about how we need to bridge things in our lives together and how everyone and every culture has something that bridges us to them. Reassuring the fact that we are all people and that we are all equals even though we live and act in different ways. He is orginally from Mexico and it gave a nice look into their culture and he shared some cool facts and pictures of Mexico. I also attended Hannah's session on Latinos in America. I thought this session was really relative to my life back home because we have so many Latinos. It is so important and we try and step back and look at things from their point of view. We must realize they look at things just like we do and they have viable opinions as well. I think all the culture's of Latinos are very interesting and I would like to do mroe research myself. ISCORE was very interesting and I will definitely attend again next year! I think it was really eye opening and really got me thinking about being more aware of other cultures.

Communication!

I had a lot of fun being the discussion and class starter this past week. I thought it was a great starting experience for the position I will be in next semester. Communication is one of the most important things when leading a class. Think, pair, share is a great way to get students to think deeply about a subject and I really like when we do such things in class. I think it is also a great tool to incourage students to get to know each other. Q space is also a very effective approach. It keeps the students in the conversation, instead of just lecturing them. Lecture is something that is always not the most interesting but at some points I feel that I will have to use it next year just to get some material covered and then allow the students to do some partner learning to class discuss. Communication is something that we always do not think about as being such an important part but it definately is. I think I personally need to make sure that when I communicate to a large group that I do not come off to timid and I can be understood and respected. These are often hard things to work on but I think I need to be more direct when talking in front of the class. Hope everyone had a great weekend and look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!

Cultural Diversity

I really enjoyed this weeks topic because it really got me thinking. Lisa and I discussed that we thought tthat race, language and ethnicity would be some of the biggest shocks with started college. I think this is what was so hard for me when it comes to diversity. There is so much diversity with in diversity. I mean being at Iowa State was the first time I actually met people who have just came straight from their country to college. They have not lived in America before so their culture shock it large too. Socioeconomic was another one we thought was big. It is crazy how differently we were all raised and how we were taught to spend and use money. What we think are needs and what other people think are needs that we would consider wants. Iowa State is a very culture place. There is a lot of differences for me from where I come from since my graduating class had the first black person to ever graduate from my high school. I enjoy being in the mix of a bunch of different diversities because it makes things more well rounded. You cannot live under a rock your whole life, you should see all the other kinds of people and cultures that are out there. I have traveled to Mexico before and I loved seeing how they lived and how things work down there. I find things like that very interesting. I lived with a host family for a week and at first it was hard to communicate cuz my spanish was not the best. Luckily my host sister spoke perfect English, but no one else in her family did. She encouraged me to speak spanish and try and learn while I was there and I ended up learning a lot more that I went there with. I think it is very important that you get and see what other cultures are like, it also helps you reflect on your own and see how your culture appears to other people. I think I need to work on being more open minded. I am a fairly open minded person but there is still much room for improvement. Sometimes I do not even realise that I am not being open minded and that I already have very strong beliefs about topics.

Valentine's Day!

I really enjoyed the topic this week about getting to know ourselves and awareness. I feel like this is one really important thing about being a good mentor. You really need to know what you stand and what you are all about to be a great leader. Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about myself and I have learned so much already this semester through this class. I do not know about the rest of the world, but when all this snow is gone it will be a lot easier to have a more exciting look upon going outside. But I am trying to remember the FISH, and pick my attitude! Have a great week everyone!

I forgot

So I totally forgot to blog yesterday! I guess I was too excited to watch the superbowl commercials! I thought that last week was a very interesting and I am so amazed how much I am learing about myself every class. I am trying to work on being more vocal and let my side be heard. I cannot wait for it to be spring! This snow is getting extremely old, but I would almost rather have it then rain! I plan on going to the Hixson committee on Thursday! I think this is a great idea and I would love to be a part of it! Have a great week everyone!

Last week of January

This week has been full of a lot of things. I feel this week I have grown a lot through all the experiences I have had through class. I really enjoyed the time at the Learning Communities Session. I went to the session about Common Reading Roundtables. I was the only student there but it turned out to be a great experience and I learned a lot about their program and shared imformation about the Hixson program to them. It was different than I had thought it would be but turned out to be equally as interesting. I thought that the retreat today was very interesting and made me think a lot. Many of the issues we talked about today are going to directly relate to things next fall and really made me start to think critically about situations. I feel that it is important to think about these things now and figure out how to deal with them. I enjoyed the session on the myers briggs evaluation. I find it so interesting how much the descriptions of the letters describe me. I really enjoy thinking about myself on a deeper level and figuring out exactly who I am because usually we do not even think about it.