SOOOOO I have presented at my first conference and it was
amazing!! I can’t wait to do it again. J I am pretty much just chillin’ until we have our
poster presentations on August 9th. I don’t think I have ever
networked so much in my life and although I was hesitant at first, I think it
was pretty successful. I hope that I can become a McNair Scholar for next
summer! *fingers crossed* I am kind of looking forward to staying in
Hattiesburg, but remaining productive. J
I am so not looking forward to saying goodbye to all of my
summer friends! We are from so many different places that it seems nearly
impossible that we will ever see each other again. :-\ Before I left Hattiesburg
in June, I was praying for group unity and I think we may have been a little
TOO unified. HAHA I am going to miss everyone --even the people with high pitched
laughs and the ones who critique EVERYTHING they see. OOOOH MY I just got misty
eyed writing that sentence! This is going to be hard…. Ugh. But with that being
said, I can’t wait to be back and see everyone!! I miss everything Luckyday, I
miss my crazy family, I miss Ekklesia, I miss the DOJO, I miss Hardy Street AND
USM pride lol I don’t think these summers are good for one’s sanity. FAR TOO
MANY EMOTIONS GOING ON
I think one major lesson that I have learned this summer,
and maybe even one of the most important, is to be myself. (Easier said than
done!) It’s weird.. Being home, I always knew that I had a really good
reputation so that would always be known BEFORE “me”. EXAMPLES: Luckyday (had
to send in my resume so everyone knew my love for Service), Job at Payne (boss
knew my family), LD Friends (we were all Luckydays so we had that in common),
other Friends (a mutual friend that says “this is coco, she is…. Blah blah blah”).
Here, the only background I had is I’m Jasmine from South Mississippi (marks
against) I go to USM (what is that? Was a common reaction) I’m a sociology/
social work double major (soooo?). It wasn’t until I shared my opinion even
when I knew some people would disagree, shared a cooked meal with some of the
other peeps in the program, and locked myself in my office everyday from 9-7 until
I figured out how to do regressions, recodes and other forms of statistics that
I realized that being myself isn’t about hanging out with other people like me
or making an effort to be different from everyone, but to just do what I feel
is right. I feel like this realization may be a little redundant especially
after my last blog, but I guess that’s just the way life works. HAHA ….you repetitively
run into a wall until you realize it’s just a wall…
Does anyone have any ideas of how we can let more students
know about Leadership Alliance? A lot of other students are on their university’s
homepage (NOT HAPPENING), but I think it is a really cool opportunity and I am
willing to write something up, send a pic, or make a presentation whenever it
would be appropriate. I mean Leadership Alliance is huuuuge! And I know I’m not
the only person in the state of Mississippi that could benefit from a program
like this.
I MISS YOU GUYS!!!!
We will DEFINITELY do a press release about your experiences, and that will gain some PR... and you will do a presentation as part of the ANT/SOC Research Colloquium this fall (already told you about that, but more later!!), and I think we should feature you on the dept. website talking about it... and I'm sure I will think of more stuff. I'm sure Larry can also help think of ways to get the word out to other Luckyday students because it would be AWESOME if we could get a lot of them to apply. Thank you for doing this AND for being enthusiastic about sharing your experience!! We are all so happy for you - and so proud of how fabulously you represent our school, the programs, and the rest :)
ReplyDeleteps - I'm "unknown" --ACM
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