Semester Ending, New Semester Starting

So my fall semester at Texas Lutheran University is coming to an end and I'm hanging in there. I cannot believe I actually got through a whole semester of college, I am pretty proud of myself. But the semester is not over yet I still got finals and I have to study my butt off so I can end this semester on a good note. I have really enjoyed my time here at Texas Lutheran University I have met a lot of new amazing people and overall just have had so much more fun than I have ever could have imagined.  My classes were pretty difficult but hey it's college and it was nothing I could not handle. And my professors were great as well I was completely expecting them to not care at all about their students and grades but they are very helpful when it comes to needing help. My overall experience at Texas Lutheran has been great and I expect to come back next year. I have really liked it here and made a new family with my team they are truly amazing girls. This team has made my first freshman semester of college incredible. Well I recently signed up for my spring classes because, yes I survived my first semester of college and I am planning on surviving for plenty of more. I am glad I came here to play soccer. I really enjoyed playing with them and would not change it for anything. Well I was fortunate enough to have gotten all my classes when signing up for my spring semester classes, because most of my friends were not able to get all the classes they wanted due to them being full. Anyways next semester I am taking fourteen hours of classes my classes being: Composition II, Object - Oriented Design and Methods, Calculus II, Intro to Theology, and Advance Physical Conditioning. So this next semester I am taking classes that are somewhat hard but I should be able to keep with them being that I already know how it all works. I plan on doing better this next semester than this first semester because during my first semester I struggled with adjusting from high school to college and also time management. But now that I got the hang of this college stuff I plan to do better I am striving to do better because I really want to. I am really looking to this next semester, can't wait! Should be lots of fun! (:

Studying Abroad!?

          To be completely honest, I never really considered studying abroad because it seemed I don't know a bit out of my element and I just did not find it too interesting at first. But after hearing a couple of my older friends who have studied abroad talk about how much fun they had and how amazing all their experiences they got to have while studying abroad, I wanted to learn more about it. They urged me and gave me the idea to study abroad because they kept telling me to study abroad, to just do it. Well after hearing them talk about studying abroad, I then heard mostly all of my professors suggesting to study abroad and I started to wonder why?

          Through this process I have learned a lot about the study abroad program at Texas Lutheran University and I am glad I did. I talked to one of my fellow teammates from the soccer team, Amy Walls, and she definitely opened the idea of studying abroad to me along with some of my professors as well. Some of my professors talked to us about studying abroad and recommended it because we were young and we will never get an opportunity to travel the world for a low price due to the fact that our financial aid transfers and stuff. Amy told me that, "Being able to leave everything I knew behind and everything that was normal was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I met amazing people, got to see incredible things and had the opportunity to participate in two different internships that pertained to my International Business major. I got to work with international students in an admissions office and a marketing firm as well. I learned Dutch, got to go to Belgium and Barcelona for spring break, and took really interesting classes with people from all over the world. Overall I grew as a person and things I could have never learned by staying where I was" (Amy C. Walls Studying Abroad Interview). She basically explained how incredibly life changing this experience has been for her and hearing her say this has completely changed my views about studying abroad.

          I am now considering studying abroad because of a couple people. I just have to look into what study abroad program I want to do and where I want to go and when, I am still researching that. But overall I am looking forward to studying abroad and how it will change my life like how everyone is saying it changed theirs. I can not wait to go study abroad but I am not going to lie there is a part of me that is scared but what the heck you only live once so I am definitely going to do it. 

To Always Remember That No One is More Important Than The Team!

The TLU Women's Soccer team is circled up on the field right before the game.  During the huddle, we try to pump each other up and encourage ourselves to play for each other and to give it all we got.  The seniors or some of the upperclassmen say a couple of inspiring words to get the whole team hyped up to win and kick some grass.  We do this right before every game as a tradition for the team.  This picture shows us coming together as a team and gathering ourselves up to have a special moment as a team before the game because each girl is embraced and connected to each other.  During the season we did this traditional huddle right before each and every game and I feel like if we did not do this it would not feel right so I am glad we did. This little moment right before the start of every game truly makes me feel part of something more and special. This picture was taken at Texas Lutheran's soccer field during one of our home games against Southwestern. I was the one that took this picture because I was sitting in the stands watching my team play without me due to the incident that happened the previous game. It was definitely hard watching them play and not being to help them. I am not going to lie it sucked because they lost and I felt like I could have helped them a lot during this game. So I definitely learned from this mistake I made during this season and the only good thing I got out of it was this nice picture of my team huddling up and showing that they are a team. I love them, they are just something else!

Krost Symposium

A couple of weeks ago I listened to Daniel Solove's Keynote speech called, “Social Media, Gossip, and Privacy: A New Frontier” for Texas Lutheran University's Krost Symposium and it was held in Jackson Auditorium on November 3rd, 2011.  Solove explains how he started blogging in May 2005 and that's how it all started,  that's where his ideas about social media and technology developed.  During Solove's presentation I strongly agreed with his point of view on the process of employers hiring employees since this process could affect my generation in a bad way.  He stated that according to a study by Microsoft, 70% of employers rejected employees because of online information (“ Social Media, Gossip, and Privacy: A New Frontier”).   So he thinks that employers are not fair because it is wrong and these employers should warn employees about their hiring process (“Social Media, Gossip, and Privacy: A New Frontier”).   I could relate to this main point in his speech because I feel like it could happen to me and the rest of my generation due to the fact that we are “generation google” like how he explains it.   So I agree when he discusses that employers are not fair because the information on the internet should not affect if I get hired or not but at the same time this brings us to Solove's big advice is to be careful of what we expose online or what other people put about you (“Social Media, Gossip, and Privacy: A New Frontier”).   The way employers hire employees is one of the many impacts, in his speech, due to information on the internet that affects people's lives and opportunities (“Social Media, Gossip, and Privacy: A New Frontier”).

Solove, Daniel. “Social Media, Gossip, and Privacy: A New Frontier” Texas Lutheran University.

             Jackson Auditorium, 1000 West Court St. 4 November 2011. Keynote Address.