Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Spring to Summer and all the Stuff in Between

It has been a really crazy semester for me, between being an officer in ASME and Texas Bluebonnets, having to rerun for new officer positions, Spring Break with Marissa in Utah, Finals for college, starting summer classes and being a camp counselor there is no rest for the weary! I will try and summarize some of these things in the next few paragraphs, wish me luck!

First off! SPRING BREAK IN UTAH!!!! Oh my gosh, it was amazing. I planned that trip to visit Marissa since August 2013 and it finally happened in March 2014! I met her awesome roommates, Jessie, Becca and Maren and got to see her cool apartment styled dorm! We went skiing up in the mountains, hiked up a frozen waterfall, saw a boy band a cappella show, visited Salt Lake City, walked up to a point and overlooked the city of Provo, ate JDawg Hotdogs, toured a history museum, and had some delicious waffles. As you can probably tell, we did a lot of stuff thanks to Marissa's awesome planning of our time! I will never forget that spring break and I am so so so glad I had the opportunity to spend it with Marissa and the mountains!



Next up, end of the year shenanigans! I applied, interviewed, and was chosen as the new Events Coordinator for ASME! Basically, I coordinate and plan all events that our organization does throughout the year. We have approximately 500 members total, but normally a little less than 50 show up to the actual events, but it is still a lot of work. During the transition from the old officer team to the new officer team, I planned Senior Project Happy Hour (money donated from professors for a Happy hour for the seniors at a local bar, Posse East), Fiesta Friday (end of the year grill out), and two Study Break sessions (free food and a place to study during finals week). It was a ton of work, and I am loving reorganizing and documenting how these events are run! We also had a delicious end of the year banquet, and I was awarded Officer of the Semester!!!! It was such a great feeling to be awarded this honor, it really means a lot to me to be chosen by my fellow peers to receive this award. I look forward to all of the events that we have planned for the next school year!

Another organization I am in, Texas Bluebonnets, also had officer elections. I was nominated for Vice President and sustaining my role as Secretary, so that is what I will be doing next year! We also had our official initiation ceremony for the "Baby Blues" who are now active Bluebonnets! So exciting! We also had our semi formal end of the year event where we rented a party bus and headed down to Peter Pan mini golf all dressed up! I even got a hole in one at one of the holes, of course this is right after James golfed before me and also got a hole in one on the same hole.... oh well. Still pretty cool in my opinion!


While all of these end of the school year events were wrapping up, it meant I had to start studying for finals. I had four finals this semester out of the five classes I took. Economics and Thermodynamics were the first day of finals, Statics the day after, and Differential Equations two days after that. I finished up early and in time to make it home for Mother's Day, only to return a week later to Austin to attend Patrick's graduation from the MPA program! It was interesting meeting James' family, and it is really cool to see the end of the journey of which I have just begun!


Once I got back from all of this, I started taking Online Government via community college and also volunteering a little at Habitat for Humanity! I went to a music festival called Free Press in downtown Houston and saw a bunch of different alternative singers and rappers with James. I have also been watching The Bachelorette with my friends and trying to enjoy my summer!


The past two weeks I have been at MITE (My Intro to Engineering Camp) where I had the opportunity to mentor high school seniors. This camp is really special to me because I also attended this camp when I was in high school. To give you an idea of what we do, professors from each engineering department give a talk about that engineering area, they work on a Rube Goldberg styled project, tour campus, participate in engineering activities, and have fun (hopefully)! This camp really wears me out! Here is a picture of my kiddos from Session 1 (there are two sessions with 50 different kids at each session). I was very proud of them because they earned 2nd place overall! We are almost finished with the second session, and I am eager to see how my new group fares!

(Session 1 Group)

Whooo, that is 4 months summed up as best as I can!


-KD

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