DONE?!

It's strange to think it, but I'm finished with all the work of my undergrad, and will be crossing that stage into the next chapter of my life in TWO DAYS! Agh where did this year go? It's insane to actually sit and try to think of all the memories made this year, because while it felt like it was flying by way too fast, it's still jam-packed with more memories than imaginable. That's actually how all of this college experience feels to me at the moment. I mean didn't I just move in to my freshman dorm? Didn't I just run for senate for the first time? And went to my first PUB Live show? And wasn't last summer my first experience at the field station? And my first summer away from home? Agh so strange how quickly it all passed by. I know now that I have changed and grown so much in the last four years but I never recognized it at the time. You never notice it while it's happening, but then all of a sudden you have those moments where you realize how much has changed right before your very eyes without you even realizing it. I started this experience hellbent on becoming a traveling nurse, and now in two days I'll be graduating with a psych degree, and four months of experience living in Europe. Of course some parts of us stay the same: I've always craved new experiences, I still love to sing, I still want to make a living by helping others, etc. But it's a certainty that I've settled more into my skin now. After four years at Coe, I now excitedly look forward to entering into the world as a confident, able-bodied individual who can take whatever life throws at her.

The next big adventure for me will be moving to Denver, CO in October. I have been accepted into the NCCC branch of Americorps, and so they'll be sending me out there for a year of service with their volunteer branch. For a year I'll be working in a team of ten to complete a handful of community service projects: They'll range anywhere from disaster relief to tutoring kids to city beautification, wherever the need is heaviest. As a team we'll live together, eat together, do everything together, and live essentially at the poverty level for the year. Americorps covers our accommodation, our uniforms, and our transportation, and also provides us with a biweekly stipend for groceries. And when I'm done, I'll get money for grad school! Agh it's going to be a blast; this is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to do when I graduated. It's just that year where I can take a break from school, figure out what I want to go to grad school for, and then continue on after for higher levels of education. So wish me luck :)

My immediate plans are somewhat flimsy. I actually leave for Sicily in a week for a May term class, and then when I get back on May 31st I literally have no idea where I'll be working. I'm waiting to hear back from a few places, and am supposed to call a few more once I get back to the States, but this ambiguity is not fun for me. Haha I'm trying to not worry about it and just focus on the moment, but I can't say it's easy. Oh well, I guess there'll always be something coming up next to occupy your thoughts. 

Well I think I'll wrap this up here, but it's been a fun journey with you all! I hope my insights shed a little light on what it is to be a Kohawk. :)

Katie

Last Day of Undergraduate Class??

So yesterday marked my very last of class as an undergrad. Whoa! Pretty trippy. I haven't had much to blog about, actually, because these last flew weeks have seemed to blow by at such a rate that I haven't really given myself ample time to reflect on them. Take my last Coe College Choir Concert on Sunday: This would be my very last choir concert as a student, and my last time every performing a concert with these people again. There's no reason why I shouldn't have been anticipating this somber moment, but a combination of refusal to get emotional and busyness put the emotionality of singing in my last concert aside until the second half of the actual concert. Then it hit me like a tidal wave! It was so unexpected. All of a sudden in the middle of a silly song where the smaller group Crimson and Gold had everything from pans to construction cones on their heads, tears jumps right up to the brims of my eyes and couldn't be stopped! It was really out of the blue. I mean it's strange, because all my life I have been someone who emotionally prepared for big moments such as this so much it was almost to a fault. But some combination of studying abroad, graduating, and looking to the future, has evolved me into someone who focuses more on the happy things, the good-feeling things, the positive things. And it's great, but it obviously is a mindset that exists at the expense of moments for introspection. Don't get me wrong I still feel that I reflect on life quite frequently, but a person only has so much cognitive energy and so focusing on the here and the now and the positives takes up a little of that energy I would have typically spent on reflection. So needless to say, being suddenly overcome with repressed emotion was a new experience for me and one that came as a shock right in the middle of my last choir concert. My last choir concert! So strange. 

I really hope that I continue to sing outside of college. It's always an option to join a church choir, but the monotony of week after week, Sunday after Sunday singing church music may start to wear on me. Maybe I could find a secular choir? Or try out for a musical? Agh it's so weird! I keep having flashes of myself outside of college, sitting in my new apartment, looking up clubs or groups in the area where I can interact socially with new people! I mean what? No campus-sponsored clubs and organizations to choose from? No choir scholarships? No caf where everyone eats?? Weird!! How do you make friends outside of this structured place!? Weird, but exciting. :) 

Well today is Reading Day, which is dedicated to studying for finals week, which starts tomorrow. As I have two finals tomorrow, I think I'll start using this day for what it's intended for :) Stay tuned for graduation reflection!

Katie

Research symposium, and nearing the end?

Well hello all!

It has been an insane last few weeks. All of a sudden the excitement, the anxiety, the promise of finishing up college here in LESS THAN A MONTH???!!! has really been setting in and accumulating. With the tasks of finding a place to live this summer, securing a summer job, and all the while continuing with my efforts to look to the future with potential full-time positions, I haven't even had the chance to take time and really truly reflect on everything I've experienced in the last four years here in this wonderful place. (That was a preface of what's to come. :)) What I've mainly been focusing on have been the present and the important tasks that are at hand. For starters, Wednesday of this last week was the Research Symposium. Every year we look forward to symposium day because it's a day off of classes and a chance to support our fellow classmates by checking out the research they've spent months, sometimes years investigating. But this year I got to see symposium day from a different perspective. This year I was the presenter and my peers came out to see what I had to talk about. My research consisted of analyzing the effects of the Poverty Simulation we put on and Coe on participants' attitudes toward poverty and its causes in America. It was such a wonderful experience! I took part in the poster session, so I was surrounded by dozens of other students who had put their research into posters as well. I learned a lot, both from the other students' research projects and from the people who approached my poster with their questions and insights. It gave me a new perspective on our findings, and prepared me for the Psychology Symposium that we'll be putting on next week. That symposium calls for an actual presentation of our research in front of all the psych professors and others who are interested in the research; so in other words it's a slightly more nerve-racking experience than just standing by my poster. I feel very much prepared for it now!

Another big part of last week was interviewing for positions at two of the local programs for troubled youth in Cedar Rapids. It's my hope that I can eventually secure a full-time position at one of the two places to gain a sense of what it may be to eventually become a social worker. You see my ultimate goal for the next year or two is to narrow down what I would like to eventually go to graduate school for, and social work is one of my potential paths. So a job at either one of the locations I interviewed at (Four Oaks and Tanager Place) would definitely be a helpful starts. 

My most stress-relieving step I took this week was...(drumroll please!)...putting a deposit on my first real-live apartment!!!! Agh I'm so excited. This place is huge, and is one of four units in a big old house right across the street from campus. I'll be living with my same roommate from freshman year, and we're really excited to just finally have a plan!! Such a relief! 

Well as the end of the year approaches, you can be expecting increasingly more sentimental posts. Take care!

Sprrrrring Break!!!

Well contrary to popular practices, my final Spring Break of college was not outrageously wild by any means. As a matter of fact my spring breaks have gotten increasingly less exotic as the years have gone by. 

Freshman year, three floormates and I got all hyped up and on a whim purchased four plane tickets to Huntington Beach, California for the week. The sunbathing was freezing, but we were adventurous and went out and saw as much of the pacific coast as we could reach on the bus. 

The next year, still with sun on the mind but a little more broader sights, I took advantage of one of my favorite Coe staples: The Alternative Spring Break. That particular year I joined the college's chaplain and 21 other students on a road trip down to Gulfport, Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina relief. After what was one of the most eye-opening and changeful weeks of my life, I came back to Coe with a tan and some perspective. 

Thinking in the same vein but eager to explore other parts of the States, I took off to New York City for the Alternative Spring Break in March of 2008. Our group of 16 took a 24-hour train from Chicago to Brooklyn and stayed at a YMCA for the entire week. Each day we dedicated to a different volunteer organization, and I'd like to attribute my interest in volunteering and its wide range of opportunities to this trip specifically. 

Although the last two Spring Break trips cost me virtually nothing, they weren't nearly as cost-efficient as this year's break. Still feeling well-traveled from my four months in Europe, and more importantly sensing the quiver-lip in my mom's voice over the phone in anticipation of her "only Katie"'s future fast-approaching, I decided to go nuts and head back home for the week of spring break. Yep, back to good ol' Apple Valley, Minnesota for me. It wasn't crazy, it wasn't out of control, but it was great. I got to sleep in and spend quality time, like real, true, quality time with the members of my family without feeling compressed with a timeline. In anticipation of a future living away from home fast-approaching, it felt like the perfect way to spend my spring break. :)

Now I'm back in socializing mode. With 6 weeks of college left (really?? EEK!) I'm taking it up a notch with quality friend time (while obviously keeping my grades stable :)). Wish me luck!

Blindspot and community

Hello all!

Well I'm sure the concept of community at Coe has been reiterated here time after time, but I have yet another stunning example of why this place has been such a home to me over the last four years. One of the most important aspects of a future college for me when I was in my college search was a place where I felt I could be well-rounded in. More specifically, I wanted to make sure I'd be able to continue to grow in my love for singing despite my interests in other academic fields. I know that I am never done growing, that I'm a constant work in progress, and I was so happy to find myself in a place where I could continue to grow, continue to expand my interests, make mistakes and hit brick walls along the way, and all the while have a solid safety net in the community at this college to catch me when I fell. I've had some huge experiences over the last four years, both successes and failures, and all the while I've had a foundation of support to carrying me through it all. 

To relate this concept to a specific incident, let's look at the Offstage Players' bimonthly event called Blindspot. Every two Fridays or so, any student from any walk of life with any interest or talent may take the opportunity to sign up for a time slot at Blindspot. The event consists of 5-minute acts during which these students sing, perform their new piano composition, tap dance, read their latest poem, do stand-up comedy, whatever, to a packed audience of their peers. Each show is a huge hit. The thought process behind the name Blidndspot is to imply that the audience is expected to be blind to the flaws of the performers: they are here in this safe and welcoming space to share a part of themselves with the audience, and respect is a given. For the first time in over a year, I performed at Blindspot last Friday. It's so easy as a senior to start to lose that sense of belongingness I once felt so passionately for Coe, but performing on that stage last Friday rekindled the comfort and community that all the joys and memories of the last four years have been built upon. It was such a refreshing experience.

Katie

Well hello all! How do you like the new look? Now that I've safely returned to Coe's campus, the Travel Blog has been set aside to be revisited on my May Term trip to Sicily. For the time being, I've joined my fellow Coe Bloggers in our sazzy Coe Crimson and Gold look. :)

So getting back to campus has been a whirlwind of craziness. Moments of extreme excitement in being reminded of familiar concepts are immediately followed by feelings of awkwardness and naivete, only then to be followed up with something that reminds me of my home I had in Sweden . When you miss a chunk of four months, the rest of the world doesn't stop to wait for you to catch up. Surprising, isn't it?? Haha but my overall attitude has been positive and warm. Coe is a home. It's shocking to find how much I missed just being able to recognize people as I walk the campus grounds. There's a warmth in knowing what's going on around you, as weird as that sounds. When you're grocery shopping, or studying at the university, or strolling the town in a country whose language you aren't familiar with, it feels like you have ear muffs on. The small day-to-day verbal exchanges that we have with one another, the "Saw your article in the paper!"'s, the, "Wow that band is going to be awesome"'s, the, "What do you think of that class"'s, that are so easy to overlook when you're here, go much much further than we realize. I mean I definitely felt like I had a home in Sweden, don't get me wrong, but I have rekindled the sense of belongingness that accompanies being able to actively participate in daily living here.

Well that's all about that. The link to my Sweden Blog is on my page here so if you'd like to hear more I invite you to take a look at that. Let's get to Coe talkin. On Tuesday night I attended the Contemporary Issues Forum with speaker Jared Diamond. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning ecologist who has extensively studied the rises and falls of cultures throughout human history. Our beloved Sinclair Auditorium was packed to the brim with Coe students and Cedar Rapidians alike to hear his reminder of the importance of moderate consumption and consideration for our environment. It was a fun break in my night.

I think I'll wrap this first post up now, but pictures and more posts to come!!! :)
Katie