Diversity Event

     I went to the lecture about Christians Views On Climate Change.  The speaker was a pastor from a church in Nebraska but she had also majored in Geology.  She made very good points about how the climate is changing around the world and it's all in a science.  She showed some clips to everybody of people in Congress I believe pulling out the Bible trying to say that global warming isn't happening and that it's not the end of the world.  The people quoting the Bible were talking about the end of the world and that it'll happen in a big way and that the warming and cooling in the world is just a cycle and that we'll get out of this hot cycle soon.  She then showed us graphs about the facts of the weather and what it's like.  Yes, there were cycles of the climate changing but right now according to the graphs we're supposed to be going back into a change were it gets colder but all we've noticed is that the climate is just getting warmer and warmer.
     I did agree with the whole thing that climate change is all in cycles but I didn't know that we're approaching the need to go back down and all the climate is doing is going back up.  It made me understand that we're really in a problem here and we should do something to fix it.  The speaker had a good presentation with the visuals and I liked the video clips and charts because they helped me understand all of what she was explaining.

What I've Learned and How I've Grown/Changed

What I’ve learned

• ·      Cyride is a lifesaver! I take it everywhere
• ·      You’ll be thankful for all the home cookin’ quick, I promise you that
• ·      My sociology professor is pretty hilarious.  I’m glad I’m in the learning community with him because you just get to know him and he asks our class how’s he’s going and he takes our suggestions into account and has changed some things b/c of what we’ve said to him.
• ·      You run out of money fast, also use you’re dinning dollars wisely my friend ran out in October b/c she spent it all on caribou!
• ·      Football games are awesome!! And storming the field was even better getting to do it two times this season!
• ·      It’s totally nice going back home and sleeping in your own bed, I loved it!
• ·      Movies at Carver are awesome with a big group of your friends(:
• ·      Doing the required readings is hard, honestly I don’t read as much as a should which I know is a bad thing.  I keep telling myself I will but I don’t, for me it’s hard to read when the material is boring but I need to motivate myself better especially b/c finals are coming up.  Yes, I’ll probably be the one cramming that in.
• ·      It totally SUCKS when you live on the 8th floor and both of the elevators are broken..not fun   :(
• ·      I’ve learned not everyone gets along with their roommate and I’m thankful that my roommate and I have a good relationship..we don’t know what we’d do if we didn't get along.

How I’ve grown/changed

• ·      I feel like I’m a bit more independent now.  I don’t call my parents and they don’t call me as much as I thought they would.  Really I only call if I need help with an issue, which only happened at the beginning of the semester really.
• ·     I definitely put things off in high school and I brought that over to college, not really a good start but I want to make a change next semester.
• ·    I’ve accepted myself and I am who I am, nobody can change that.

What The Hixson Award Means To Me

I am SO thankful for being able to receive this scholarship.  When I found out I got it I was so ecstatic, jumping up and down, it was a great feeling.  Honestly, getting the Christina Hixson Scholarship decided where I would go to college.  If I hadn't received this scholarship I would probably be taking classes at the community college DMACC and that's definitely not something I wanted to be doing.  I wanted to go to a big college, meet new people, and continue my education here at Iowa State.  I had always wanted to go here since I was little, my family is a big cyclone family and my mom went here  for her first few years of college too and it just seemed right.  However, I knew we weren't  in the best place financially and going to Iowa  State just might have to be put off a bit.  

The scholarship is giving me the opportunity to continue my education without being too worried about financial issues.  It was interesting going over financial aid in class and finding out that the average Iowa State students debt when they graduate college is around $30,000, that's ridiculous!!!  Although I'm only a freshman I'm still worried about what kind of debt I'll be in when I graduate, and hoping that I'll find a job soon enough to pay everything off when the bills start coming in.  

This scholarship has also brought me to meet a ton of great people, like THE PURPLE SQUAD!!  We're able to connect with people who share common goals and interests and it's fun.  We've definitely stuck together through this whole semester and it's always fun when we get together.  

Mainly this scholarship gives me the ability to go to college and continue a higher education.  I want to make a good life for me and I wouldn't be given that opportunity without the Hixson Scholarship.  Hopefully I finally decide on what I want to do in the near future so I can start taking classes toward that degree and do something that I want to do and make a good living off of it. 

Social Media Week

By doing the social media week I learned that I seriously need to pick what I want to do with the rest of my life.  It's hard to pick what I want to do but there are SO many ways I could go with it.  Ever since I had gone on these mission trips with my church I had known that I want to go into a career that helps people, but honestly that doens't really narrow it down to what I want to do.  Everytime someone asks me 'well what do you like to do?' I say I don't know it's hard to explain for me.  The only thing that I really say is that I like to help people, then they come back with suggestions like becoming a techer or social worker but I'm not sure if that fits me the way I want it to.
     I'm going to say I didn't really get much out of this activity.  By being undecided and literally not knowing what I want to go into at all doesn't help trying to follow people on twitter that I don't even know what they are.  I didn't want to be one of those people who are undecided so they could just follow random people and say oh that sounds like me, I wanted to try to get something out of it.  Social media however can help you research what you want to go into.  Say I was a computer engineer looking up things about Apple or Goodle would be a great thing to do in my opinion. 
     I feel like social media is a good and bad thing.  The good things about it is you can get great advirtising from it, get people to notice your business if need be or if you're looking for a job searching different places to get background information would be great if you knew what you wanted.  However, it's bad because employeers can look up your social media pages and realize maybe you're not the best candidate for what they're looking for.  You have to be careful with what you post on social media websites.

MBTI results

Nothing really surprised me about my MBTI results.  The only difference from the test we took in the summer and the one we recently took in class was one letter, either the S or P I believe.  I’m a pretty loud and outgoing kind of person so it’s obvious that I would be an extrovert.  I don’t really keep a whole lot of things in so when people ask me if I’m an introvert or extrovert I would say extrovert but I feel like they would already know that by seeing me in person and catching a glimpse of my personality.  I also take peoples' feelings into consideration with a lot of things.  I’m not one to hurt peoples feelings, if I do I feel REALLY bad.  Before I do something I contemplate it and how others would feel.  I have having someone feeling left out, so I try to get everyone to agree on things no matter what it is. 

So with me saying that I think I’m pretty aware of myself and how I feel about certain things.  I know myself and I don’t question myself a whole lot about who I am.  

Bucket List

Here are a few things from my bucket list.  It's hard to come up with everything and I'm sure this could be WAY longer if I tried to think of EVERYTHING.

Bucket list for ISU

• ·          Get good grades
• ·         Go Campaniling
• ·         Beat Iowa in an Iowa vs Iowa State game
• ·         Body pant at a game and get front row
• ·         Get along with roommate
• ·         Make many good friends
• ·         Go to the rec and try out an exercise class
• ·         Maybe join a sorority
• ·         Play a HUGE game of hide and seek on campus
• ·         Sing karaoke with some friends
• ·         Go to after dark and win something!
• ·         Study abroad somewhere

Bucket list in general

·         Find something I love to do as a job

·         Go parasailing

·         Go on a cruse

·         Travel to many brazil, the Caribbean, Italy, Greece, france, austrailia

·         Finish college

·         Get married & start a family

·         Move to California

·         Win the lottery

·         After winning the lottery buy a log cabin house/boat in Minnesota off of a lake, buy a house in California, and buy a house in Colorado.  Also buy some nice cars, and give the other money to my family and organizations that I like

·         Try a different type of food that I wouldn’t normally try

·         Go snorkeling

·         Meet a few celebrities (Orlando Bloom, Ryan Reynolds, Channing Tatum, Ashton Kutcher)

·         Buy a mansion

·         Climb mount Everest

·         Have something named after me

·         Have my kids accomplish a lot in their life (send them to ISU)

·         Go to Egypt and see a pyramid

·         Make my own wine in Italy or Greece

·         Buy a cake from the Cake Boss so I can be on the TV show

·         Learn how to fly an airplane

·         Own a huge house with a lot of acres

·         See Bruno Mars in concert

·         See Britney spears, Ke$ha, Katy Perry in concert

·         Be on the news for something cool

·         Meet the president

·         Go to a Super Bowl game

·         Travel to every state

·         Take a road trip on Route 66 with some friends

·         See the Big Ben and Buckingham Palace

·         Go in the Eiffel Tower

·         Shop on Rodeo Drive

·         Sit in an audience for some talk show/reality show thing (SNL)

·         Ride a gondola in Venice

·         Learn Spanish

When I Was At My Best

 Hello fellow Hixson Scholars!  My name is Jessica Overturf and I am the 2011 Hixson Scholar from Warren County.  One important thing about me is that I love music.  In my opinion nobody can go a day without music.  I had been involved with music from those choir classes we took in kindergarten up to my senior year being in Sound Revolution, which is another name for our show choir in school.

     My first year in show choir was my junior year in high school.  I tried out in 8th grade to be in it in high school but I never made it so when I tried out I wasn't really expecting a good outcome.  Of course it was a complete shock to me when I found out I made it but after going to all the rehearsals and practicing my music it really did pay off.  As my junior year in show choir ended I could not wait for my senior year!  I told myself it was going to be the best one yet and I was going to step up during competitions and be a good leader for the underclassmen.

     The year started very well the whole team seemed to click which I was excited about.  As rehearsals went on everyone got better and better.  Even during rehearsals our teacher would bring a few people up to make sure everyone had good facial expressions for a song or the correct arm movements.  One comment I received was that I had great facial expressions.  Now if you're not in show choir you won't know this but it's extremely important to be on point with the music like that.  I took that comment in feeling good about the competition season.  Our first  competition was at DC-G and our 'rivals' Pella AcaPella were there.

     It has always been a goal of ours to beat them and we were going to try our best.  We did our set and it was awesome!  We killed it and we were excited to see how we placed, so along come awards.  Colby and I are up on stage standing in anticipation to see what we placed.  Slowly but surely we get best male vocals, best female vocals, etc., then they say the runner up was Pella AcaPella, we won!!  Norwalk Sound Revolution placed first!  This brought the whole team closer than before and we were ready to do it again the second round, and we did!

     I was so happy with the team and myself.  We pushed ourselves to be our best and the reward was accomplishing our goal!  I want to carry this on to college by setting goals for myself that I can take little steps at and accomplish.  Not all goals are going to be easy.  I know it will be a struggle but with a little help from others and motivation I know that it's possible to surpass those goals.