this is it. this is my last blog as a student voice for the college of mount st. joseph. i've been thinking about what i wanted to say here for quite some time and then it hit me - advice. yea, its cliche but i've taken a different spin on it. i've chosen to walk around the dorm building with a notepad and pen at hand and ask some of the students to share some advice. i had given them some background for my reasoning and then stated that it could include quotes, lyrics, inside jokes and more and could revolve around academics, college life, relationships, and humor. the statements i received revolve around a wide spectrum of these topics:

Honesty is the best image.

Be prepared for shattered expectations. It doesn’t always mean broken. It can be a growing experience.

Don’t let your schoolwork get in your way of a good education.

Think with your head, not your heart.

If the ocean were whiskey and I were a duck I’d float to the bottom and stay there.

It’s true what people say; patience is a virtue. But without taking risks you are not guaranteed rewards. If you see something worth fighting for, NEVER turn down that opportunity… you gotta live to learn. You gotta crash and burn. You gotta make some stances, and take some chances. You gotta live and love and take all life has to give. You gotta live and learn so you can learn to live.

Don’t let somebody be a priority in your life if you’re only an option in theirs.

A life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

I’m not afraid to be who I am.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day. And I believe in miracles.

I have learned that your college friends become a kind of family: you eat together, laugh and cry and do absolutely nothing together – until you can’t remember how you ever survived without them.

Tough times don’t last but tough girls do.

Even a broken clock is correct two times a day.

Success is a peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best.

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

Regret nothing that once made you smile.

To coxify: to complicate simple matters.

When you see the light at the end of the tunnel get off the tracks.

Talking in a British accent while intoxicated makes your time worthwhile.

Being different is being normal.

Its something unpredictable but in the end its right, I hope you had the time of your life.

I hope you dance.

Live life for those you love. When you get the chance, do it for someone else.

Prayer in action is love, and love in action is service.

Dance as though no one is watching you, Sing as though no one can hear you, love as though you have never been hurt before, live as though heaven is on earth

Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.

Be still and know that I am God

Let go and Let God

The hardest thing is loving someone and then having the courage to let them love you back.

In life never stop dreaming... for in dreams, we never stop living.

Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and call it love.

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.

The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return.

God only brings on this challenge in our lives because he knows we’re strong enough to handle it.

Live your day with no regrets. A year from now, are you going to look back on today and be proud of the decisions you made and be happy with the memories of your actions?

No matter how bad a person is, there is something good about them so be like the humming bird and pick the sweetness of virtues.

I am more than happy to be leaving on this note. Constant encouragement to succeed and be the best you can be is the strongest love and that will go on forever.i wish nothing but absolute success in all of your endeavors and will part with the pride that I have earned a degree from the mount and that the education i've been rewarded extends so far past the classes. thank you, everyone, for your time and interest.

 Class Dismissed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIVyRjAI0pI&feature=related

Hey guys!

Guess what? This is my last blog as an undergraduate for the College of Mount St. Joseph. Now I know you all are choking back tears and all that stuff, but I just wanted to say a few final comments before I walk across the stage on Saturday. First off, I want to thank my bosses Cliff and Betheny for allowing me to get on the website and type about random stuff every week. I have had a great time sharing my experiences with all of you out there and I hope that I have completed my job in giving you all insight to life as a student at the College of Mount St. Joseph. 

It’s weird; I always looked forward to graduation and getting the diploma, but now that its here, I’m really not all that excited. I guess all the work that’s gone into it, it’ll just be a relief having accomplished the goal. I’ve never been one to get excited about reaching my goals, because by the time it comes to fruition, I have higher goals in place and the original goal becomes merely a stepping stone to the next step. Right now, my next step is getting hired at a high school somewhere (I have my school I want to work with in my head, but I won’t post it here).

The thing I forgot about when thinking of graduation was the fact that many of the people I’ve surrounded myself with over the past four years will be returning to their hometowns and other places of interest.  I guess so many of my friends that were from out of town that attended the Mount stayed in Cincinnati after graduation and it never occurred to me that people actually leave the Westside of Cincinnati. Until the other day when I received like a bazillion going away party invitations on Facebook. Oh wait. Everyone ISN’T trapped by the Westside vortex and they actually DO go back home sometimes. I’m thankful for the friends I have made and the experiences I’ve had with them and I’ll be sad to see them all go. It’s like high school all over again, seeing everyone go off in their own directions.

But I still have a few days of activities planned and few more chances for memories before goodbyes (First off will be the Iron Man 1 viewing and Iron Man 2 midnight showing on Thursday night over at Newport on the Levee!). 

As my last paragraph I write on here, let me say that the Mount has been a perfect fit for me. I have countless exceptional experiences and can’t think of any serious issues over the past four years. I guess that qualifies as an overall positive experience, huh? I’m grateful for all of my professors, advisors, coaches, support staff, and bosses that have helped me out and provided me with amazing opportunities that would have been unmatched elsewhere. I am walking away from this institution with absolutely no regrets as to if I made the right college choice.

Thanks for everything, do well in everything you do, and…

See ya!

>Eric M.

“However gifted an individual is at the outset, ifhis or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition,because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born” –Simone de Beauvoir

Why is it that we have gifted children, children that are extremelybright and very intelligent, children that are identified as so, sitting in ourgeneral classroom across the country bored to tears?  Why is it that my gifted nephew is in the office almostevery day at school for behavioral problems that no one in the family has everseen signs of in his 10 years on this planet? Why is it that we have our advanced learners failing out of high schoolor dropping out to go to the streets or to work?  Well I think it boils down to a lack ofaction and a lack of funding.

It is our job as future educators to know our students, and not just thepercentage of our students that are considered “normal,” I mean, after all…what is normal?  A teacher should take iton as her personal responsibility to try to reach the children in her classroomin some special way, to show them that she cares about them as more than a student– as a unique person.  Before going intothe research for my research paper for Mr. Santoro I had mixed feeling about gifted programs.  I myself am a product of a gifted program atthe middle school level and growing up I always thought it was unfair to belabeled as gifted because in my school it brought with it unfair stereotypicaljudgments.  If I went to my BYWAYS classeveryone else thought that I was getting special treatment that was allowing meto get off easy, but if I stayed in the general classroom I would be so boredthat I would just drift away and get in trouble for not paying attention.

It seems to me that there should be a way to give our gifted learnersmore support in this great country.  People wonder why there are no programs out there – well, it’s because there’s nomoney out there to run those programs and they don’t exactly pay for themselves now do they? When I researched the regulations regarding gifted education and found thatthere were NONE at the federal level I was in shock.  How can we leave these students without support,to go on their own separate ways and figure out how to adjust to their specialneeds the way I had to learn to do in high school and now in college?  To me, we are doing these children aninjustice by not helping them and to be completely honest, they aren’t blind…they know that their disabled counterparts have all kinds of money available tothem and that they themselves basically have none.  I’m in no way saying that funding shouldbe taken away from students with learning disabilities and handicaps, but these children needit too.

I have learned so much valuable information over the course of writingthis paper, it has made the whole course worthwhile to me.  I am a firm believer in thefact that you cannot possible know where you are going until you know where youhave come from.  I would not be nearly asprepared to facilitate lessons to fit the learning styles of the giftedchildren that may be in my future classrooms had I not written this paper.  Learning about the characteristics of giftedchildren and exploring the various strategies to use in the classroom with themoffered me a perspective on giftedness I had never been exposed to before.  I always looked at gifted and talentededucation as a gifted student, but this paper gave me a lens through which tolook at this exceptionality as an educator. Gifted education has come a long way from Plato’s Academy, but there arestill many steps that need to be made towards getting it to be where it needsto be to efficiently serve the leaders of tomorrow.

This image is from  http://www.nagc.org/index2.aspx?id=3134

Megan, New Jersey, 14 

Today was the day that I made that ever so important decision to put my words from my last entry into action... 

I started bright and early.  Mr. Santoro's 8:15 class was canceled this morning and while everyone else was enjoying their free class period sleeping in I was on campus already.  I decided that if I set my alarm for 5:30 and got up and stayed home that it would be no time before I was sound asleep again and I didn't want that to happen.  I had things that needed to get done and I wasn't about to let that time that I was already used to being up for anyway just slip by.  So I got up at 5:30 and was out the door but 6:00 with a packed lunch and a full cup of coffee.

When I got to campus I was one of a handful of students just arriving and I got a really good parking spot (always a plus on a long day!).  I found the empty classroom where I would normally be sitting with my peers learning about the world of exceptionalities that will greet our every waking moment as teachers in the career field.  I picked a spot by the window where the cool morning breeze would keep my mind awake and my senses alert and I pulled out my worn copy of Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch and began to carefully read and analyze the 12-page section that Dr. Green had assigned to us for the quiz we would be having in class.  It was nothing overly interesting, mostly just how radical progressive educators had gotten after the Great Depression and how many extremeist ideas there were out there about the role schools should play in society... it's worth a look if you like that kind of stuff.  I went through it once, nit picking and highlighting/underlining every important detail and then I went back and read straight through it one more time for fluidity and comprehension.  

At that point I was really getting sleepy.  I have been very sick since Monday afternoon when I came home from work with a temperature of 103 (not fun).  Anyway, I decided I needed to move, so I made my way to the lobby where I watched my fellow students all around me.  Some I knew, some I didn't; some conversations I recognized (senior thesis projects, a shake up in CAB and the very quiz I had just prepared for were among them) and some just failed to catch my attention.  I sat there for probably 10-15minutes thinking over what I had just read to myself so I could keep it fresh in my mind.  Then it was time for class so I made my way up to the 2nd floor of the classroom building and sat down in the front row of the stifling atmosphere of CL 206 and waited for the customary rhetoric of Dr. Green to announce his arrival.

"I think I may have actually gotten a 10 out of 10 on that one," I said to Chris as we headed down to the Excel department. "And you know what? I think I actually understood what he was talking about today, it didn't seem like a bunch of mumbo jumbo jibberish..." my voice trailed off as I saw the look on Chris's face (which meant that he did not feel the same way), so I decided to drop the subject for the more favorable one of what was on special at the food court today (it was buffalo chicken wraps).  After I dropped my notes off at Excel I stopped by to see Betheny and missed her, and then we headed down to the food court.  While I ate I tied up some loose ends with emails that I had out to some professors and some applications and the sort that I had unfinished floating around my desktop.  After that I put pen to paper and made out a to-do list for the rest of the semester, and let me tell YOU it's a DOOZY!  It hurts me to look at it, but at the same time it feels good to know exactly what has to be done.

Art class went smoothly, my group was understanding of my absences and Mrs. Dick cut me some slack on her grading policy, she thinks if I can continue my 'A' line of work from the beginning of the semester (before all hell broke loose) though to the end of the semester and do really well on my final that I can pull through with a 'B', but no higher than that... ugh, I wish there was something I could do about the classes I had to miss... anyway... her final will require a lot of time and effort, but to be completely honest I think I will have fun with it.  Before I left campus for work I added her final and my responsibilities for our group project to my list of things to do.... looks like thing will be getting hairy this weekend. 

Work went nicely, I hadn't seen the kids in awhile because I've been sick and Ariyanna was glad to have her Mancala partner back.  Alexus is on crutches and Aaron lost a tooth... they are so great, I love it when I go to the after school program after being on campus so long on Thursdays because they're so lively and refreshing... they just make my day!  The Howards were picked up right at 5:00 leaving Issa as the only one left.  His mother showed up at 5:15 and Ms. Dorris and I were free to go.  I-471 was shut down so I had to come home Columbia Parkway which was backed up all the way back to the city and it took me the better part of and hour to get home instead of the usual half hour.  I ate dinner and then my medicine knocked me out so I slept until 9:30 and now here we are.

Why is any of this important enough to me to be in my blog at all?  Well because just yesterday I didn't want to do anything, everyday "staples" were a big feat for me and everything I did, no matter how simple, required a great deal of effort.  But I reached that breaking point and I decided to keep pushing through no matter how hard things got.  So today "carpe diem" was my motto... and I think I did a good job of seizing the day!

Let's hope I can continue. 

P.S. I have been thinking about my first year here and all the fun I had.  This picture symbolizes a time when things were better and I was in a better place with my mind... this is what I'm striving to reach again... 

Today was the day that I made that ever so important decision to put my words from my last entry into action... 

I started bright and early.  Mr. Santoro's 8:15 class was canceled this morning and while everyone else was enjoying their free class period sleeping in I was on campus already.  I decided that if I set my alarm for 5:30 and got up and stayed home that it would be no time before I was sound asleep again and I didn't want that to happen.  I had things that needed to get done and I wasn't about to let that time that I was already used to being up for anyway just slip by.  So I got up at 5:30 and was out the door but 6:00 with a packed lunch and a full cup of coffee.

When I got to campus I was one of a handful of students just arriving and I got a really good parking spot (always a plus on a long day!).  I found the empty classroom where I would normally be sitting with my peers learning about the world of exceptionalities that will greet our every waking moment as teachers in the career field.  I picked a spot by the window where the cool morning breeze would keep my mind awake and my senses alert and I pulled out my worn copy of Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch and began to carefully read and analyze the 12-page section that Dr. Green had assigned to us for the quiz we would be having in class.  It was nothing overly interesting, mostly just how radical progressive educators had gotten after the Great Depression and how many extremeist ideas there were out there about the role schools should play in society... it's worth a look if you like that kind of stuff.  I went through it once, nit picking and highlighting/underlining every important detail and then I went back and read straight through it one more time for fluidity and comprehension.  

At that point I was really getting sleepy.  I have been very sick since Monday afternoon when I came home from work with a temperature of 103 (not fun).  Anyway, I decided I needed to move, so I made my way to the lobby where I watched my fellow students all around me.  Some I knew, some I didn't; some conversations I recognized (senior thesis projects, a shake up in CAB and the very quiz I had just prepared for were among them) and some just failed to catch my attention.  I sat there for probably 10-15minutes thinking over what I had just read to myself so I could keep it fresh in my mind.  Then it was time for class so I made my way up to the 2nd floor of the classroom building and sat down in the front row of the stifling atmosphere of CL 206 and waited for the customary rhetoric of Dr. Green to announce his arrival.

"I think I may have actually gotten a 10 out of 10 on that one," I said to Chris as we headed down to the Excel department. "And you know what? I think I actually understood what he was talking about today, it didn't seem like a bunch of mumbo jumbo jibberish..." my voice trailed off as I saw the look on Chris's face (which meant that he did not feel the same way), so I decided to drop the subject for the more favorable one of what was on special at the food court today (it was buffalo chicken wraps).  After I dropped my notes off at Excel I stopped by to see Betheny and missed her, and then we headed down to the food court.  While I ate I tied up some loose ends with emails that I had out to some professors and some applications and the sort that I had unfinished floating around my desktop.  After that I put pen to paper and made out a to-do list for the rest of the semester, and let me tell YOU it's a DOOZY!  It hurts me to look at it, but at the same time it feels good to know exactly what has to be done.

Art class went smoothly, my group was understanding of my absences and Mrs. Dick cut me some slack on her grading policy, she thinks if I can continue my 'A' line of work from the beginning of the semester (before all hell broke loose) though to the end of the semester and do really well on my final that I can pull through with a 'B', but no higher than that... ugh, I wish there was something I could do about the classes I had to miss... anyway... her final will require a lot of time and effort, but to be completely honest I think I will have fun with it.  Before I left campus for work I added her final and my responsibilities for our group project to my list of things to do.... looks like thing will be getting hairy this weekend. 

Work went nicely, I hadn't seen the kids in awhile because I've been sick and Ariyanna was glad to have her Mancala partner back.  Alexus is on crutches and Aaron lost a tooth... they are so great, I love it when I go to the after school program after being on campus so long on Thursdays because they're so lively and refreshing... they just make my day!  The Howards were picked up right at 5:00 leaving Issa as the only one left.  His mother showed up at 5:15 and Ms. Dorris and I were free to go.  I-471 was shut down so I had to come home Columbia Parkway which was backed up all the way back to the city and it took me the better part of and hour to get home instead of the usual half hour.  I ate dinner and then my medicine knocked me out so I slept until 9:30 and now here we are.

Why is any of this important enough to me to be in my blog at all?  Well because just yesterday I didn't want to do anything, everyday "staples" were a big feat for me and everything I did, no matter how simple, required a great deal of effort.  But I reached that breaking point and I decided to keep pushing through no matter how hard things got.  So today "carpe diem" was my motto... and I think I did a good job of seizing the day!

Let's hope I can continue. 

P.S. I have been thinking about my first year here and all the fun I had.  This picture symbolizes a time when things were better and I was in a better place with my mind... this is what I'm striving to reach again... 

well i heard a little something on facebook today that its national procrastination day. i'm really not so sure about this. because i'm suprising myself with the amount of work that i'm really getting done today. well to be honest, its all work that should have been figured out by now, BUT ITS NOT LATE! but either way, i'm actually being productive today. on the day where i should be celebrating excuses i'm actually progressing and doing some really good work. yikes - does this mean i've actually grown up. do i have to actually be REAL adult now. okay okay okay, i know. i'm already an adult. i'm graduating from college in 23 days and it is pretty dang nerve-wrecking. this past weekend when i was home for my sister's wedding i had talked to sooooo many family members and friends of family members and friends of friends, and neighbors, and people that i haven't seen in 20 years. what did we talk about? well i'm sure this will sound familiar: so what are you doing when you graduate? ..... guess what - i have no idea. sure i've thought about my options with teaching, and volunteer work, and continuing school, and hospital jobs, and whatnot, but will i actually do? i don't have a license to teach or a masters to even substitute. i don't have a psychology title in my degree. i don't want to go back to school right away. its all a mystery right now. the biggest issue on my mind at the time is thesis. i have one week to get this thing posted on the wall and then its done. my senior thesis to graduate college with a bachelor's in art will be done.

what's so cool is that when it is done - i'll be free to make the choices i want to make with the freedom of time and enjoyment of a college degree!!!

I have been absolutely ALL OVER the place these past few weeks... I sit down and think about the time that has passed since the blogger lunch we had here with the team on campus and it just blows my mind.  I absolutely cannot even fathom where the time went, it just doesn't seem physically possible for me to go from being on top of things and excited about my future career to not even being sure if I will make it through the rest of the semester.  I just don't know what happened to everything.

That was a lie.  Yes I do.  Life happened, and when life wants to happen it doesn't ask you if you are okay with its decision first, it just snaps and suddenly everything you know is spinning around you and you lose your footing.  The next thing you know you're staring up from the bottom of a hole you've somehow dug yourself into.  You look at the blue sky up there above you and you can hear your friends and family going on with their lives on the surface, but no matter how hard you scream they can't hear you.  You look around for a way out, a foothold, a rope... anything, just any way out of this nightmare... but you don't find a thing.

 This is where a decision has to be made... you have two choices, to fight (and fight hard) and figure out a way up, or to sit down and let the world pass you by as you hang your head in shame.  I am familiar with this hole, familiar with these decisions as well as their outcomes and I don't like being here because it scares me.  Someone once told me that my depression was not something to be ashamed of, that it was something that made me who I am, something that, when handled the right way, I could almost be proud of.  Who was that someone??  Well, she was the someone that my parents decided to hire for me to talk to when Krystal died (like that was going to help...).  Who was Krystal??

Krystal LeAnn Delaney was one of my best friends throughout high school.  She was the third of the "Three Musketeers" and I had been through 13 years of school with her... we were READY to graduate, ready to show the world who we were and what we could do, and it was within 3 days of our grasp.  That's right, 3 short days until we were going to walk across that stage, shake Mr. Hopkin's hand, receive our diploma and say ADIOS to that one-horse town and spread our wings and fly.  We left that senior reward dinner Thursday night and headed our separate ways for the evening with dreams of graduation in our eyes.  I never saw Krystal again.  She was taken from this world faster than she had come into it, and suddenly those dreams were gone.  What should have been the happiest time of my life suddenly hurt so bad I could barely breathe!!  It was excruciating...

Now back to that person who told me to be proud of my depression what a JOKE)... I said NO!  I was tired of my life being controlled by medicine and doctors who didn't even know me, I was tired of people telling me that the grief process was depression and "it's been 6 months Megan, you should be over this, doing this to yourself won't bring her back..."  Well maybe it did take me longer than others, but I don't think anyone had a right to jump in and tell me what was wrong or what was right.  I didn't completely shut down, I still knew that what needed to be done had to get done and that my college came first, but a chunk of the very person I had been for the better majority of my life here on this earth was gone and I was trying to figure out how to go on with being myself without Krystal... I needed time to do that (and to tell the truth I'm still trying to figure it out).

The night before the blogger lunch I found myself faced with the task of preparing myself to lose someone even closer to me than Krystal was and I guess it's fair to say that it has hit me hard.  I have been feeling the icy hands of death gripping my life and my heart once again and I'm trying desperately to go on with my life and break free from this death hold... I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I need to get out of this hole, I refuse to just sit here and watch the person I love waste away to nothing while I let my schoolwork pass me by.  He wouldn't want that, no... he would want me to fight hard and to be the student he has always known I am.  I suppose it's time for me to realize that what's going to happen will happen whether or not I want it to and that I need to fight, to show him that I can do this, and to make him proud before this earth says goodbye to him... It's time to get out of this hole!

 I will fight and I WILL win.