April Blog Post

Blake Andrews
WOW, it's already the month of April! This school year has gone by very fast. I just want to take a moment to reflect on our project with CARE and feel good about all that we have accomplished. We still have a long way to go for April, but we have a plan in place. For the month of April we are finally hosting out fundraiser event for CARE! It is called "Dogs on Campus". At this event we will be providing students and staff the opportunity to play with hogs from CARE. We will be accepting cash and wish-list items for CARE. We have put out flyers as a group, had the Dean of Students send out a mass email to all students, and provided a powerpoint slide for the commons. We have advertised this event heavily. It should be a great success! After we do this event, all we will have left for Summit is out final presentation. I can't wait to tell people about our experience with CARE. It has been amazing!

Mitch Daniel
This year has gone by so quickly, never a dull moment in 629. By far my favorite year in college so far. A big part of that is due to my hilarious roomies and great housemates. Personally the greatest accomplishment might be the fact that we have "gotten along" so well for so long. I am so proud to have lived in the 629 aka home. My housemates have dominated the RLA competitions. Best Door Decoration, best funny video, swept the Cribs competition, and made up two of the four survivors after the zombie apocalypse. We are sorry that we will have to break up our dream team with the girls upstairs and take our talents to College Park next year, but we are ready to make an impact on that too. In the community we have made many more meaningful impacts. One of our big contributions to Castaway Animals Rescue Effort would be the huge number of hours we combined for working. Added all up it would be five straight days. Besides that we added to their pet care resources and added to their budget. Im so glad that we could give our time to such a deserving organization like CARE!

Logan Presscott
As our time at CARE is winding down I feel like my group is making an even bigger impact on my community. Last week, we hosted an event at Drury where a few dogs were brought to campus for the rest of the students a faculty to play with and walk as a way to bring in donations and make CARE become better known at Drury. The day after we hosted this event, one of the dogs, Rex, who was at the event got adopted! Not only did the dogs have great time at the event, in order to get away from the shelter for a while, but the students who showed up all had a great time as well. I have seen so many dogs come and go from the shelter and I learned so much about the shelter and just how much volunteers mean to the CARE staff. After volunteering this semester and becoming close to many of the dogs, I plan on returning to the shelter as much as I can to continue to make a difference.

Jamen Helton
Working at CARE this semester has been great. I have gotten to know so many new animals and people alike. I have found that working at CARE was definitely not as easy as I initially thought. You really need to take time to put in good work so the shelter can function. This month we had our big event for CARE- "Dogs on Campus". This event was a fundraiser where we brought 3 dogs from the shelter to Drury and we were able to have students and professors alike donate multiple items as well as play with the animals. This event was a big success we were able to take some donations for CARE and allow the students of Drury to enjoy some company before finals.

The Team (plus Tux)

 DOG PILE!

 Blue Skies, Blue Shirts, Full Hearts

"Place Donations Here"

Majors Unfair

We had a hing during core where we would go around to the different tables and learn about the different majors that we have at D U.  Most of the stations had tri-folds and some papers to take. The representative would talk to you for a few minutes give you papers then you'd move on to the next one.  My major happened to be the one with the thirty minute presentation in the presidents dinning room. It was a presentation on things freshman should know, like study abroad and things. It was also nice to learn about some of the other classes I might take if I have some free hours. If I did have a year where I wasn't already overloading I would choose to take some business classes to maybe minor in business if it is possible. Im already taking one class in the spring that starts the business minor but also completes other requirements. It will also be fun, I enjoy classes like that and I always do well in them because i like it.

ALICE Training

The ALICE Training speech given by the Springfield Police Officer informed us on the way to react when an active shooter is in progress somewhere near us. His advice was much different from what we learned in school. Starting in elementary school we would have "code red" drills where we would turn of the lights, lock the doors, and hide in the back of the room. He told us that we were doing the worst thing possible and making ourselves to be the best targets. He gave us a new protocol for when an active shooter warning is given. The first thing we should try to do if we can is run from the scene and call the police. The Second best way to avoid the bad situation is to hide, but not to hide the old way he advises us to barricade the doors and be ready to fight back if the intruder do get in. He showed us examples from the past and illustrated how some did the wrong thing and how some did the correct thing. His speech made some points that made me think what would I have done in the past if that happend at my school. I think I might have done what other victims did. Nothing. He made one point hat I thought was really interesting. He said that we have been conditioned to act the way we did and we cant be blamed for what we did. I experienced something like that recently. Me and some friends were in a movie theater alone during a movie. For some reason we started whispering about what happend in the movie. I then noticed the comical quality of the situation. In any other setting where it was just us I would talk plenty loud for every one to here me easily. But because were in a theater I whispered without thinking. The talk has made me think twice about all the things that I "naturally" do.

YOU: How have you changed this year

How have I changed this year? I dont feel like I have changed very much this year. If I was to of had a change it would be how I see my future. This year in architecture classes I learned much more than I used to about the carrer and what an architects job is. I learned that they are much more of artists than I thought coming into the year. Art is not my favorite subject and I'm not very good at pretending that things look like something that they are not. Most of my leaning and growth this year was probably done outside of the classroom. If there was any growth it would mostly be in my time management and perseverance. College days seem a lot shorter than they were back home. In high school I never lost any sleep because I was doing homework or a project. It used to be that there was time for tv and reading for fun. But now the tv is only on if its the super bowl, March Madness or the police tracked down a domestic terrorist, and reading is only if you are forced to for class which makes it impossible to enjoy. This year I learned what it was like to try to be creative and "designy" while not sleeping for a few days. I now understand why when I would tell them I was an architecture major I would get concerned looks like I said I was joining a nocturnal colt where we play with knives, make purposeless mounds of cardboard, and worship structures make hundreds or thousands of years ago. I still remember years ago back in August when I had my first studio class and how disappointed, disillusioned and dishappy I was when the teacher said where were going to make a painting of a painting of and artist born before 1500.  Obviously I am a much different person than I was at the beginning of this year.

Financial Wellness

This blog post is about financial wellness. According to the first point in Matt Battaglia's blog (http://andreabcreative.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/the-core-of-financial-wellness/) I am making the number one financial mistake a college student can make: nothing. I havent ever wanted to educate myself on finances. I do know some about this from my mom and from watching the Clark Howard show sometimes. In the future I dont see myself taking the time to read any financial blogs.
The second point is knowing the importance of having good credit.  I have learned the importance of having good credit from the commercials for "Free Credit Report.com". I have asked people when I was wondering what it was and got the basic run down of what credit is.
The next point was to get a credit card and learn how to use it wisely. My math teacher in fifth grade told my class to never get credit cards and that they will make you lose all your money. If that is true then why does everyone have one? I see the usefulness of them and how they speed up checking out at Hobby Lobby or quickly leaving BWs at half-time to make it home for the rest of the game. On most other occasions I prefer to use other ways to pay. 

Physical Activity

In class we took a test that judged us in our """"life choices"""". The test included many questions from many different categories. According to the test I am best in Physical Activity. I can say that I expected that to be the one but this is only because I run year round on the XC and track team. If it were not for that I would not be that good at physical activity. I do not think that it was an accurate test of my """life choices""" because I dont make the choice to workout, my coach does. If I was going to try to help someone be better in this category, the one way I could help them would be to tell them to become good enough at a sport that you play at a competitive level where you are forced to be in great shape. If this person didn't have the determination or was just really bad at sports I would tell them to find an activity that they love and can keep loving it after doing it everyday, sometimes twice a day, for hours. If I were not on the team I would have a score in that category of two. Which would be one of my lowest and creativity and self expression would be the highest. This an interesting name for this category it looks more like a Are you depressed? test. Who would say no to "I want to live to be at least 80+ years old" or any of the other weird ones.

Diversity & Inclusion

I believe that it is good to have a diverse selection of people around you in life. They can give you a broader knowledge of the world and may make you more accepting to other people. If you are accustomed to encountering people that seem weird, they wont scare you away. I like to meet and get to know people that seem weird from the outside. I've noticed that once you understand the person better you start to realize how why they are that way. A lot of times they only seem weird to us because they are different then what we are used to, but where they come from they are just fitting in. When you include someone that has been pushed out or doesn’t want to be included you are adding a new perspective to the group. When a group alienates a person, sometimes unintentionally, they reduce the number to minds working together. This can happen when everyone is agreeing except one person who doesn’t want to speak up because they know they will be out numbered, but just because everyone has the same opinion doesn’t mean it is the correct one. By adding the other side of the discussion a better solution can be made where angles have been said and heard. Also it is nice.