Second week of blogs and class

This week in class we talked about what some of the main problems or questions that incoming freshman would have coming into their first semester at college. Going into class I hadn’t even thought about frequent problems that they had. I was only thinking about what I had experienced and what situations I had gone through. It was a big wake up call that I need to start preparing and preparing myself for the coming year.

Something that I think is the most relevant thing to think about is that every student is going to have to find out who they are and who they want to be in college. I think they will have lots of questions about how I handled it and what advice I would have for their situation. But there would be some things that I never had to go through. For example, I never had to deal with homesickness because my home was only 20 minutes away. This would take some preparation and thought on how I would handle that question.

One of the things that the booked did really well was laying out all of the things that people struggle with during their first year at college. For example they talked about how most first year students can have troubles with adjusting to living with someone that they might not get along with first semester or living with integrity even though there is no one watching over your shoulder. 

I was kind of surprised to find that this book actually had some information that would be useful to apply in my time as a peer mentor. In my experience most books that are supposed to be helpful in teaching you things, aren't usually pretty good. But, with the first two chapters of this book it has made really excited for the rest of the semester and to see how it prepares us to be peer mentors!

First Blog as a Peer Mentor!

Hello,
My name is Sam Hausler and I am a sophomore majoring in Finance. I have lived on campus for the past two years in Larch hall, and yes I love polar bears! But I am not writing about polar bears, I am writing about myself. I was homeschooled up until my junior year of high school when I started going to Ankeny Christian Academy. I graduated from ACA with a class size of 11. Thats right, 11. So not a big change from being homeschooled. Then I came to Iowa State where my first class has over 300 students in it. That was a big change, but the change has ultimately been good and helped me to grow as a person.

The time when I am at my best is when I am around people I love, doing something that I have a passion for. I am a very emotional person so when I there is something I am passionate for, it motivates me to continue to work harder and try to do the best job that I can do.

What I enjoy doing most is connecting with people. I feel like I can use things that have happened in my life and things that I am still going through to relate to people and help them through tough times in their life.

Something I enjoy learning about is things that I can apply to everyday life. I don't like the classes when the teacher just says things that you could never use either in your future or now as a student. I understand that not all things are applicable to your major, but when they can tie something back into an application, then I enjoy those classes or lectures.

My goals as a peer mentor is to help transition freshman into their move to college. I was blessed to have many older students that could give me advice and help me to not make stupid mistakes. Another goal that I have is just to simply be there for the people in my group. I want to be available and someone that they know they can come to outside of class and recitation.

The role that I would play is something that I kind of talked about in the last question. To always be available to the students, and to give them things that I have found helpful in my transition.

Sam Hausler

Diversity Event

The diversity event that I went to was Candy Crowley discussing what happened during the campaign process and her post-election analysis. Walking into the Memorial Union I didn't know what to really expect to listen to during this talk.

Having this be the first presidential election that I could actually vote in, I was actually interested in what each candidate stood for and their policies for different things. So when I found out that she was going to talk about why she thought that Obama won the election my interest immediately increased. Once I saw what she what she looked like I realized that I had seen the election that she had moderated.  

One of the main things that she talked about was why she thought the election went the way that it did. I agree with a lot of things that she said. For example, she talked about how the Democrats focused on getting votes from the cities, which is usually the case for every election, and that the Republicans focused on the suburbs, also usually the case. But during this election the Democrats got more votes than usual from the cities while the Republicans got less than usual from the suburbs that they counted on to bring in votes. The other main reason that she gave is that Obama won a lot of the votes from the Hispanics. Obama won around 70% of the Hispanic votes, while Romney only got around 30% of the remaining voters.

It was really interesting hearing an expert in politics talk about the election and why everything turned out the way that it did. I'm glad that I went to this event because it drew my attention more than the other ones would have. Would I have gone to this if it wasn't for the Hixson program? Probably not. But am I glad that I went? Absolutely.

How I've grown, what I've learned

This semester has been really good for me as a Hixson Scholar. I have been so blessed to have a great section and two peer mentors that really care if we do well or not. I couldn't have asked for a better first semester as a Cyclone. Over this semester I have grown a lot and learned a few things and this is that this blog is about.

This semester I learned a lot of things, I learned that you actually need to study at college and work hard to get good grades, you can't just coast by like I could in high school. I needed to actually put myself out there and talk to people in order to make friends, the talking part isn't very hard for me. I learned how to work as a team and that everyone learns and communicates in different ways. This was a big learning experience for me because I like everyone to learn and do things my way.

I have also grown a lot this semester. I have grown in my understanding of who I am and how I react to certain situations. Whether this was with the MBTI test or other tests that we had to do. I grew in a way that I found out that I can live an entire semester away from home.

My first semester at Iowa State was fantastic and I couldn't have ased for a better experience. I have been surrounded by great friends and fellow students. I am looking forward to see what happens in these next three years.

What The Hixson Award Means To Me

Finances has never been a worry for me. My family was in the middle class and I just assumed that we were normal. Then when my dad passed away because of cancer the Spring of my Junior year, while everyone was thinking about what to do next, I was thinking about how I was going to pay for college. Fear crept in when I couldn't think of a way to pay for college, especially with price of college not getting any cheaper, without taking any loans. My Junior and Senior year I worked as hard as I could in hopes of possibly getting a scholarship. I have heard so many stories about people getting in a large amount of debt because of their college loans that they couldn't pay off. My dad has his masters degree in Biology and I remember seeing him mail bill after bill to try and pay all of his loans off. 

When I started to look for scholarships, I was trying to decide whether to go to The University of Northern Iowa or Iowa State University. When I saw the Hixson Scholarship I knew immediately that this was the perfect scholarship for me to get. The fact that one of the requirements really showed me that they were looking for people who had gone through something tough and was able to persevere through it. The fact that it was worth a lot of money also attracted it to me. What I decided, without telling anyone, is that if I got the Hixson scholarship then I would go to Iowa State. Then when I received the news that I had received the scholarship I ran around the house yelling. Not only because I had just received a great honor, but because I knew finally where I was going to go to college. 

In conclusion the Hixson Award means more to me than an amount of money. It means to me one of the reasons why I came to Iowa State and that I have people that are willing to support me and believe that because of the things I have gone through they think that I have the ability to succeed in college and in life. 

Diversity

My initial reaction when I heard that we were having a diversity talk, was "Oh great, another talk about diversity." But the talk that we had was different, it changed my thoughts and outlook on diversity a lot more than all of the other talks. I think the thing that impacted me the most was the difference between empathy and sympathy. Usually when thinking about diversity I usually just think in a sympathetic way. Feeling sorry for the people that are discriminated against instead of actually thinking about how I would react in their situations.

In high school I just thought that diversity involved race. Now after been to many diversity talks I have realized that it is about so much more. It includes: race, culture, social status, sexual orientation, age, gender, and much more. It really showed me that diversity isn't just limited to what color your skin is.

Diversity is important to our culture for many reasons. It is what separates everyone of us and what makes us unique. Without diversity our lives would be pretty boring. Everyone would be the same and that doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.

Social Media Week

When I first heard what our assignment was for Social Media, I was actually kind of worried because I didn't know what I was going to do. I have always heard about Twitter but never thought about getting one. At first, I didn't know what to tweet about, or who to follow. But once I got the hang of it, it became a lot easier to know what to talk about. I think that tweeting things that envolved our careers was a lot harder than tweets that were meant to be funny.

Connecting with different people was a hard task. Because I didn't know where to start or who to even follow. Following people is probably the most important part of Twitter. Because who you follow determine what you read on your home page. It also shows the kind of person that you are. When people look at who your are following they can get a pretty good idea of what you enjoy and what your hobbies are. This goes for employers as well. Employers may look me up on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They can see what kind of person I am in a short amount of time. As long as I keep my sites looking professional, they could possibly help me achieve my goals later on down the road.

The articles and video surprised me quite a bit. I didn't know that people overseas are affected by this as much as we are. Also this week has really showed me how much time I spend on social media sites. Such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.