Failure

Not everything in my life can be a success, it's a fact of life. This was a reminder forced upon me at the Heifer International Fundraiser Lunch this past Friday. This was the 3rd year that our ASGSA has put this on to benefit Heifer International and unfortunately also the worst as far as turnout. I know not everything can be blamed on me - it was a group effort, it was on a really nice day, not all of the secretary's followed through on advertising, etc. - but I also helped in the decision not to pre-sell tickets this year and I think that led to a turn for the worse.

The end result of this is that we didn't raise enough money for Heifer as we had hoped and that a lot of people put in a lot of really hard work for a less than thrilling result. I felt at the end of the day as if I'd let people down a little. I hope that wasn't the case, but then again I more hope that it doesn't get brought up again in conversation in the first place. I don't like things not working out like they should.

But there was also a shining moment from my clouds of despair. The grad students showed up en masse to help with the lunch and for that I'm grateful. It was good if nothing else to get everyone together and to spend some time socializing and working over the food to feed the people who did show up. For that I am thankful and that was the uplifting part of the day. This group cares about service and they're willing to put the time into it. We had a chance to share food with some 40 people and outreach from animal science students is still outreach, regardless of how many people we reach. I just think it's a shame for all the help that we had to have only served 40 people.

Plant Sale

With one more thing to add to the busy schedule I keep for the next year, I asked to be nominated for the presidency of our departmental graduate student association. Not wanting to step on anyone’s toes, I rarely ask to lead things if there is someone else capable of taking the leadership role when I can just as easily lead without the title. But this time, I wanted the title, the authority and to finally do something that I can look back and formally get credit for, so here goes. Hopefully they’re glad they voted for me when this is all over.

Our grad student association was pretty dead when I showed up last year. No offense to any grad students who read this, but that is at least the way it seemed to me and the other new people last year. Most people didn’t spend a lot of time with each, either in service projects or in social activities. This isn’t to say that the club wasn’t formally doing things, but the club in theory consisted of far more people than the few that actually showed up and did stuff. I had long talks with the now past president about frustrations with lack of group participation, and so my goal since last fall has been to encourage people to start joining in activities, starting as always with the big winners, sports and drinks. Everyone likes a little bit of social drinking as a group; as our Wageningen University president said, it made meeting people much easier. And honestly, it works well. We’ve had great participation in group drinks and sports, and everyone has been good at encouraging group participation so that we’ve all gotten to know each other a lot better.

Hoping to build on the momentum we’ve gained through the past year, I volunteered and was elected to the presidency in the hope that we can really mold this student body into a factor and a positive influence on campus. There are so many opportunities for us to make an impact even within our department, so hopefully this next year will be a great success.

It already started really well this past weekend when we served brats and burgers for the plant sale. Not only did this serve as a small fundraiser for us, but this gave us an opportunity to increase our visibility on campus. Many people stopped to talk and to ask questions, and this was a chance for students to talk about what they do at the Animal Sciences building and to discuss different factors of meat production for human consumption. We also served many grateful volunteers and so what started out as a fundraiser opportunity morphed in a broad-spectrum outreach opportunity which I was very proud to be a part of.

Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious

Yep, that's right, I went to see Mary Poppins this past weekend with Amanda and the extended in-laws, and I loved it. I grew up on the movie and have always been attached to the good magic worked by Mary Poppins who teaches kids to love their imaginations and to stop wasting time on obstinacy. Of course, that's probably also why my mom liked the movie so much and put it on for us to watch so often. Combined with the my favorite actor as a youth, that is Dick van Dyke, the movie was one of my favorites. I have to say I was a bit surprised by the ending being a tick happier than the movie, but the storyline was about the same, with great performers, a solid soundtrack and simply put it embodied my idea of a good time on a Thursday evening.

Life recently hasn't been a simple coast, but I can't really pretend that it's been altogether difficult. I'm cleaning up a lot of little things I've started and then also starting a lot of new things. Recently finished with my online class, I'm down to one class for the rest of this academic year and a couple of seminars which I go to. This opens up time for me to work on finishing old lab projects and the start uploading my proposal online which should be submitted to our IACUC this week. Then I will work towards finalizing my comp submission and internship plan for the National 4-H Conference with Lauren. She's been busy moving to a new job recently so we've had to put that off a bit, but I think she deserves a brief shout out for finishing her Masters like a champ - Congratulations!

Many of the people in our office are finishing in the next month and it's sad to see people go. This past week has definitely been a sharp realization of just how much work and life will change in the next month as we transition through the end of another academic year. My election as the future ASGSA president will mean I have a larger responsibility towards the new grad students, so I'm excited to be given new challenges too as this year rolls along. So hang in there folks, and stay tuned for a series of posts on their way to this page and some additional pictures on my Picasa album.