An Industry that Keeps Bringing You Back

It's ironic how things work. Thursday night was one of those horrible nights that you wish was a bad dream. My friend's mare finally foaled (after being on heavy duty foal watch for a few days prior) but after a weird delivery, the foal was born dead. At some point, her umbilical cord had gotten (for lack of a better word) kinked, cutting oxygen off to the foal. While it was a horrible experience, instead of chasing me away from the industry again, it actually brought me back.

If you know me, you know that when I was a teenager, my life was all about horses. There was a time that I was on the road nearly every weekend with my horse and had major dreams of being a big rider. As that dream slowly faded due to lack of money and life getting in the way, I moved on to other things. And when I got injured, I pretty much stepped out of the horse industry all together other than watching horse racing.

While I have been writing articles about horse racing off and on over the past year or so, it was mostly just a fun thing. I love the whole industry and have a lot of opinions on it so writing about racing let me get some of those opinions out. But I honestly never thought about rejoining the industry in an active role until the past few months. When I first got my USEF internship, I figured I'd go, get the experience, then move on to another sport. But now, that plan has drastically changed and I hope that I can stay in some position like the one I'll be doing for the six months after graduation.

Horses are amazing animals, I don't think many people will dispute that. But what we all seem to fail to realize is that they have some sort of weird power over us that lets us think we can escape before pulling us back in. I may have spent the past few years trying to escape my horse craziness that was my life when I was younger but I think it's time to face the facts that it will never go away. So I think it's time to give in and admit that for once, my younger version was way smarter than the person I am today on this issue.

Liz Murray

WT added another thing to it's resume when it comes to changing my life last night. Every year, we have something called "Communications Week". Last year I didn't participate but last night I went to the guest speaker they brought in. Her name is Liz Murray and she's probably mostly known as the "Homeless to Harvard" girl. To kind of explain her story, I've linked a video below so you can get a better feel about her than I could ever describe.

I'm not going to lie, at first I wasn't planning on going to this speech. I was supposed to work the reception beforehand for the Eternal Flame and decided that after the reception, I'd go do homework. But after going to the reception, I decided to join my friends to watch the speech. It was definitely a night full of learning for me. 

When I showed up to the reception, I learned it wasn't really for students, more for the big, important people that help run the school. I talked to people from the Board of Advisers for our college and other people I'd never dream of being in a room with at any other time. It was definitely a learning experience on smoozing. 

As we went into the lecture after the reception, I was hoping it would be a 45 minute thing followed by 15 minutes of questions, then we'd be done and even kept checking the time for the first 10 minutes or so but Liz finally sucked me in and I never wanted it to end. She was the right sort of entertaining and inspiring that after the lecture, I wanted to go out and do something productive. Here was a lady that was homeless and STILL made something of her life, after a speech like that, you can't feel sorry for yourself. And it's really made me step up and reevaluate where I am right now. How can I continue to better myself? That's the burning question that I have in my brain.

It's been 24 hours and I'm still attempting to digest everything I heard last night and how it affects me. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to sit down and be totally honest with myself and figure out how I can't only help myself, but also help others like Liz Murray did. I'm definitely going to get her book soon so I can be reminded about the speech and think about the "What If" she brought up when talking about life changing moments. Like she said, a life changing experience can be inches away from you at all times, I'm ready to find that experience and take it head on.

For the love of sports

Tonight The Prairie had a mixer with the local community college where we not only got to mingle with each other and give the visiting students a chance to experience WT but the editor of the local major paper in the area, the Amarillo Globe, also came to talk to us.

One of the things he said was that as journalists, our goal should be to make a change in the community where we work. He gave some real life examples that make total sense and while I’m not really planning on doing anything outside of sports, I related to what he said and even saw how it could apply to my area of the industry.

I’m not sure if I’m going to be a journalist in the “real” sense or if I’m going to go into media relations but like making a difference in the community, I want to make a different for whatever sport I work in. My immediate plans are obviously to work with the USEF and my goal there isn’t just to grow the association within the equestrian community, but also to educate those outside of the industry about this part of the Olympic team.

Sports as a whole are huge in cultures all over the world but at least in America, not many people focus on our national teams. And with hundreds of professional teams playing year-round on television, I understand how our country’s teams can get lost in the shuffle. But I also believe that with the right kind of attention given to these teams, they can gain more popularity and fans. The ways to reach this goal may change throughout my career but working for one of the US National Teams has been one of my goals for quite a while now and I think that this is one goal that I will always focus on.

I know my goal is a huge undertaking but if I can get more people to focus on national teams during my career, I will feel like I have accomplished something. So yes, the speech we got may have applied to local communities and non-sports news but like a ton of stuff I have learned during my school career, information that doesn’t directly apply to my field can always give me ideas for my own field.

Moving On

My editor pointed out yesterday that we just have 11 more issues of the paper until we graduate and today in another meeting, we were reminded that Green Lighting starts this month to register for the Fall semester. It's slowly hitting me that even though the school is already preparing for the Fall semester, I don't have anything to plan for when it comes to school, at least for the next year.

The surprising thing is that while this would have bugged me a month ago, now I'm totally okay with graduating. Now that I have a plan in place for at least the first few months after I graduate, I'm okay with moving on. I've been at WT for two years now and while the first year wasn't that great (okay, there were points that I hated it) this year has been everything and more than I could have imagined, but I can't see myself here next year.

Sure, staying a kid for another year would be amazing, but I'm ready to accomplish my goals and take the world head on. Really, even though I planned to stay here for another semester and had good reasons to in my head, it wasn't the real reason I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay because I was afraid to grow up and looking at how I would have been then, I really wouldn't have been all that happy with my choice.

One of the assignments for my portfolio class was to find a job listing to be "interviewed" for and while other people have struggled with finding any job that interests them, I found mine within one minute. And it's actually a job I would love to have. This may not be a big deal to most people, but finding the job and realizing that it's something that I would love to do prepared me for moving on.

With this newfound confidence, the next 96 days will be full of enjoying the last of my college experience instead of worrying about the future.

Welcome to Team USA

Welcome to Team USA....

Okay, the e-mail I got from the USEF didn't say exactly that but close enough. After making a phone call over winter break and being told who to e-mail about internship inquiries, I put together a cover letter (I am way better at this now than I was a year ago), sent it to the HR person at the USEF and waited.

Literally the day I decided "I'm going to follow up on the letter since I haven't heard from anyone in nine days" an e-mail came in. There were some scary moments when I was asked about living situations and given the worst case scenario of what may happen with the internship but the main person said she really liked what my resume showed and she wanted to work with me and that she'd forward the internship on to the communications department.

Another waiting period was in the cards but thankfully it was my first weekend back in Canyon so I had more than enough to keep me occupied. Then on Wednesday, the best case scenario showed up in my e-mail with an offer that I never would have dreamed of. After a nerve wracking day of trying to call my mom to talk to her about the offer (and finally getting a hold of her at 8pm my time [where she urged me to take it] followed by calls to my dads) I needed to make sure that I could get enough time in to do a ton of driving.

Side note: I graduate in mid-May and with my horse down here and the car I want to take to Kentucky up in Washington, I needed to do a switch. So instead of going straight to Kentucky (because what smart person would think "hey, let's just drive to KY from TX"?) after I step off the graduation stage, I will be loading up Vegas, driving the 20 some odd hours it is to Washington (barring any incidents like the trip down here), spending a week or so getting stuff settled at home, then loading up Eddie (the famous traveling fish as my friends like to call him) for our second long drive in less than a month. Overall, I am guessing that I'll be driving 4,100 miles in that time frame.

Thankfully, the June starting date was approved so I can book the mileage and go to Kentucky. This is extremely exciting since I'll be working in the Communications department helping to continue building all the new stuff the USEF has put out over the past yearish (USEF Network, etc) and even developing some new things they have in mind. Plus, I'm in the middle of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park, it can't get much better than that.

While this is just a summer gig (we haven't worked out exactly how long it will last yet, though), I'm having mixed feelings about what comes after the internship. I'd love to get a job at the USEF since my main goal is to work for Team USA and being in racing country is amazing (if you haven't realized it, I'm a bit of a horse racing nut) but, I also want to go to Europe for grad school. I'm still going to work on my Fulbright and actually have a meeting with Elly this week to discuss our next step since my personal statement questions are answered and edited, we just need to work on developing them more. Since I can't control what happens in the coming months (something that has been pounded into my head over the past year), other than doing my best work, I'm just throwing all the cards on the table and hoping something sticks.

While all of those thoughts are also going through my head, I'm just going to sit back and continue freaking out about my summer. I've often gone from completely calm to completely excited to completely freaked out this week. I'm interested to see what emotion I finally settle on.

Until next time,

Mel

First Week of School... and other stuff

I failed on the whole updating thing last week due to the first week of school and getting stuff set up, but I'm back. The week started pretty good with me cutting my schedule down from 12 credits to seven since I dropped my major but it went to crap from there. Wednesday, I was at school from eight to 4:30 and it all kind of went "blah" from there with multiple bad things happening in the hour after I left school. But that's a story for another day.

Overall, I think my classes are going to go good. I mean, with just two real classes, it's kind of hard for me to be too busy but I plan on learning a ton of stuff, especially in Media Design, that will help me in my career.

I'm also working on something that may be a huge plan changer but we'll see how that goes. With no definite word one way or the other, I'm not wanting to say anything and jinx it. I'm also working on my Fulbright application. With only a few classes this semester, I'm expecting to devote a ton more time to it (which will probably make my mentor extremely happy to hear). I'm going to have to talk to her about how stuff in the fall may work if I get that far but for now, I'm just wanting to write the best stuff I can.

I have also scheduled in "riding time" for this semester. On Thursday and Wednesday, I got to put some time into the pony to figure out what we need to work on. I also started her on aloe vera juice for some ulcers I think she may have so hopefully that gives me an even better indication of where we are at. The weather the last two days has kind of screwed me up on riding but overall, I'm looking to make a lot more progress with her than last semester.

I expect that this will get more interesting at the semester goes on but that's about all you missed from me not updating last week.

Until next time,

Mel

Time to Grow Up... Maybe?

As I prepare to go back to school (I leave in less than a week, where did this vacation go?) I've also been searching out summer internships. I was told last year that the more you get your name out there, the better off you are in this industry so I decided to get a head start on the search so that I'd hopefully know earlier if I was going to go home or somewhere else for the summer. 

However, once again, life surprised me.

As I was looking at internships, I restumbled upon one that I've looked at a few times over the last few years and have toyed around with applying for. The only "downfall" (if you could call it that) is that it is a year long, meaning I would have to make a choice on what I wanted to do when it came to graduating.

I had been pretty locked into the idea of getting my minor, which meant spending an extra semester at WT, which really isn't that long if you think about it. But as I weighed the pros and cons of staying for a minor vs. getting a dream internship, the internship won out. I mean, a minor is great to get and teaches you a ton but that internship gives you on the job experience that you just can't get in the classroom.

While I would absolutely love to get this internship, I also know that with how crazy competitive this one (and other ones) are, there is a major chance that if I did graduate, I would be out of any options (hello world, nice to meet you head on). So as a back up plan, I decided that I'd ask my adviser if I could sneak in a class that we are only supposed to take the semester we graduate. That way if I am stuck high and dry, I can get my minor next semester and if I get the internship, I can graduate. 

Win/win, right?

While it sounds good in theory, there are some bumps along the road (such as not having an official word on if I can take that class yet with only about a week left until the semester starts) that I've decided to plan for just in case. I've pretty much made the decision that if I'm  told "no, you can't take the class before the semester you graduate" that I will be graduating in May. I don't want to give up an opportunity to get an internship like this just because I need one more class and don't have it due to two plans. 

So instead, I have also put out feelers for other similar internships that I would love to have as well (that also fall almost exactly into my goals. And if I don't get any of those internships as well and decide to graduate in May? Well I guess it will be time to enter the "real world" for a year before I start grad school. Not going to lie, that really scares me since I've been in school since I can remember (the year off doesn't count since I knew for a fact that I was going on to my four-year school). The good news is that I am certain I'm going to grad school (as long as some high paying, amazing job doesn't come along) so my stress level isn't too high (other than the stress that comes with filling out applications and my Fulbright). However, the thought of taking the year "off" between my bachelors and grad degrees and either sinking or swimming since I need a job or internship is a scary, scary thought.

But if we don't jump in than we'll never know if we can swim, right?