Survivng Homecoming... again!

I somehow survived my second BSU Homecoming last week! HOORAY!

Bristaco and I really bonded last week.

This year was 10x more hectic (but 10x more awesome) than last year. Partly because I finally knew was I was doing with the entire event, and partly because now that I knew what I was doing, I wanted to try EVERYTHING. I really pushed the students who I was working with to do something creative with Homecoming this year and to brainstorm ideas of how we could get more of the campus involved. My students are awesome, and together we developed a Spirit Week for the campus, engaging students, staff, and even added some competition into the mix! It was a blast, but there was a LOT to take care of in order to make it successful. I think for it went great for its inaugural year, and it has a ton of potential to go really far in the future!

The OSIL staff participating in Dress to Impress Day before the Pageant!

One huge change this year was to the Homecoming Pageant. Last year, I worked with Lee Forest, the Director of the Pride Center at BSU, to get together a focus group of students to evaluate our Pageant on its inclusiveness to students of all genders. The Pageant had been set up in the past as a traditional pageant, with a King and Queen as the two winners. After gaining feedback from the focus group, we decided it would be more inclusive to have just one winner, male or female, who would be able to choose their own title, crown, etc. This change is in hopes to encourage students who may not identify as male or female or would not be comfortable being crowned "King" or "Queen". There was a great article on the change written on our university blog - click here to find out more about it! I'm very proud to be working alongside such mindful colleagues and students who were willing to make this change to such a long-standing BSU tradition.

Our Homecoming King and the two runners-up!

All of the events went off without a hitch, and we really beefed up some events that needed a little bit of extra attention this year. I'm so proud of everyone who was involved. I definitely felt much more connected to the whole event (all 5 days of it) this year and it's sad that it's the last Bridgewater Homecoming that I'll be helping plan. I'm very lucky that I've had such great people helping me through the process and execution and I hope the next grad enjoys it as much as I have! :)

'Til next year, when I return as an alum... (yikes!)

Where in the World is Bristaco: International Bear of Mystery

What a crazy, busy, and FUN week homecoming was! This was my first really huge event at my assistantship that I had a lot of responsibility in, and it all went off without a hitch. The students in Program Committee (the club I advise and that puts on all of these amazing on-campus events) did a wonderful job in scheduling and running so many great events this week (per usual) and it was so great really seeing them in action. Seeing students put their minds to something and make it come to life is just a reminder to why I'm pursuing a career in this field in the first place. :)

Being a part of BSU's homecoming really made me feel like a part of the Bridgewater community, rather than just a grad student that works in OSIL. I'm a Bear, and I love it!