September 7th, 2011 first speakers

I really enjoyed our first session of speakers, they were all very interesting.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank our speakers:

Judy Carey Nevin, Melissa Gilbert, Mary DeGenaro, and Steven Grinch

 I found all of these speakers to be very interesting, but I will start at the beginning and with Judy Carey Nevin, our lovely research librarian.  I would like to thank her for setting up the room for us to be in, i know how difficult it is to accommodate such a large group such as ours.  I found her presentation to be very interesting and informative.  I had only been in the library once before and it had been for orientation so I found that having her speak to us about the library was very informative.  I had no idea that the library had so many different resources for the students at Otterbein University.  For example, I did not know that the library had bikes that students could borrow, and the wide variety of technology available to students was shocking!  However what i found to be the most amazing was how above and beyond the call of duty she had gone for our class, when she showed us the entire, I guess you would call it, website that she had set up specifically for our class I was blown away!  Just by looking at it you could clearly see the amount of time an effort she had put into making a resource for just our class!  This was true for all of our speakers, i was touched by the shear amount of work they had put into a presentation for our class, it must have taken them a long time.  This time, being time they took out of their already jam-packed days filled with work they must do for their jobs to do all of these things for us!  I digress, I really enjoyed Judy Carey Nevin's presentation and all of the cool things the library has and does for all of the students here, my only hope is that everyone takes advantage of all they do!

When Melissa Gilbert gave us the papers discussing our project we would be doing with volunteering and mentoring young(er) children in the area I must admit that I was worried.  I began to think, "how am I supposed to be able to do all of this?" and it seemed to be a daunting task. While I still feel it will be a lot of hard work and it is still a scary idea, when Melissa Gilbert had us do the activity about breaking down barriers I began to feel as if "Maybe I can do this" and I know that going throw that experience as the roll of the young girl facing all of these barriers and "road blocks" on my path to being the best me possible, I personally related to having to deal with, and currently dealing with, all of the barriers my peers represented.  However what I found the most helpful was when I took a moment and looked around and saw all of the other young women in the room relating to the barriers as well.  I know that everyone has to deal with these problems but when people actually talk about them and you can see that you are not alone, even people I would never have thought have had to deal with these problems were nodding their heads and relating.  I even noticed that our peer mentors and I believe I even saw Dr. Krendl relating and nodding her head along with us.  I know that I still face these and other barriers on a daily basis but knowing that there all all of these other strong women, who are in different places in their lives, have made it through it and are still going stronger than ever.  Knowing this leads me to think that yes, I will face hardship and I am sure there will be days I wonder if it is even worth it or if I will make it, but I can look back on that night and hopefully future experiences like it and know that I am not alone and that if they can make it, so can I.


okay so i wrote this last week and by looking at the other blogs posted i am going to stop here and possibly pick back up with it later.  I should probably post this lovely blog to facebook!