Berea, Berea, Beloved..

     I'm back to the grind of becoming educated with week one in the books. It feels almost as if I never left, fitting comfortably back into the swing of the Berea Bubble and its busyness. Our first day of classes was Wednesday the 26 and here's some of my thoughts on my courses.

Comprehensive CPR and First Aid (MWF 8:00-9:10): The instructor, Sandy Williams, is also my labor supervisor for the athletic training room. This is my first time having a course with Sandy and the first time working under her. She is returning from Sabbatical, but I already expect to learn much from her in class and at work. She is very thorough, personable and is very experienced allowing her to provide input of emergency situations from first person accounts. I was questioning myself if I should stay in the course, but on the first day she stated something that gave me reason to stay. Sandy acknowledged that we can learn CPR and First Aid in a very safe environment of the classroom, but her goal was to mimic real life scenarios and the craziness that might go along with an emergency situation. After all, our senses will be alarmed differently from a safe classroom environment to a real life emergency situation. There are about 20-25 students in this course, which is a pretty big class at Berea.

Social and Folk Dance (MWF 9:20-10:30): Since this course is right after CPR&First Aid and in the same building, I get to the dance studio early. Up until 3 minutes or so until the class starts it is just 8 or so females and myself. My thoughts are, "Oh this should be good!" but then the rest of class files in and I am not the only male... To start off the class, we went around and introduced ourselves and stated why we wanted to take the class. When it was my turn, my reason to take the class was that I felt stiff and awkward when I danced and so I wanted to not feel stiff and awkward when I danced so that I could enjoy dancing. So far we have done some contra dancing and waltz. This is also a "big" class with about 20-25 students.

Biomechanics (MWF 1:20-2:30 & Lab Thurs 12:00-2:50): For whatever reason, I could have sworn this class started at 1:30 not 1:20...and I ended up being late at 1:26. AJ Mortara is the professor and he is also my academic advisor. He just gave me a hard time when I walked in and at the start of the Friday class session he acknowledged that I was on time when he was taking attendance. This class really captures my interest in the human body and movement. By coincidence, this is also an all-male class with about 15 of us.

Teaching Danish Gymnastics (MWF 2:40-3:50): This is taught by a professor from Denmark and his name is Martin Moesgaard. Berea has partnered with one of the schools in Denmark for the last few decades to host one professor to teach gymnastics for a year, but this happens to be Martin's second year at Berea. I have been taught by Martin before in the Danish Gymnastics Club last year, and he is very intentional in phrasing his questions the right way as he knows that the answers he may receive depend on how he asks the question. For this course, we will visit the Berea Community School and teach one of their class sessions a couple times a week. We will write lesson plans and come up with games that intrigue their imagination and incorporate gross movements such as walking, crawling, jumping etc. Although I am not planning on going into education, I still see value in this course as I may improve my ability to teach, which we all do every day. This also fulfills one of my elective course requirements in my major. There are about 20 students in the class.

General Studies Requirement 310: Understandings of Christianity (Tuesday and Thursdays 10:00-11:50): There are 4 levels of the GSTR writing and critical thinking seminar as part of Berea's general education requirements. All GSTR 110 sections vary on the subject focus but the title of my 110 was So You Want to be a Changemaker? All GSTR 210 focuses on Race, Diversity and Identity. The specific focus for my 210 course section was on John Gregg Fee, the founder of Berea College. We explored what it meant for people in Fee's day, which was during the mid to late 1800's, to be radical. All GSTR 310 courses focus on the Understandings of Christianity. This means that the course explores the various differences of Chrisitianity throughout the world and how other religions may view Christianity. The professor for my 310 is Jeff Pool. He has always taught philosophical and theological studies. He has been at Berea since 2003 and was at TCU previously. I did appreciate his perspective and the things he was saying from the first day of his class. I resonated with him when he shared that his first undergraduate course on Christianity gave him trouble because he was going into the class with the idea that all Christians were completely unified in all that they believed and acted upon. I certainly feel this way and experienced some of the same trouble my freshman year when I took Introduction to the Old Testament. For some reason, looking at Christianity through an academic lens really affects me and gives me some emotional turmoil. However, Dr. Pool seems sensitive enough to realize some students may feel some emotional turmoil during the course and is open to discussion outside of class about any troubles we may have. He has learned to appreciate the goodness in all the differences, I am not sure how I will handle it this semester but we will see. Also, he says he likes class discussion, but on the first day I'm not sure if he took breathes between his sentences...I may have to use my learnings from CPR sooner than I thought if he keeps going breathless while he talks.

Those are my courses and thoughts from week one. I will also be working 12 hours a week as an athletic trainer which I am looking forward to, my sport to cover will be Baseball. As I said before, Sandy is very personable and Saturday she had all the athletic training students to her house for a cookout! It was really awesome and speaks volumes to the kind of faculty and staff at Berea College.

I am expecting to really do well in all areas (academic, social, labor etc.) of life this semester after a great summer. Speaking of which, September 30, 2015 at 7:00pm I will actually be presenting on my summer internship experience in hopes of becoming a Fellow of the Entrepreneurship for the Public Good after two summers under the program. If you are reading these words, you are certainly invited.

Also, you may have wondered what I was doing that caught me up in thinking my Biomechanics class started at 1:30 instead of 1:20. Well I will be glad to tell you. I was actually sending some emails for potential team members/sponsors for the Sept. 26 St. Jude's 5k Run/Walk in Kingsport. If you feel like running with me or making a donation, you can visit this link to do so:  http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Walk/Walk?px=3573197&pg=personal&fr_id=40422

The link will provide you with two options of joining my team, Crossfit Kingsport, or donating on my behalf. The run will start at 8:30 and the walk will start at 8:45 that Saturday morning. This last weekend of September is also my 21st birthday, I would really appreciate donations or friends to do this event with as a birthday present over any gifts.

I'm also excited to have a single room! And air conditioning in my dorm for the first time too! Here's some pics of my headquarters.



I hope this update finds you well. Feel free to stay in touch via email, text or phone call. I would love to hear what's going on in your life.