Reflection

My Final Reflection

My husband and I welcomed our daughter into this world on March 7, 2016. When I returned to school, things changed for me. I felt judged by other students for leaving my baby to finish school and I felt judged by my friends for leaving my baby to go to work outside of the home. My husband and I were trying to juggle multiple things at once between full time school, full time work and switching off taking care of our baby because we couldn’t afford day-care and at times we felt like all odds were against us. 

A few months after I started back at school I was in the hallway of the Science Center trying to calm a fussy baby and finish an assignment before it was due, again feeling absolutely defeated. I will never forget, my chemistry professor came out of his office and offered to walk my baby around the halls to keep her calm while I finished my assignment in his office. For the first time I felt like I finally had someone on my side, someone who understood the demands of being a parent while going to school. From that day on, I knew I wanted to be that advocate for other non-traditional students at SUU like myself. 

About a year later I had the opportunity to volunteer with the Non-Traditional Student Services Office for one of my classes. I absolutely fell in love with working at the Non-Traditional Student Services Office that semester and I left that semester feeling like I wanted and needed to do something more. This is why I decided to carry out my EDGE project with them. 

My husband and I are currently living out of state so that he can go to graduate school and I am about to deliver baby #2 in less than a month. As we were preparing to leave Cedar City to set out on our big adventure, once again we felt like all odds were against us. The “advice” we were given was far from encouraging and at times we didn’t know if we were going to be able to handle the stresses of grad school while raising a family. A small percentage of students in my husband’s class are married and an even smaller percentage have children. It’s just not the norm. This is what helped me decide that I wanted to be that uplifting encouragement, that positive advocate for other SUU students to go on to grad school and get their master’s too. We know that even though it is very hard work, we are opening up so many more doors for our future and the future of our children.

I worked alongside the Non-Traditional Student Services Office to create brochures with helpful information and encouragement from faculty in the different Master programs on SUU campus. I also volunteered in the office doing various tasks and talking to lots of students about the different opportunities on campus as well as created an updated brochure for the office too. My goal for this project was to create something that was fast and easy for busy non-traditional students to get information that was important to them about the grad schools at SUU and I feel like I was able to achieve it. I worked very hard to make the brochures simple yet informational. I sifted through a lot of information and picked apart the key points that would be important to understand, and I am displaying these brochures in an area that is full of Non-Traditional students every day.

The outcome of my project was absolutely incredible. First, seeing these brochures come to life made me so excited, happy, and feel accomplished. Then, watching the employees in the Non-Traditional Student Services Office light up when I brought in the final product was more than I could have ever asked for. I had a few bumps in the road throughout the project and was discouraged a few times but seeing the end result made it all worth-while. 

I feel like I am a people person and I enjoy talking and getting to know people and hearing their story and I think that this is the biggest skill that I used throughout my project. I got to know the different faculty and heard their stories about previous students as well was their personal ones. I also got to know many students on campus and learned about the different things that are important to them, which helped guide my project. Not only did certain skills aide me throughout my project but I strengthened some of my weaker skills too. More specifically, I gained more knowledge on how to problem solve throughout this project. Like I mentioned above, there were a few bumps in the road, but I didn’t give up and I learned how fix things. 

In conclusion, the EDGE program is a program that is put in place to help students go above and beyond. EDGE stands for “Education Designed to Give Experience” and it does a very good job of that. Students are encouraged to get out of their comfort zones and exceed their own expectations. I think this is a huge skill to learn, especially for students who are graduating soon.  We are about to enter the real world, where we will be competing for different jobs and we need to be able to do things that scare us, things that get us out of our comfort zones. One of the biggest things employers look for when interviewing or looking over a resume is one’s experience level, and the EDGE program does just that. It helps students achieve more experience, putting them ahead of everyone else.