Dealing with Death: R.I.P Jerry Allen Holt Sr.

Last night, I received one of the hardest calls anyone can ever receive—one of my family members had passed away unexpectedly. Naturally, the first thing I worried about was my family, followed by school—I had a large assignment due and tons of reading—then I remembered that I have some of the most wonderful professors imaginable.

All I had to do was shoot them a quick email explaining my situation, and they made me feel so much better. Each of them wanted to do anything they could to help me out—they actually cared about my loss, worried about me.

Let me tell you—you don’t get that everywhere. In fact, you probably don’t get that most anywhere. That’s something that I found that’s unique to Transy, and is one of my favorite things about going here.

I know this is a short post, but I don’t feel up to much more at the moment, forgive me! Just wanted to give you another example of sheer awesomeness that Transy’s professors exude on a daily basis.

Embracing Different Cultures: Drag Comes to Transy

One of the things that I like about Transy is its openness to all perspectives. On Wednesday night, for example, the campus lined up out the door to get into Transy’s first ever drag show. There’s a bit of a story behind how we got the pleasure of hosting some nationally renowned drag queens on our campus, so I’ll start at the beginning.

About a month ago, I attended an academic affairs presentation (that’s where professors present their recent research). My literature professor this semester and an art professor had teamed up to photograph and obtain oral histories from members of the Lexington drag community, a previously voiceless and misunderstood community. The photographs were displayed in Morlan Art Gallery (and they were beautiful!) and some of the audio clips of the interviews were played for us. It really shed some light on a facet of society I didn’t fully understand, and I was extremely impressed with the strength these women exude in the face of intolerance. The women were so appreciative of the project that they offered to give Transy “the best drag show Lexington has ever seen,” and that’s just what they did!

On Wednesday, the lovely women came out to our Carrick Theatre and performed numbers, ranging from country to pop to industrial rock and beyond. It was amazing to see how enthusiastically they were embraced by the Transylvania community, which demonstrated its overwhelming open-mindedness when over 50 students had to be turned away because the theatre was filled to capacity. I had a blast. Not only did I enjoy some mind-blowing entertainment, I also learned about a community that people often forget about. Yet another amazing Transy experience!

Intense Writing!

Hello, folks! This weeks post will be kind of short, because I have to squeeze it in between reading William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom for Literary Interpretation, doing research on Motivation and Emotion as it relates to health, and writing a 15 page paper on the discourse of the environmental destruction of Haiti for Latin Civilization II. So, because it’s on my mind, I thought I would talk a little bit about my opinion on one of Transy’s most notorious requirements—“writing intensive” classes. The phrase itself sounds borderline horrifying and reeks of the stress it will undoubtedly cause a lot of students—“writing intensive,” BUT, let me explain why this was a huge selling point for me on Transylvania University and why it’s not so bad after all.

Every leadership conference and career fair I’ve attended and every job description I’ve looked at has emphasized “effective communication,” and this is the greatest benefit that I have drawn from Transy’s writing intensive class requirement so far. I know that sounds tired, like a cop-out explanation of a scary-sounding requirement: “That’s what everyone says!” you’re probably saying, and you’re right, it is what everyone says, but at Transy, it’s the truth. From freshman year, Transylvania recognizes the fact that not every incoming student had the good fortune of attending a school that emphasized and taught the writing process effectively, so everyone starts over. The Foundations of Liberal arts I and II required classes help students prepare for college level critical reading, writing and research skills. As a student who entered college as a pretty strong writer, even I saw my writing skills improve significantly through this program, as I perfected the techniques of producing effective and eloquent arguments that I will carry with me the rest of my academic and professional career. And these techniques keep improving with every writing intensive class I take!

It kind of threw me off when I was writing papers for math classes (2 of them in calc II), but I quickly came to learn that if I could write a paper explaining how to use a Taylor series to solve a real life problem (I’m not a math person, for the record), I could pretty much communicate anything I wanted to anyone. As much as it stresses me out at times to know that I have multiple 15 page papers looming in the near future, nothing makes me feel more accomplished and nothing assures me that I will be more than prepared to continue my education or pursue nearly any career I want. Not to mention, we have an amazing writing center and wicked awesome professors who are always willing to help!

Spring Break 2009

Spring break is always an exciting time in college. Whether you just go home and relax or head down south to the beach or up north to the big cities, everyone seems to enjoy this week more than any other week of the semester. Maybe it’s the fact that you can work on your school work at your own pace, or maybe it’s sleeping in until noon, or maybe it’s hanging out for extended periods of time with your friends, but whatever it is that Spring Break entails, it always seems to bring immense amounts of joy. For me, I had never actually gone anywhere other than home on any Spring Break in my life (which is fine, I love hanging out with my family. Last year, since it snowed, we all went sledding!) This year, though, I packed up my bathing suit and beach towels and headed down to Florida with 6 of my best friends for the week.

Spring Break 2008 at home! Snow storm!

It was glorious! 80 degrees, a cloudless blue Florida sky, board games, dancing, naps, good books and beaches led to a week of solid relaxation, something that everyone seems to have needed. We stayed in a friend’s condo at Cocoa Beach, woke up every day around 9 and headed to the pool and either read, listened to music or napped in the sun until it was time to come inside. We took walks on the beach in the afternoon and either played mini-golf, went out to eat, watched movies or played board games at night. It was totally worth the 14 hour road trip!

Spring Break 2009! Cocoa Beach!

Even though I’m recovering from a mild bought of sun poisoning (fair skin + hours in the sun even with sunscreen = Not a good idea), I know that this week is exactly what I needed to refresh me and get me ready for the last few weeks of this semester—2 15 page papers, 2 8 page papers and finals better look out!

Powershift 2009

Hello everyone! I just got back from Spring break and I have a couple of exciting things to share with you! I’ll start where I left off a couple of weeks ago!

On the night of Thursday February 27th, nearly 50 Transylvania students, myself included, endured a 10 hour night commute to converge with 170 other young Kentuckians and nearly 12,000 other American youth for Powershift ’09 in Washington D.C.

Me at the Rally!

Organized by the Energy Action Coalition, a coalition of environmental organizations from across the country, Powershift ’09, allowed young people concerned with reversing climate change to educate themselves about environmental issues, rally on Capitol Hill, and participate in lobbying to convince their legislators to support climate change legislation. Gathering at the Washington Convention Center in the heart of Washington D.C., we got to choose from nearly 200 workshops and panel discussions to attend such as, “Trash, Incinerators, and other dirty stuff,” “Creative Activism,” “The Story of Coal, Past, Present and Future” and “Green Building: Energy Efficiency.” We also heard keynote speakers such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, “Green-Collar Economy” pioneers Van Jones and Majora Carter and important student activists including Transylvania’s own Marcie Smith. Also, Santigold and The Roots played concerts on Friday and Saturday, which was completely rad.

At the Rally!

After receiving 2 days of issues education and training in the techniques of lobbying, Powershift’s 12,000 attendees, donning green hardhats to symbolize support for a green-collar workforce, trekked through the 4 inches of snow, which had fallen the night before, to the Capitol for a historic rally in support of a clean energy economy. After the rally, the green hardhats flooded congressional buildings, and students met in groups with their local representatives and senators to lobby for climate change legislation. Powershifters collectively called for such things as the implementation of 5 million new green jobs, an 80-95% reduction of carbon emissions by 2050, and a moratorium on new coal fired power plants.

Having attended Powershift in 2007 as well, I was so thrilled that Transylvania would help support our going again this year. All my professors completely understood my missing class, and even encouraged it, as this event was so monumental. Talking to some of the other Kentucky schools who had loads of difficulty finding funding and getting people to participate reiterated my appreciation of Transy, a school that continually finds ways to support its students in any way it can!