Another Final Chapter

This week marks what is possibly the last Spring Invitational that I will ever have an opportunity to work. For anyone who happens to read this (does anyone??) and is not familiar with the program, Spring Invitational is a program for high-achieving high school seniors coming to LSU. Yes, Bart Swecker, there are quite a few!

As an LSU Ambassador, I was lucky enough to serve as an orientation leader for four SPINs as we like to call it. Last year, I kind of watched things from behind the scenes though I did get to respond when a student had a seizure right before scheduling. This year however, I've gotten the opportunity to work on a few portions that I think will be helpful for my future.

First, I got to completely redesign the itinerary used for the program to make it easier to read and to include more information for participants. Though I used some agendas from other schools for a few ideas, most of the publication is purely me! I really like the design and the extras that I added.

I'm also very proud of the "Commuter Student Success" session that Ryann and I put together. We were pretty nervous today especially since we were right after crowd favorite University Auxiliary Services (they bring lots of giveaways). Though a good bit of the audience cleared out of the room before we presented, I think those that stayed got a lot out of it. Also, I think that many of the students at SPIN are planning to live on campus so our session was clearly not geared toward them. I expected to be nervous and jittery when speaking but I've been told that I did pretty well. I'm just excited to have put something together from start to finish and to see it come to fruition.

It hasn't really hit me yet that this could very well be the last time that I work Spring Invitational. The last time to act as a roamer during Check-In, to watch the LSU Ambassadors scramble and have the seniors squeeze to the front of the crowd for the annual official photo, to hear Carolyn Collins call the event by the wrong name, to worry about Louisiana's weather causing problems with the picnic or movie on the Parade Ground, to sit through or emcee "This is LSU" while students fall asleep on Friday morning, to hear the grumbling from students upset about walking across campus for lunch, to take bets on how long certain senior colleges will take to schedule, to explain to everyone that I don't eat crawfish at the Ambassador Crawfish Boil... I'm sure that I'll be a bit out of it tomorrow evening and it all may catch up to me, but I think this is just another step on my journey.

A necessary step regardless of how difficult or sad it is to take.