Nebraska: The Good Life

The endless corn fields cover the landscape of Nebraska. The Husker "N" is unavoidable as you stroll through any area of the state during a husker game day.

Aurora, Nebraska

The water tower is a given. It stands for Aurora with the neat wording wrapped around its spherical top. The Leadership Center is big part of Aurora between holding meetings for local businesses and hosting the Aurora After-Prom party it is essential to the community.

The Place I Call School

The husky represents our school mascot while the FFA painting represents the presence of FFA in my school activities.

Home is Where the Heart is

This is my home. The red brick is familiar and has been part of my life since I can remember. The windmill is a symbol that I have used to describe my home for nearly ten years. Its towering length casts shadows out over our yard.

Where am I?

Where am I?

I am everywhere at once and then at one place for quite some time. I am at school. Aurora Public Schools to be exact. I roam the halls as I find my way from class to class.  Going on four years in this high school I find myself accustom to the long tiled hallways that venture to different sections of the school ranging from the science rooms, English department, mathematics, and Ag sections. Each one of these places I have found myself spending much time in as I have endured the life of a high school student.

This year a new place has emerged to take over a lengthy amount of my time: the guidance office.  Between my online medical terminology class that finds its home there and the pressures of college, the guidance office has become a place of comfort and familiarity. As an underclassman the guidance office was too scary and must I add over-rated to visit. Now it is the place that you wish you could spend more time.  

Then there is the Ag department. This has been my home since I was a freshman. It is the place that just seems natural for me to be. I can walk in the rooms to find a quiet place to work or a place roaring with activity. It is the place to meet if you want to have some fun. Now don’t misinterpret the use of fun, because my definition of fun and yours may be two completely different things. It is also a place of deep talks and successes that last a lifetime. It is where I am. I may not be the welding or mechanics type but the excitement and hands on learning have always been my thing. Between horticulture and natural resources my interests have been identified and have drawn me back to those classrooms over and over again. If you find yourself looking for me during the school day, don’t look to hard because I can usually be located with one call down to Mr. Sigler’s room.

Moving away from the subject of school I am at home. My house has been my house since I was a baby. My family has never moved. If I am not at a school activity I am most likely at my house in my basement bedroom working on some form of homework. Senior year has given me a new chance to occupy my Friday and for that matter weekend nights at home trying to finish the load of homework that is assigned every night. Some may call me a homebody, which I am, but I would enjoy to get out every once in a while if the homework would permit it.

This new lifestyle has ultimately put me in a good position. That would be the road to college. With months left in my high school career I would say I am nearing the end of my road to college. This road started back when I was in kindergarten with a desire to learn. It can almost be made a physical road. In my mind I think of the prudential life commercials that tell you to follow the green path to guide you to retirement. The only difference is I am looking towards a college degree before the whole retirement thing. Although retirement sounds like a nice idea to me.

Following my green path of life I plan to find myself in Lincoln, Nebraska attending the University of Nebraska next fall. This is a long way from home when you really think about it. Just over an hour from home and in some foreign dorm room with some roommate I will have to wait to find out. College will be a big change in my life, but it will become my new home that I will come to know and love. It just may take some time to come to this realization.

Home is where the heart is. My heart will always be out in the middle of nowhere, three miles north of Phillips surrounded by cornfields. I feel a sense of comfort as I see the red brick house and the windmill towering over the buildings each time I return home after a trip. There is nothing that can replace that sense of comfort. Even as I age and have a place to call my own home, my heart will always know the security that home can bring to an individual. I am here. I am there. I am everywhere.

The Song From my Heart

American Honey by Lady Antebellum describes me and my life story. It is surprising that such a song could exist.

A Look into my Deeper Self

My Deep Map includes different aspects of my life including what has helped define me.

Keeping it as a Family Tradition

As a family tradition my family goes on a hunting trip the opening weekend of pheasant season each year. The pheasant feather represents each of the trips we have gone on as a family.

Who am I?

Who am I?

I am a free-willed person. Someone who cannot be defined. My family and my peers do not even know the true me. They each have a different view of my personality, what they think I like, and who I really am as a person. Even though their views may be similar they are different, because I cannot be defined.

My beliefs have shaped who I am since I was a young girl. My family has been the church going kind of family for generations. That fact has not changed even with the addition of four kids to my parent’s household. For many families going to church has become a thing of the past. This sad trend has skipped my family thankfully. Each Sunday all six of us make the trek from our country house to the church we call home in Grand Island. There we devote our time to praising God and catching up with family and old friends after the service. If my faith was not enough to keep me going through life, I know that my family would be plenty to get me through the rough patches of life.

I am a determined individual who has not allowed anything to stop me. Through several injuries to my leg I have continued to think positively. Each injury presented a different challenge. The first time I fractured my leg I was only an eighth grader. I did not care about the details of the break; all I cared about was the color of my cast (purple) and how I was going to continue all of my activities in a wheel chair. Both of these things were not important as I look back on my past, but in the mind of an eighth grade girl I was completely stressed about these issues. Give or take a year I was presented with another problem. I then had a stress fracture in the same spot of the previous break. Again I was pronounced crippled and given crutches to carry myself around. In the heat of summer this was not the most comfortable situation. I then had to worry about what I could wear with crutches and how was I going to ever play softball again. This is where the determination starts to set in. I was so sick of being side-lined because of my unforgiving leg that I was not going to let anyone stop me from playing softball ever again. I set out with this in mind after this last break. Only to find another fracture shortly after I was released to run. This was only a set back, I knew that I could get over this one as well. It came with  a lot of hard work and early mornings of physical therapy, but I was finally pronounced eligible to play softball one week before the season was set to start my Junior year. It may have been painful and at most times the complete opposite of fun, but it helped to shape me into the person that I am. It has given me a different standard to determination. 

My determination was not just raised from the hardships of breaking my leg, but also from the ideals that my parents instilled in me as I grew up on a farm. My dad knows that real definition of hard work and he taught me that through out my summers working on the farm right beside him. There is no room for being lazy and a day's work means getting up before the sun rises and getting home after it goes down. He showed me that with a good work ethic you can virtually do anything. My dad has helped raise his father’s small cattle operation into a large feedlot that is successful beyond anyone’s imagination. Of course, he did not do this alone, but with the determination and a good work ethic he was able to make a change for the better. I can only hope to be as successful and full of as many good intentions as my father.

I have mentioned who I am now and where I have been but I have failed to narrow in on where I would like to go in my life and who I want to become. I am that small town girl who dreams big. The girl that wants to do something others have told her she cannot do. In the next few years my college experience at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln will shape me into who I will be for the rest of my life. I hope to become a large animal veterinarian. With a college environment surrounding me in the next few years I hope that my dream will be complete and I will become the person I want to be. I do know that if my life tends to lead me down a different path it will be the right one. I have a strong enough faith to know this is true.