It’s a HELLER of a good time!

It’s the best night of the year, it’s the Heller Exceptional Adult Dance!

Every year around valentine’s day the Furman campus comes together for a night of dancing and fun with the Greenville special needs community. You eat a lot of candy, do the cupid shuffle, and meet some of the happiest and most loving people in Greenville. Heller Service Corps organizes the dance and decorates the Younts Conference center with red, pink, and white. I helped make the balloon arch (Shoutout to my freshman reps!!).

I might be biased when I say that Heller Service Corps is the best student organization on campus, but I mean it’s true! Heller Service Corps is probably one of the only organizations on campus that have such an impact not only on the community but on the students as well. Heller is the largest student organization on campus and won a national award from The National Center for Voluntary Action. Every year around 1800 students are involved with Heller in some way. Heller works with over 50 philanthropy organizations that are under nine Heller divisions which include: Community Concerns, Crisis Centers, Children’s Education, Medical, Special Needs, Hispanic Community Engagement, Animal Interest, Sustainability, Children’s Recreation, and International. I go to an afterschool program called Frazee once a week. I get to play with little kiddos, teach them to read and give them a positive outlet to unwind from a long day of school. These kids brighten my day every week and I look forward to going. Without Heller, I would have never found this community outside of Furman’s campus and be exposed to the struggles that many of my kids face every day. Heller has also given me a community on campus. The people who make up Heller are dedicated to serving others and making a difference in the lives of the people around them and my Furman experience wouldn’t be the same without it.

What Wellness Taught Me

One of the most interesting General Education Requirements (GERs) is the Mind and Body GER. While there are a few classes to fulfill this requirement, most students end up taking Health and Wellness in the Health Sciences department. Furman Students describes this class as a more intensive physical fitness with a good helping of a general understanding of health sciences.

Let me tell you that this class scared the heck out of me. In middle school and high school, the mention of the PACER test would make my spine tingle. I am the complete opposite of a jock and by no means would I describe myself as “fit.” I imagined running up and down a track field while a very intimidating professor would scream that I was not doing the exercises correctly.

I had already begun to sweat as I entered my classroom. We hadn’t even started exercising! Thankfully, my fears subsided when I sat down at my desk. My professor wasn’t some intimidating, muscle bulging, jock but rather friendly and “realistically” fit. Even better the class syllabus was fun and engaging. We weren’t just going to be running and lifting weights, we were going to be doing Zumba, yoga, spin classes, and Pilates. All of these exercises seemed fun and engaging.

While I thought that this GER was going to be useless, it ended up benefitting me more than just from a health perspective. Yes, it made me a better eater and have a better understanding of the nutrition I was putting in my body, but it also taught me several important life skills. The one that stuck out the most was being content with your progress. While I did not expect to get washboard abs in the first couple of weeks, I definitely set some very loft goals at the start of the semester. Those goals were fine to have, but my professor encouraged smaller and obtainable goals leading up those more lofty goals.

At the end of the course, I did not feel more comfortable with the Physical Activity Center, but also with myself. The course is designed to cover a lot of different material that the student won’t stick with everything the course presents, but students take what fits with their lifestyles and allow their overall wellness to grow and allows them to be better Furman students.

A love letter to the people that MAKE The Playhouse

On Furman’s campus, tucked away behind McAlister Auditorium, you’ll find a little tin building called The Playhouse. It’s not much, but it’s home to me and around 30 other theatre majors. What makes this place so special, are it’s colorful inhabitants i.e. The faculty of the theatre department. They are some of the wittiest, kindest, hardest-working most gracious people on this campus and they deserve all of the awards and accolades. Instead, what they get is a blog-post by little ‘ol me. When I was deciding on whether or not Furman was the place for me four years ago, I remember the day I walked into the Playhouse for the first time. It had that great, homey, old theatre smell that hit me as soon as I opened the doors. I met Jay Oney, our fearless leader. Jay is the head of our department and he’s probably (nay DEFINITELY) the funniest person on Furman’s campus. After talking to him, and being shown the maze of the department, meeting the curmudgeon-wizard Rhett Bryson, the passionate genius Maegan Azar and the compassionate, nurturing Margaret Caterisano, I was hooked, and fully convinced that this place deserved a sitcom spot on NBC.

Four years later, and I still feel the same way. They’ve all become family, a most loud, adventurous, creative family. In the theatre department, we all call each other by our first names. Every morning at 10:30AM, if you don’t have to attend or teach a class, you go into the scene shop and you play darts. Well, for me it’s more like throwing a dart and hitting the side of the wall only to get properly heckled by Jay and Rhett. Nevertheless, it comes with great conversation and espresso. And what’s not to love about espresso? When we aren’t being taught by them in a classroom, we are being directed, costumed or borrowing their plays and books. Sometimes, we are workshopping on a Saturday. Grabbing lunch at Karrie’s Deli, or just popping by an office to chat about life.

I have shared my highest highs and my lowest lows with those wonderful, quirky people in that happy little shanty. When you come to Furman, whether you find your family in the theatre department, biology department, or gender and woman’s studies department, I promise that this place is made up of some of the most exquisite people. Sure, the lake is really pretty, and the drive through the old trees down the mall is pretty breathtaking, but what beats all of the aesthetics every single time are the human beings that shape and mold you to be the person that you will be when you leave this place at the end of it all. I’m reminded every day how blessed I am to have met these people… to have let them all steal little parts of my heart. Winnie the Pooh said it best “how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

#FurmanfortheWynne

 

Quarter-life Crisis? No Problem!

Life is interesting. I don’t really remember a time when college wasn’t at the forefront of all of my goals. My parents both graduated from UGA, so I grew up going to Georgia games in Athens, tailgating with pimento cheese sandwiches and seeing all of the giddy excitement in all of the college students. Even then, as a seven-year-old, it was a palpable excitement that I knew I had to be a part of. College was a topic my parents always loved to talk about, we always enjoyed dreaming together. When I discovered my passion for theatre, we were able to bring our dreams into a narrower, more specific focus. “Which schools have good theatre programs?” “where will you have the most opportunities to get on stage?” “Study abroad programs?” “What about a scholarship opportunity via an audition?” Throughout high school it was a lot of research until finally, my senior year, my decision was made and Furman was the place for me! And then I was in it! Doing college. Going to classes, getting cast in shows, rehearsals, studying abroad! It’s been a whirlwind and (as cliché as it may sound) a total dream come true. But now here I am, a second-semester senior…so close to the finish line, I feel like I can see it. However, instead of sprinting toward those last few strides, I find myself wanting to dig in my heels, or to take the slowest, most leisurely walk.

Maybe I’m the only one who’s felt this way, but I can’t shake the feeling of “well, what now?” for most of my life the end-goal has been my undergrad, and now that that’s coming to a close, I feel myself slipping into this weird, quarter-life, where-is-the-meaning-in-all-of-this crisis. So, in case you’re like me at all, and feeling anything like this, here’s what I’ve found:

1)Life doesn’t end after college ends. It goes on. We carry on.

2)My worth is not measured by a fancy piece of paper I will receive in May.

3)That great, big, adventure-filled anticipation that I felt days before coming to college exists in a lot of other things as well.

4)College has been some of the best times of my life, but that doesn’t mean that the good times have to end.

5)Embrace the valleys with the peaks.

 

Ok so maybe it all sounds a bit like mumbo-jumbo or like I’m speaking in inspirational bumper-stickers. Or maybe someone out there needed to read that and feel encouraged, or at least heartened because hey, if you’re freaking out at all, you’re not alone. Trust me. #FurmanfortheWynne