Ahh, there I go - rambling! See? :-D

*points to self* Jess Rogers here! I'm a senior at Gallaudet and will be graduating this May. Fret not - I'm sticking around Kendall Green for two years of graduate school. I will be graduating with a BA in Psychology and then grabbing my MA in School Counseling and Guidance.

People have been telling me from left to right the pros and cons of starting graduate school right after getting my BA degree. Some say that it is better to gain experience in the real world before jumping into graduate school, and others say that it's hard to go back to school after working for a couple years. Of course, there is that group of people who have no clue what they want to study in graduate school... I've wanted to go into counseling for some time now and I know I'd be someone whose butt that my parents would be kicking to get back in the academic world after working for a couple years. I've been accepted into the program and I've met with the faculty several times - and I am super-excited :-D I'm ready to move on and take the next big step.

I hail from the Midwestern state of Michigan, the best Midwestern state of all (I just KNOW that some Ohio people are glaring at the computer screen right now)! I was mainstreamed throughout my K-12 years in a small town that no one has ever heard of, one hour north of Detroit. I personally would prefer living on the western side of the state due to the landscape, but my parents decide to reside on Lake Huron. Can't complain - we're about 10 minutes away from the bridge to Canada! :-D I graduated from high school in 2002 and went straight to Gallaudet.

I'll be honest - I was debating between Michigan State University and Gallaudet for some time... MSU was my DREAM university during high school - it had every quality I search for in an ultimate college experience. I didn't even think (or learn) about Gallaudet until the middle of my high school years. I started meeting more people within the signing community and they encouraged me to think about Gallaudet. By the time I hit senior year, I was starting to get sick of being mainstreamed and not getting full access through interpreting so the thought of full access to communication on a campus was becoming pretty appealing. I got accepted to both colleges, but the campus visit to Gallaudet did it for me. The people I met were friendly, the campus was gorgeous in the peak of springtime, and I was hooked by the constant flurry of hands around campus. It also helped that I was offered a scholarship ;-)

Fast-forward four years (yikes) - I am 21 years old and my interests include reading, watching movies, photography, TRAAAAAVELING, learning about other cultures and languages, nature, camping/hiking, animals, sleeping, eating... Okaaay - I was starting to learn towards the typical profilic description. I am currently obsessed with traveling, reading and watching movies. The only obstacles to these three are time and money! I always have a pile of books to read, a pile of movies to check out and a pile of travel brochures to start planning.

However, my favorite traveling experience thus far HAS to be Costa Rica. I lived there for about 4 months in the fall of 2004 - a wonderful opportunity made available by Gallaudet's Foreign Languages department. They offer a variety of study abroad programs (one of which is a month-long study program in Spain during the summertime - and I'm going this summer!) and this specific program is a semester-long internship program. I was placed in a deaf school to work with the school psychologist and that has to be when I officially decided I wanted to go into school counseling. My host family was the BEST and I gained valuable experiences and the personal growth was way up there as well. I'll save the rest of the details for another entry ;-)

Okay. Rambling again... I'll close off with one of my favorite pictures of Costa Rica. This was taken in the backyard of my host mother's home... This flower is a representation of the amazing biodiversity found in Costa Rica *nostalgic sigh*