I believe that a mentor will be a major advantage to me throughout my entire year. The transition from high school to college is such a vast and quick change, mentors can be one of your greatest assets.
I am majoring in Agronomy, and living in a Ag fraternity is a major asset to me. Answers to almost all of my questions are at my fingertips. All I have to do is simply walk down the hall way and ask someone if I should take a certain class or which professor I should take the class with. Also, many of the people in my house have taken the classes I am currently taking, and can help out a lot with any of the homework or tests.
I also see outside mentors as a great asset. The Hixson peer mentors and my Agronomy mentors have both been great. I really think that having them available has helped with some of the questions that I have about college as well as the transition. Having a seamless transition to college is key to success in your Freshman year, and in all of your college career.
All in all I think that having mentors available during my first semester here has really helped me and I think it has set me up for success throughout the next three and a half years of schooling here at Iowa State.

Blog Assignment #2

All my life I have been very involved with agriculture. Since about 4th grade I have been showing livestock mostly swine, and also cattle. As I moved on to college I wanted to keep involved with livestock and livestock showing.
When I came to Iowa State I heard about the Block and Bridle club. I talked to several people that were already involved in the club to find out what it involved. I also attended several meetings of the club in the first few weeks of school and I decided that I would like to join.

Block and Bridle focuses on all aspects of livestock. There are interest groups for swine, cattle, dairy, sheep, LNA, equine, and companion animal. Every group usually goes on a trip and holds one major event per year. Although I am not involved in it, I believe LNA is a very interesting group. LNA stands for Little North American, and it is a showmanship event. In this group you can be labled as an expert or a novice. Then an expert and novice are paired and the expert teaches the novice how to show a certain species.
I ended up joining this group and I look forward to all of its activities over the next four years.

It is always important to be to class on time because if you are late you could miss something important, also it shows a lot of respect to the professer if you show up on time.

Wish I had known *that* before coming to college.

Before I came to college I wish that I known that you really don't need a book for all the classes your in. At orientation I signed up for the pre-packaged books, which was handy but a mistake all in all. I think that if I had came to school and went to classes for a week or two, I could have found out which class actually requires a book, and saved myself a couple hundred dollars.
Just today in my economics class the teacher, who said the book was great and manditory in the first week of class, has waited until past the return date to display his deep hatred for the book, writers, and anything to do with either. Fantastic.