Hey everybody!

A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks! Here's an update on all the craziness that has been going on in my life:

1) Practicum- So the semester is off to a pretty good start. I'm taking Psychometrics, Christian Social Ethics, The Criminal Justice System, Independent Study and my Criminology Practicum. Practicum is a senior outcomes course required for several of our majors/minors that involves a 120-hour unpaid internship in your field of study. It's a great way to build upon your professional experiences and apply what you've been learning in the classroom. For my Criminology minor I am doing my practicum internship with the Maryland State Police! The people I'm working with are great and I've had a blast so far. And for anyone who's wondering, I did my practicum internship for my Psychology major at the Springfield Hospital Forensic Psychiatry Unit. So as you can tell there are internships available for a wide range of interests! One of my favorite part about Notre Dame is that they build things such as practicum into your curriculum to ensure that you're really getting the professional and networking experience to give you a leg up for after you graduate.

2) Career Fair- Speaking of professional development, my friend and fellow student ambassador, Christine, and I recently attended the Loyola Career Fair! Notre Dame has developed close relationships with several of our neighboring colleges (i.e. Loyola, Towson, Johns Hopkins etc.) and developed something called the Consortium. This means that Notre Dame students are allowed to attend most events on the neighboring campuses for free! In addition, thanks to the Consortium, students are allowed to take one class per semester at one of the neighboring schools as a part of our regular tuition! Anyway, the Loyola Career Fair was great- there were around 70 businesses there and Christine and I had a fantastic time networking and giving our resumes to potential employers!

3) Notre Dame Day- we recently had one of my favorite traditions of the year at NDM! Notre Dame Day is a day when the campus comes together to celebrate our history, our values, and the achievements of our current students/faculty/staff. The entire campus community comes together for a big luncheon and we have speeches about our history and give out several awards. Our very own Angela Baumler, Interim Director of Admissions, received the Distinguished Staff Award! No one deserves it more than her. I was honored to be asked to do the preliminary remarks and introduce this year's theme: love transforms!

So yeah that's about it for what's been going on in my life! I've got a lot of exciting stuff coming up in the next week or two, including: the start of softball season (!) 100 Nights (I'll tell you more about that later this week), and getting my (maybe) acceptance letter to graduate school!!!