beyond the green

Hi, my name is Rebecca Trumble. I’m a junior from Newton, Kan. and am an Elementary Education major with a special education liscensure. I’m also involved in a lot of music things here at Bethel. I play trombone in the Wind Ensemble, Jazz Ensemble I, and soon will be playing in the Jazz Combo II. The Student Alumni Association and the Student Ambassador program are a couple other things I’m also invovled in.

Since I’m an El. Ed. major I really enjoy working with kids and had the opportunity to spend a second summer working on staff at Swan Lake Christian Camp in South Dakota. Being at camp was so exhausting at times but it was worth every moment. One our longest but most memorable days of the summer was the morning we had to wake up at 4am to help with staffing at the Swan Lake Marathon. We had marathoners come to camp from all over the United States. It was pretty cool to get the chance to eat meals with them, worship with them, and hear their stories.

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A new year! Thank goodness! The summer is a great time to earn money and relax and whatnot, but there’s nothing quite the same as another year here. Personally, I’m always ready to be back at it when summer finally comes to its end.

My name is Jocelyn Wilkinson. I’m a junior communication arts and history major from San Antonio, Texas. This is technically my second year blogging but due to my less than spectacular track record last year, I consider this my first. I am going to do my best to not do what I did last year, which was nothing.

Blogging for me this semester will be a little different than my fellow bloggers because I will be studying abroad in Athens, Greece this semester! Needless to say, I’m super excited. I really hope to be able to shed some light on the wonders of study abroad, especially seeing as it’s something that can often be overlooked here at Bethel. But I plan on changing that, so have no fear! =) (Yes, I use emoticons.) In addition to this blog, I will also be sharing posts from my personal blog, so that you can get both the academic and social feel for a semester abroad because both aspects are important.

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Well, we’re back.

The campus is once again crawling with young men and women from all over the Midwest and some from other parts of the country and the world. There are students in their fifth (or more) year. There are students fresh out of high school. There is even a healthy contingent of students who spent the past year doing service and are now starting college.

My name is Megan Leary, and I am a junior from North Newton. I’m one of those students who knows someone no matter where I go in Newton. It’s one of those double-edged sword situations, where I love being an expert on Newton but I can’t go incognito anywhere.

This will be my third year of blogging for Bethel, so there are plenty of posts about me for you to go back and see. I’m a math major with a computer science minor. I’m also the vice president of both Math Club and Student Alumni Association, Web Editor for The Collegian (the school newspaper), and I work at the campus bookstore.

I’m really, really excited about this semester. All of my classes are fascinating subjects in small seminar settings and the other students seem just as excited as I am. In the past I’ve had at least one bigger general education class each semester full of students who didn’t want to be there so it’s really exciting to be done with all of those.

My busy schedule with jobs and classes keeps me sane. All I need is just enough work to keep something on my to-do list at all times without being overwhelmed. Bethel’s a great place for this to happen, and I missed that over the summer.

Hello all! I am Cris Nelson, and I will be a junior this year at Bethel College. I grew up in the neighborhood, spending three years living in North Newton from the 4th grade on up to the end of my 6th grade year. I attended high school at Wichita Heights for four years, all the while making frequent trips back to North Newton to see friends and attend Bethel College Mennonite Church. My mother and my grandmother both used to be members of the church until they moved to Marietta, GA not to long before I would set off for my freshman college. My father and my sister both joined them in the trek to their new digs and took my two dogs, Bear and Shadow with them. Though I have not been to Georgia for any extended amount of time, it is where my family resides and thus my home, though it did not take long for me to find a second home here at Bethel.

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We’ve all seen them. Those *ahem* elderly people that look like their 80+ years of life have been the most difficult anyone has had to endure in the history of the earth. When they go out in public they no longer care if their socks don’t match. They’ll wear plaid shorts with striped shirts. Matted hair and an open fly indicate either supreme ignorance or incredible apathy. I think it’s the latter. What are you going to say to someone who has been alive for more presidents than you have years? They’ve heard it all, seen it all, done it all. As a senior in college, that’s about how I feel… to an extent. I always marveled at the upperclassmen at Bethel. The way their pride in the school was displayed in the most carefree ways. Whether it was a flamewar, a challenging question in convocation, a prank, or at a sporting event. Boisterous. Incisive. Excessive. Even down right belligerent at times. But what I didn’t know before now was that they were preserving something sacred.

As a senior, I’ve lost any sensation of self-conciousness. Who’s going to tell me that I’m cheering too loud or asking the wrong questions? I’ve paid my dues, now it’s my turn to take over the ship and help lead a student body in the ways that are innovative and relevant to the changing campus demographic but with respect to the classic Bethel culture. This is a responsibility that I and the rest of my senior class should take with great care. We’re now on the pedestal to be the crazy, outgoing, loud, ignorant-to-normal social cues individuals that eliminate any sort of embarrassment of others by bearing it all on ourselves. In this way we break down the barriers that would normally exist and instead create the “community” that is so often referred to at this place. I’ll paint my face and run across the stage shirtless at convo if that means even one freshman feels less aware of themselves as an individual and feels comforted in the collective. I appreciate the times in the last three years in which a senior did that for me. Perhaps unknowingly. But regardless, the effect was the same. My voice became louder as the collective voice grew because of the long list of leaders that went before me. I don’t remember all the names of those ridiculous individuals that paved the way for my position today, just as I’m sure mine won’t be remembered. There were countless individuals before me and, I hope, there will countless after me, continuing the long tradition of creating and molding the community at Bethel.