Accepted Students Day

Today, Ohio Northern University had its Accepted Student's Day on campus. This is an event where all incoming freshmen who have already been accepted for the fall semester come and spend the day at ONU. They get tours of the campus, they can put down their deposits, they get served lunch, and they get to see some of the student organizations that ONU has to offer.

This year, Mock Trial was able to have a booth at the event. Myself and two other members of the team went to go meet some new students so that we could potentially recruit them for Mock Trial this year. Unfortunately, due to a mix up that happened last year, Mock Trial was unable to have a booth at Accepted Student's Day and Welcome Fest. Since we didn't have any booths, we struggled to recruit new members. By the time the season had ended, we only had six members on the team, which was the minimum we needed to compete. We met a lot of great students today and hopefully sparked some interest in our club. Our goal this year is to triple our numbers to we can have two full teams for competitions. Hopefully we'll get some people to sign up at Welcome Fest this fall!

The Last Light of the Sun

Over spring break, I had to read "The Last Light of the Sun" for one of my English classes. As an English major, I have to read a lot. However, I haven't read for pleasure in a really long time. Not since middle school. I always find it hard to find a new book to start and, on top of that, I was always assigned books to read throughout high school. When I got to college, I was overloaded with books, short stories, and poems I had to read for my classes. For example, I have nine books that I had to rent for my Literature in Medicine class alone. With so much reading, I found myself spending a lot of time reading through chapters and writing responses for my classes. After I read all the chapters and stories I was required to read, I was completely burnt out. I didn't want to read something else for fun after I had just been forced to read several chapters or stories for school.

I don't hate most of what I read, but I'm not always overjoyed with the selections either. However, I really loved this particular book. "The Last Light of the Sun" reminded me of the "Game of Thrones" series. The characters are all very well written and the plot captures your interest from start to finish. There are numerous characters that you follow through the story. Each one has their own baggage and issues that drive them forwards until multiple paths begin to intertwine. While it is a long book, nearly 500 pages, I found myself easily cruising through it alongside my favorite characters. If you guys are ever looking for a good book to read, I would highly suggest this one!

New Horse in the Barn!

Our barn became just a little bit bigger over spring break. My step-father, Kevin, has been looking for a new horse that he could ride in competitions. After some looking, we were lucky enough to come across this beautiful grey. He is currently four years old, but he is not yet fully broke. This means that he isn't not completely trained when it comes to riding. Since he is so new, he hasn't yet acquired a barn name, though we are thinking of calling him Steel. We had not seen Steel in person before we purchased him, so once he was brought home we had to see what his temperament was like as well as see how he would ride. We learned pretty quickly that he was a big sweetheart. He loves to have his face pet and he is as calm as can be. Much calmer than some of our other young horses!

When it came to riding, he did pretty well too! It was clear that he wasn't fully trained, but he proved to be a horse that we could work with. With a little bit of time and training, he could become a good competition horse. He has long strides and does a good job listening to the rider. We put him through some tests like in the picture shown above. We took him to an indoor arena where we had him try to step up onto a few little platforms. This was just to try and see if he would listen or if he was skittish around new things. Another test we did was we tried walking him through a shredded-up tarp. The sound the tarp makes and the feel of it can be scary to a young horse, but Steel managed to walk through it with a little bit of work. I am excited to see how he does over the next couple of months or so!