It’s times like these
Posted: April 25, 2013 Filed under: Cedar City, Student Life | Tags: cedar city, Choices, college, Feelings, Life, School, Student Life, suu, University Leave a comment »WOW! School is almost over and I can’t really wrap my head around that. My 1st year at SUU has been absolutely amazing and I am so happy I’m here and will be back next year as well. As I have sat here thinking about what this 1st year has done for me, I see so many things that have been a positive influence and have changed my life for good. The people I’ve meet, the professors I have been able to work closely with, my leadership organization, ect, and it’s times like these when I just stop and really see how amazing SUU is. Its been so amazing, that I kind of get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it all! That, people, is exactly how it should be. When you think about your school, when you think about where you want to be for the next few years of your life, make sure the feelings there. I can say this from experience, college becomes your new home. If you want to like your new home, make sure that the chosen school (sound all epic saying this! 
), is actually the one.
I am proud to say that I am a life long t-bird with pride as big as the ocean blue, and I hope that you can be too.
So go and find that place where you need to be and stick with it. SUU is my groove because of all the amazing things that have made it that way, and I knew from the beginning that this was going to be my new home. I have never, EVER regretted that decision.
Just a picture and a really close friend I met at SUU and I at one of my FAVORITE SUU dances. 
Masquerade!
Posted: April 22, 2013 Filed under: Student Life | Tags: admissions, cedar city, Cirque du Sunfest, college, dance, friends, Fun, Fun Times, mask ball, masquerade, southern utah, southern utah university, sunfest, suu, suu admissions, SUUSA, tbirdnation, UT, utah, utah college, Utah High School Tour Leave a comment »Last week SUU had their annual SUNFest. The theme this year was “Cirque du SUNFest,” a play on “cirque du Soleil,” which means “circus of the sun.”
Events during the week included a comedian; the Mr. SUU pageant; bingo with great prizes; a showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey; a carnival with fun bouncy inflatables, free food, carnival games, prizes, and live music; the Thunderbird Awards Ceremony; and a masquerade ball.
I love dancing. Any time I have an excuse to go dancing is a good time. Sometimes I’ll go to rather sketchy places if I know there’s going to be dancing. When I found out about the masquerade, you can imagine how excited I was to go.
I went with my dancing friend Ali (whenever there’s a dance beat, chances are you’ll see us together) and our outfits matched. Unintentionally.
Black and leopard. I’m not wearing any leopard, but I’m wearing gold which matched her accents.
At the dance (which was free!) I ate lots of cookies and fruits and vegetables, danced, sweated, and got some photos done in a photo booth.
You can see our love we have for dance depicted in this photo with vogue-ing and jazz hands. The other two are just… great.
I love the great activities and events SUUSA does.
Au revoir!
Fly, Peter, Fly! Fly!
Posted: April 19, 2013 Filed under: Cedar City | Tags: Adventures, cedar city, Cedar City Airport, christmas break, college, collegebound, Flights, Fly, friends, Fun, Fun Times, memories, southern utah, Student Life, suu, tbirdnation, UT Leave a comment »Did you know Cedar City has an airport?
Cedar City Airport
Did you know they have flights to the Salt Lake International Airport every single day?
CLICK HERE for a link to Cedar’s webpage about their airport. You can view the regular flight times there.
Did you know that flights are pretty reasonably priced? I’m not saying to fly up north every single day, but perhaps for the occasional concert, event, or wild spontaneous weekend…it’s an option. So, let’s say you want to go to your nephew’s fourth birthday party in Salt Lake on Sunday night but you have to be to class at 10am on Monday morning. Why not just fly back? Or let’s say that you’re super homesick for your rich parents. Why not just have them fly in for lunch? (I recommend the Pastry Pub.) It could happen (for those of you that have rich parents). There are other scenarios I could paint, but let me just tell you, flying from Cedar City to Salt Lake is a pretty good deal. I went home this last weekend for that nephew scenario. Happy Birthday, Cooper….thanks for letting me come to your party.
The Cedar airport is a happy place where life moves a bit slower. When I showed up an hour early for my flight, the only employee I could find told me, “Oh, just take a seat by the fireplace and we’ll make an announcement when we’re ready to start the security screening and boarding processes for the flight.” That’s just how they roll there. I loved it. Here’s what some of my experience looked like.
Like I said, don’t necessarily plan on flying from Cedar to Salt Lake every day or every weekend, but if you ever get the chance, just know that it’s an option. And you never know, upon landing in Salt Lake, you might just run into some good friends off on a weekend adventure of their own.
Lookin’ good, Garret and Kyle!
The Salt Lake airport is pretty nice too, it’s just not quite what we’ve got here in Southern Utah. PS, getting through Salt Lake security screening on a Monday morning took longer than my entire 33 minute flight back to the land of SUU. Ain’t no thang.
My sister told me I was pretty cool for flying up North for the weekend, and honestly, I kinda felt cool. Walking into my class at 10am, nobody even knew that my flight had just arrived at 9:20 that morning. Always be aware of the adventures that are awaiting you…even in Cedar City, Utah.
SUU is full of Excellence
Posted: April 12, 2013 Filed under: Cedar City, Experiential Education, Student Life | Tags: Campus Activities, cedar city, Excellence, Festival, Psychology, Research, Student Life, suu Leave a comment »This past week, SUU was able to put on the very 1st Festival of Excellence! This was a campus wide conference where students and professors alike where able to present their ideas or things that they had done in school with the rest of the student body. Classes where suspended and every student was encouraged to go and see what was offered. We had many seniors present their Cap Stone projects for SUU’s Edge projects and we had professors present on topics that they had written on.
The morning stated off early with a performance by our Cheerleaders and an introduction to the things that were provided for the rest of the day. Along with other single presenters, such as the students and professors, a Poster Session was held where many people or groups of students where able to present their findings on research projects they did, whether for Psychology or other things. I was privileged enough to have the opportunity to present with 2 other students on a Psychology research project that we conducted for more than a month. It was nice to be able to talk to students about what I had learned and share my findings.
The idea behind the Festival was to get students more engaged in the academics, as well as open other student’s eyes to things that they may not have know before and give them ideas to do more with their education. Which is actually what SUU is all about. We want students to take control of their education and do what they want with it and experience many different things.
Chelsea Kimptom, a junior History/Anthropology major, said that she really enjoyed having the Festival on campus and she was happy that we were able to have it and hopes that it will become an annual thing.
So when you think about where to attend, keep in mind that you’ll only find the best form of excellence at Southern Utah University
I’m going there some day
Posted: April 12, 2013 Filed under: Cedar City | Tags: cedar city, friends, LDS, Mormons, Religion, southern utah, tbirdnation, Temple, UT Leave a comment »The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an exciting announcement. Watch!
They’re going to build a Mormon temple in Cedar City. It’s going to be a couple years before this comes to fruition, but seeing as I’ve already been hoping for this for four years, I can wait patiently (and excitedly) for a little bit longer until it happens.
For more information on why Mormons build temples, CLICK HERE.
For some details on the Cedar City temple specifically, CLICK HERE.
For the SUU Journal article listing some additional benefits of the temple, CLICK HERE.
And in the meantime, just know that I’m one very excited tbirdnation-er!
Popcorn Popping
Posted: April 5, 2013 Filed under: Cedar City | Tags: cedar city, Nature, Popcorn Popping, southern utah university, spring semester, Student Life, suu, tbirdnation 1 Comment »Good news.
Spring is here.
And that’s all you need to worry about today.
Carry on.
And I’m Back.
Posted: April 4, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Busy Life, cedar city, City Life, City Lights, Fun, Mountain, School, Star Gazing, suu, tbirdnation Leave a comment »Hey guys! This week and last week have been utterly crazy but, so much fun. Due to school and trying to get everything figured out for my next semester, my life has been anything but slow and normal.
A midst all the craziness, I was able to take 30 minutes of my time to take a breather and go up the canyon right next to SUU to star gaze. It was a blast! The benefit to living in Cedar and attending SUU is that you don’t have to go far and be in civilization, and you don’t have to go far to be in the gorgeous mountains to the east. Along with the fact that SUU has so many different places to go so you aren’t ever bored inside, we have an amazing outdoors engagement center that has many classes and hosted activities to get you out and enjoying the beautiful places around you.
Whether you like the city or are more of a country guy or gal (like me) SUU is definitely the place for you. It has some of everything and it makes living here and being at SUU amazing and fun every day of the year.
My friends, roommate, and I star gazing!
Called to Serve
Posted: April 2, 2013 Filed under: Student Life | Tags: admissions, cedar city, LDS activityies, Monday night activities, Service Project, southern utah, southern utah university, suu, tbirdnation, UT, utah, utah college, Utah High School Tour, World War II Leave a comment »
The feet marched to the sound of the call. What call you might ask? The call to action! The call to serve! And the thunder came and the T-Birds arrived to do their civil duty to those who fought in a war that eventually made up “the greatest generation.”
Hopefully you liked my flowery introduction to a service project I had the opportunity to be apart of. I currently belong to the Cedar City Young Single Adult 10th Congregation for the LDS church. My job is to plan Monday night activities. When the congregational leader (bishop) asked if we could do this activity for a Monday activity, I was happy to let them take over the evening.
So at 5 o’clock we gathered together our congregation and one other, which all are SUU students, and headed out to the service project. The project was to help out a World War II veteran named Ravena. She use to fly planes from the factories out to California to be shipped across sea’s and to the front line. That was cool to find out.
When we arrived we found out the project; which was to help bring her yard back to life. At the age of 90 it becomes very difficult to maintain your yard, so we were called in to save the day. With chainsaws, shovels, rakes, and willing hands we went to work.
Everyone working
getting rid of those unwanted branches
T-Birds Represent!
Before
After
It was a great service project, and everyone had a fantastic time. There is always someone out there that we can help, and we T-Birds are always excited to help. Hope everyone had a happy Easter and enjoy the rest of your week.
Viva! Las Vegas
Posted: April 1, 2013 Filed under: Student Life | Tags: admissions, Bellagio, cedar city, Circus Circus, college, Dick's Last Resort, Dick's Restaurant, Excalibur, friends, Fun, Fun Times, Las Vegas, southern utah, southern utah university, suu, suu admissions, tbirdnation, UT, utah, utah college, Utah High School Tour Leave a comment »Of all the places on earth, I have a deep connection to Cedar City.
It’s my home and I love it here.
However, it is nice to get away for a bit, especially when it’s your friend’s birthday!
Las Vegas, Nevada is only 175 miles away, or 2.5 hours driving time, according to GoogleMaps.
Ten of us friends went to Las Vegas to spend time together and celebrate Nick’s 21st birthday!
We stayed in Circus Circus. Friday night we were going to party like 1999 and decided to walk from Circus Circus along the Strip to Excalibur for dinner. I wanted to drive because I was pretty sure the distance was a lot further than anticipated, but, in the end, I was glad we walked because we became closer friends and had some pretty awesome things happen.
Awesome thing #1: While enjoying the wonderful 80° F weather on our walk, a gentleman had the top down in his convertible and was blasting music. And it was good music. So I said, “Thanks for the tunes!” and he pointed to me and sang to us as we walked by. That made my day
Awesome thing #2: This black gentleman came up to us while we were taking photos and said we needed some color in the picture. It was great!
And then he took one of the whole group!
I love nice people
Back row LtoR: Martin, Abby, Nick, Jenni, Braden, Scott. Front row LtoR: Chris, me, Cadence, Adam!
Nick, the birthday boy, and Martin
Jenni snapped this gem of me watching the Bellagio water show. Apparently, I was quite amused.
We were walking to Excalibur to eat at Dick’s. It’s a restaurant where the servers are intentionally mean and swear at you and throw things at you and it’s quite the experience. They also make really inappropriate hats for you to wear. I, however, have a filter when it comes to posting things on the Internet so I will only be posting a photo of my hat, which was the only appropriate one made….
This is the only hat that I want photos of on the Internet. It says “Maybe if I cut my hair people would stop mistaking me for a 12 year old girl.” This is my “12 year old girl” pose.
After dinner and drinking lots of water (I don’t drink alcohol. Notice how the pitcher I’m drinking right out of is water? I was super thirsty), six of us went to a dance club and danced the night away! It was the most fun!
After a long night of walking, eating, laughing, dancing, and have the best time ever, Nick was tired so Martin carried him to our hotel room on his shoulders.
Lovely photo by Jenni of the moon over New York New York and the front of the Monte Carlo
Of all these people on the trip, there was only one that I didn’t know because of SUU. Every day it is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that I have the best friends in the world.
Thank you, SUU, for giving me friendships that I will value forever.
FHE Talent Show
Posted: March 29, 2013 Filed under: Student Life | Tags: cedar city, college, FHE, friends, Fun, Fun Times, southern utah, Student Life, tbirdnation, UT Leave a comment »Gather a bunch of church people, ask them to share their talents, and I guarantee everyone will have a good time. This is just one more thing you could experience as a member of Tbirdnation. The pictures will tell you the rest of the story. Good times, eh?
Eric
jillowhitaker
Kirk
Laurel
Jess
Nathan
Thor
Becky
