Wednesday, March 7, 2012

You Can't Know Where You're Going...

Until you know where you've been.

This is my first post in my first experience with an official blog. Congrats for taking this journey with me! I've always wanted to start a blog, but I've never thought my daily life was interesting enough for one. I would much rather tell it all to a friend or keep it to myself. But in this particular upcoming week (that just so happens to be spring break), my life is about to get a TON more interesting.


I'm going on an adventure.


Let me tell you a little bit about this trip. I'm involved in a particular group called Students Today Leaders Forever (STLF). A committee from UNI just joined this group this past year, but as it turns out, there have been 10,000+ participants across the United States. Illinois State University was the 10,000th participant on March 4th, 2011. STLF began as a group of four freshman guys at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities who wanted to make a difference in the world, so they set up this organization on September 18, 2003.
Students Today Leaders Forever
Since then, the organization has taken off and soared to heights they never expected. The group is focused on service, education, and reflection and centered around four core principals: trust, initiative, passion, and support. They have many opportunities for tours in middle school, high school, and college levels. And they also have a great website where you can find a lot more information about the group. Visit: http://www.stlf.net/home for more information.

The tour I will be participating in is called a Pay-It-Forward Tour (PIF). Tours consist of a various number of buses that travel to different cities across the United States, doing service in each city. As of now, this is really all I can tell you about the logistics of the tour. Not that I don't want to tell you, but simply because I don't know. Like I said, this will be an adventure :)

A core committee of eight students from UNI will be traveling down to Normal, Illinois tomorrow afternoon to meet up with the Illinois State participants, who already have a tour planned for this year. Besides going on an awesome, exciting spring break trip, our core will be taking notes for the planning of our own next year. (So any of you from UNI that are super interested in something like this, keep that in mind!) This year, Illinois State is taking three buses. The first is South-bound, the second is going East, and they call the last bus the "mystery bus." I'll give you one guess about which one I'll be riding on...okay, two...you got it! The mystery bus. Those of us riding this bus have no idea which cities we will be stopping in until...well, until we get there! Oh, and the best part? I'm the only one from UNI riding this bus.

Wait.
So you're saying that you'll be on a bus in which you have no idea of any destination, and you'll be joined by complete strangers?
...Yep, you've got the gist.

If this didn't sound much like an adventure before, I hope I have finally made my point. Tomorrow, let the games begin!

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