Kalysha Clark

Wow, it's hard to believe I'm already a senior in college. My final year has come and I hit the ground running. In the first month of senior year, I've already had an exam, quizzes, group projects and more. I'm also interning with a nonprofit this semester called AniMall, which is a nonprofit retail store with a mission to save the lives of homeless animals.

I got a dog this year as well. It's been a long road and he's not perfect, but thanks to some help from the local German Shepherd Rescue, we've been able to make a lot of great changes.

The turtle dogs found five turtles in 2 hours. On average, one person will spend 4 hours and find only one!

I also plan to present a research poster at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium using the side project I worked on over the summer.

So, I've been a little MIA lately. But I've had a lot going on.

Where to start?

I took another visit to the Chancellor's House and got to hear the director of the NC Council for the Status of Women and got to have dinner with Mrs. Woodson, the chancellor's wife.

I contacted the director of the Nature Research Center, Dr. Meg Lowman (world-renowned rain forest canopy researcher) to see if I could take part in a mentorship with her and if there were any opportunities at the museum for me to gain experience in research. I stopped by right before Thanksgiving break and took a tour of the biodiversity lab. I ended up running into my old bio lab TA who now works at the museum and will likely be working with her come January.

I am declaring my German minor tomorrow.

I am moving off-campus for the spring semester and living in a house with my cousin (who goes to grad school here) and her roommate who is a vet student. [For those of you who have been following my blog, you know my experience last year with on-campus living was not great. I thought I'd give it another go and it was still not great.]

Next semester, I will be a Teaching Assistant for my Companion Animals class.

I hope you guys all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I spent it with family, friends, and my boyfriend. He and I went and watched Skyfall, I also shot a gun (two actually, a 12 gauge and a 22), and my grandmother turned off the oven with the turkey in it for 2 hours without anyone noticing.

At least it makes for a good story.

My university offers this awesome service-learning experience known as Alternative Spring Break or ASB. Here's what the website says:

"Students engage in direct service to a community while being immersed in the culture and customs of the community. Members participate in a variety of cultural, educational, recreational and reflective activities to enhance their service experience."

I chose to apply for the Raleigh ASB trip. Most of the trips are across the country or international; my university is actually located in Raleigh so I wouldn't even be going anywhere. I did this for two reasons.

1. Each trip is dedicated to a different issue: Civil Rights, HIV/Aids, LGBT Community. Raleigh is based on Hunger and Homelessness, which is something I'm really passionate about and one day hope to create a nonprofit to address these issues and come up with influential solutions for them.

2. It's more affordable. Because we'll be local, the cost of the trip is significantly less than the others and that's a big deal for me because I'm trying to save money for an apartment and tuition for my last semester of school.

This year is the first ASB Raleigh trip, so it's still in the planning stages. We are going to be volunteering, learning more about hunger and homelessness in our community, exploring new areas of Raleigh and creating a unique project that can summarize our findings to our local university community so other students can be aware. We will probably be staying at a church downtown and then spending some days at a local park in a lodge. The plan is to volunteer with the Salvation Army and Raleigh Rescue Mission as well as two or three organizations.

I'm really excited. The trip will cost $150-200. I am applying for a couple scholarships (one of which would pay for the whole trip) and also asking for sponsors from local businesses from my hometown. Hopefully that will help!

I'll keep you guys updated!

Once school gets started and the classwork and homework and assignments start piling up, it can get easy to become overwhelmed. Work, class, clubs and everything else combined starts pulling at you and then you don't know which was is up.

That is why organization is key. I live by my desk calendar and planner and it makes it really easy for me to keep track of when things are due, when I have exams, when there are club meetings and all of that jazz. Below are some of my tips on how to stay organized.

1. Invest in a planner.
You will not regret this. Most of the time, you don't even have to buy one because your school likely gives them out. My university gave me two different one for free after I already had one for myself. Keep an eye out for your school to hand them out.

When using your planner, it's important to mark down dates ahead of time and to use different colors to indicate different things.

I also recommend making a "To Do" list on a sticky note for the week (or day) and keeping it in your planner to cross off as you go.

At my school, like many other colleges, there is a designated area for students to spray paint in order to decrease vandalism. Ours is called the free expression tunnel. Everyone makes a big deal about how painting the tunnel is something you should do on your freshman bucket list. I just never had the time.

Until tonight! Roots and Shoots is having a meeting on Thursday so we decided to paint the tunnel. Our guest speaker will be discussing conservation with lemurs in Madagascar so we included a lemur in the painting, ad well as a boa because they're just awesome!

All of the officers were there together, having a blast, making joke and getting the word out. I'm glad I can say I've crossed that off my bucket list (even if I'm not a freshman anymore).









Until then,

It's that time again, folks. Time for school. It seems like summer barely had time to get started before it was over.

I have moved back into school already and will be starting classes on Thursday. Until then, I'm trying to make valuable use of my time. I am writing this blog post as I sit outside Valentine Commons - a huge and brand new (not to mention completely overpriced) apartment complex right on campus. Yesterday, I spent 11 hours helping direct parking deck traffic and move students in. The things we do to make money. And I'm back again! Working ten glorious hours on this lovely Sunday.

In other news, some of you may know that I am a big sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. My little sister is starting 6th grade this year! I am only allowed to see Paris, my little; during the school year, but we planned to stay in touch via email and phone. Unfortunately that was not the case. I could not reach Paris at all and haven't gotten to talk to her since May. But l celebrate her starting a new chapter in her life, I am putting together a little gift of school supplies for her, which I am super excited about! I can't see her for another couple weeks but I'm exited for it! Before Paris and I left for summer break, we made a list of our goals for the summer. You can read my list and how it panned out in a later post, which I will link to.

Also, my cousin is now attending grad school here at NC State so I've spent the last two nights hanging out with her and have thoroughly enjoyed it! It's nice to have some family here.

Until next time,

A little while back, I posted a blog about getting to meet the Chancellor of NC State and his wife at the home. Here are the pictures from that evening!

Today in the mail, I received a note from myself that I made with one of my advisors at the beginning of the year. It read:

I got a scholarship and an award!

Since this was Roots and Shoots first semester at NC State, the founders came together and decided they wanted to give back to the members by giving a scholarship to one student every year. They said the student would be someone who was involved with the club, who takes their knowledge from speakers and events to apply them to the real world, and one who they would be proud to call a member. I was chosen for this years award and was presented with a $100 scholarship from the founders.

I was beyond surprised and my mom happened to be at the meeting when they announced it, which was an added bonus. This money will help me pay for my outrageously priced books for the upcoming year.

I'm so blessed to have been a part of the club and am happy to be taking on a leadership opportunity next year. I can't wait to see what the year holds for the club.

I hosted my first program at NC State last night. I talked about it in a previous blog post where I mentioned that I had received a grant for it.

We chose to show the movie Trade and host a discussion afterward about international human trafficking.

We managed to stay under our budget tremendously and only spent $30 of the $50 we were given. We bought drinks and popcorn, we ordered the movie on Amazon, we printed flyers, and we made a Facebook event page. The event was sent out in lots of email circulars, including WISE, CSLEPS, and Chancellor's Leadership Program.

Everything was going smoothly.

Until the day before.

Kristine (the other girl running the program) and I thought it would be a good idea to have a "guest" speaker to host the discussion because we didn't know too much about human trafficking. A friend had given me the email of a girl who she knew was involved with a lot of human trafficking research. I contacted her (a week or so before) and she had recommended that we show Trade, since it was originally planned that we would show Taken. She said Trade was a better depiction. She was excited about our event and wanted to speak but wasn't actually able to because of time conflicts. So she gave me the email of another girl who would be interested. I contacted her (a few days before the program) and told her the plan. She decided to watch the movie herself and felt like some scenes may be too graphic if there were any sexual violence survivors at the program.

So she contacted the woman who had given our grant (the woman who leads the Chancellor's program) basically behind my back to tell her that she was concerned about the movie. I was then contacted by the leader of the Chancellor's program to tell me that we should give our viewers the number of the Rape and Sexual Violence Phone Line, which I felt was appropriate.

Then the girl who was supposed to speak said she felt like we should have someone from the counseling center on campus or from the women's center come to the showing. I called and called but no one was available (especially the day before!). The counselor's center recommended we reschedule, which was just not an option.

The girl who was supposed to speak and the head of the program were going to talk to each other and contact me. They never did. So I went on with the program. We seriously only had six people, including myself and Kristine. Only one girl who attended wasn't a close friend of either me or Kristine. So we had terrible turnout. I still gave the disclaimer and we provided the phone number. I also gave a verbal warning before any graphic scenes occurred.

And the girl who was supposed to speak? Never even showed up.

This event was supposed to give me and Kristine opportunities to be leaders on campus. I felt like it was hard to lead because everyone else was telling me how to do it. And they were piling it all on me the day before.

If I learned anything from this event, I learned:
-Watch a movie before you plan to show it to others, even if someone knowledgeable recommended it.
-Don't depend on others to come through with something. After all, sometimes you can only count on yourself.
-Don't expect things to go exactly as planned because they never do. (We had some technical difficulties with the projector and had the start the movie 15 minutes late.)

All in all, we educated a few people about the topic, so we did what we were supposed to. But I can't help but think this program wasn't exactly "successful".

Hopefully we'll get 'em next time.

That's right! I met the Chancellor of NC State and his wife on Monday evening. I'm in the Chancellor's First Year Student Leadership Program, a program envision and created by the chancellor and his wife, and we were invited to their home for light appetizers.

A friend and I who are both in the Chancellor's First Year Student Leadership Program applied for a Mini-Grant ($50) from the Women's Center to do something to raise awareness about a global humanitarian issue.

We decided to hold an event to raise awareness for Human Trafficking. We plan to show the movie "Trade" in a common area in one of the dorm's and prepare handouts about what human trafficking is, why it happens and what we can do to prevent it. I was given contact information to a student here who is working with human trafficking and who is passionate about the topic. I contacted her and she's hoping to come speak at our event and host a post-movie discussion.

We plan on using the grant to get food and drinks (popcorn and sodas, really), the movie, and money to print flyers and handouts.

I'm really excited about it and even though we only have two weeks before the event, I'm hoping we have a good turn out!

To read about how to event turned out, click here.