Download this article as a

click to enlarge

Hello my friends from across beautiful North Carolina. Thanks for stopping by once again. I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day holiday, and I hope none of your children set fire to any hay bales.

The summer months sure have flown by it seems. Soon, school will be starting up here again in Alleghany County. My first semester at Carolina will begin towards the middle of August. I’m actually going to be heading down there on the 29th for orientation. I’ll be signing up for classes and finalizing a plethora of paper work. (Who knew enrolling into college would be the stressful part?) Anyway, I’m excited about beginning a new chapter of my life. I am nervous, but who isn’t nervous about going off to school?

I’ll be roughly three hours away, so I’ll be able to come home when I need to. Of course, I’ll miss my family, friends and the big city of Sparta, but that’s just a part of the journey.

In other news, I went to D.C. in June as a Red Shirt for the Rural Electric Youth Tour. A Red Shirt is a Youth Leadership Council alum who is asked to come back and assist with the Youth Tour. Every year the national spokesperson is asked to come back and deliver the speech he or she gave at the national electric co-ops annual meeting, so that is exactly what I did. I was in D.C. June 10–18. My duties included running the Youth Tour store, giving an orientation to states as their bus arrived, and basically doing whatever the powers that be instructed.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Youth Tour, I’ll take a moment to explain. Every June, electric cooperatives all over the nation select rising seniors in high school (sometimes juniors) to represent them during a weeklong, all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. These students tour D.C., meet their elected officials, and learn what cooperatives are all about. There is on average 1,500 students that attend the Youth Tour every year. As you know, I attended the Youth Tour last year representing Blue Ridge Electric, and it was through my experiences and accomplishments with Youth Tour that I came to write this very log.

Anyway, I had a great time. I was fortunate enough to make some great friends and awesome memories. Being a staff assistant, I did not get to see as much of the city as I did last year, but I still received some time to play. The highlight of the trip was the final night when my fellow Red Shirts and I toured the monuments at night. It was the first time I had gone on a lighted monument tour, and if you’ve never done that before it’s a must. By the way, catching a cab in D.C. at 2:30 a.m. is a lot harder than you would think. If you do go on a lighted tour, try going earlier in the night.

Well, as I mentioned before, I’m starting Chapel Hill this fall. Things are going to start getting busy, so it looks like my log is going to slow down just a bit. The wonderful people at Carolina Country have asked me to stick around a little while longer, so I will continue writing, but it will probably be on a quarterly basis. Thanks for letting me be a part of your lives over the past year. Look for me from time to time in here. I’ll see you down the road sometime. God bless.

top