ELEMENTARY EDUCATION MAJOR FROM GRAND ISLAND BRINGS LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY TO UNK BLOGS

Curt Carlson
Vice Chancellor for University Relations, 308.865.8529
 

Born in Guatemala, raised in Los Angeles and now a resident of Grand Island, Astrid Garcia, a junior elementary education major at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, brings a wealth of diversity and leadership to the UNK bloggers.  

Garcia is one of six UNK students who have been selected to provide detailed logs and photos of their college lives to be uploaded to the university’s home page.

According to Garcia, the most important thing that the UNK bloggers will write about will depend on the responses they receive from friends and colleagues.

“[Our topics] may vary from academics, student life to work and fun, friendships, relationships, family and religion. I guess we’ll find out when our friends and classmates read our blogs and respond to them,” Garcia said.

Garcia’s involvement on the UNK campus could possibly be a source of material for her blogs. She is the president of the Hispanic Student Association and a student senator for the College of Education.

In addition to her extracurricular activities, Garcia lists reading, running, learning French, meeting new people and watching “Gilmore Girls” as interests.

Regardless of what influences her writing, Garcia said her blogs will abide by a standard of realism. “I have success and I have failures. I have good days and bad ones. I’m going to try to keep it as real as college life is,” Garcia said.

Garcia said her blogs will be unique, due to her optimism and humor, which she said will certainly lead to uplifting stories. She also said that her blogs will occasionally be written in Spanish.

 “I will write in Spanish from time to time, to help those students who are majoring in Spanish practice their Spanish reading skills,” Garcia said.

Garcia said her experience as a first-generation college student and a minority sets her apart from a traditional student on campus. However, she doesn’t view herself as an atypical student.

“I live in the dorms. I have a roommate. I eat at Chartwells. I go to classes. I struggle with homework and procrastination. I drink coffee. And I sometimes go to class in my pajamas,” Garcia said.

Aspects of college life that Garcia said could be a common occurrence in her writings could be making friends, socializing and her faith.

The other five UNK bloggers are Kelli Cavenah, a psychobiology major from Rapid City, S.D.; Siobhan Duffy, an organizational communications major from Omaha; Cory Helie, a journalism major from North Platte; Melissa Hinkley, a journalism major from Lincoln; and Larry Perez, a criminal justice major from Topeka, Kan.

To view any of these bloggers’ entries, log-on to www.unk.edu, and click the “Student Bloggers at UNK” photo at the top-left corner of the UNK home page.