Wayne has been working very hard to provide us with a beautiful space to keep all of our memories and thoughts. He's been keeping it hidden away until it's perfect - as he is so apt to do because this website represents him in a visual sense, the coding and the design. I, however, am too anxious and have threatened mutiny unless it is released so that we can work out the buggies and add all of the historical data as we go. So here it is. Keep in mind that all of it's faults are on me for insisting a quick release.

Our hope is that this new site will be easier to read and to navigate. That it will be more aesthetically pleasing and laid back. And that you will come here to read and to comment often. We're planning on adding buttons so that you can navigate your way to reoccurring features or topics that you're interested in, as well as hosting some giveaways and fun interactive stuffs.

So keep your eyes out for how great Riotous Living is about to become. Join the movement.

♥ Jessa

In student affairs, and in life, there are competing theories to the role of race and socioeconomic status in academic success.  Across the board, studies show that students who are actively engaged in their academic experience and who feel included as a part of their campus are more likely to graduate and to perform at a high level.  Every incoming freshman experiences some degree of alienation from their campus or classes and questions their choices.  I wanted to share an article and accompanying video that I read a while ago in Stanford University News that postulates that minority students reacted very positively to a 60 minute exercise designed at making them feel more psychologically normalized.

It’s amazing what self esteem can do.  I did more research on the “race gap” as it’s being called, the lower achievement of minority students as compared to white students, and it’s receiving a great deal of attention right now in the research world.  This article believes that much of the race gap is easily explained by inadequate public school systems in poorer neighborhoods, but is more concerned with the fact that minority students with access to better schools also consistently show lagging performance.  ”This is the question that has prompted fifteen racially integrated, affluent school districts to form a consortium known as the Minority Student Achievement Network. Comprised of districts located in communities such as White Plains, NY, Ann Arbor, Michigan and Berkeley, California, the network seeks to understand the causes of the racial achievement gap and to devise solutions for reversing it.”

I’m loving the Lessons Learned about the Achievement Gap and would like to commit myself to learning more about what I can do to help provide equal education for all. You can join me in my hunt for information and wisdom at their website. I don’t claim to have any new research or information to add to this conversation, but I was interested in reading new perspectives on an old problem. And I find that it’s relevant because I was recently awakened to what this means in my own personal career hunt.

You’ve already read about when I was able to interview for Graduate Assistantships at Clemson University and, at the end of the process, rank the assistantships in order of the ones I would like to receive. Clemson’s Emerging Scholars program was something I had never heard of before and ended up being my #1 choice.  The program focuses on simply creating accessibility to education and fostering an expectation of success which is, I think, the first step in closing the gap.  I’d love to be a part of that in some way, and while I didn’t end up being offered that position I’m so grateful that the experience opened my eyes to even more possibilities in professional choices. Now I know that I need to create opportunities at UF and Santa Fe that allow me to explore my very obvious passions for diversity and equally accesible education.

Do you know of other programs in colleges that are working to close the Race Gap?  If so, please let me know of them.  I’d love to do more research

Some really cool people in my life hit a major milestone this month.

My little – Denise – blew me away by graduating med school and securing a residency at one of the top hospitals in the U.S…. Vanderbilt.  Her husband, Jesse, just finished his third round of grad school with a law certificate/masters/llm thingy. (I still don’t really get what it is but I know it’s fancy and Rachel’s doing one next year).

Rachel, Laura and Nick – along with some pretty neat people I’ve met through them – all graduated from UF Law this month. They’ve only got a few months before the bar though, so celebrations are short lived.

Girls are easy, you get them jewelry for big events like graduation (even if it’s silly jewelry like Dalek earrings), but I didn’t know what to get Nick, so I decided to get creative. Below is my first ever Bacon Bouquet.

Better than flowers because not only is it manly – it’s delicious.

All I did was wrap bacon strips into a budlike shape and spear that with skewers.  Then I laid these out on a raised rack (so that they weren’t sitting in their own juice) and baked for 20 minutes on 400 degrees.

Then I used spinach leaves as the foliage and speared them on new skewers that were also stuck into the bottom of the cooked “roses.”  They can’t be made far ahead of time because bacon gets soggy and gross if left out.

Here’s Wayne showing off the dozen rose bouquet.  Turned out pretty cool, if I do say so myself.  Which I do.

“There’s no place like home.”  ”There’s no place like home.”

I love going home, no matter what the reason for the visit.  I love sleeping at my dad’s house because my stepmom has terrific taste in furnishings and my room feels like a hotel room.  I love being, at most, a half hour away from many of the people I care about most.  I love getting to eat at Dogma (twice this visit).  I love seeing the boys relax around the pool with beers.

I love spending oodles of time with my mama.  She’s super great and we had tons of fun – shopping and eating and singing karaoke and watching butterflies flit.

We spent some of our time shopping in this terrific-ly weird “pottery” store which was more like the super walmart of homegoods.  This planter could double as a water craft.

But it was hard not to take one of these signs home…

We managed to take some time to play around with our new camera a little and… I think the pictures didn’t come out too bad.   We’ve got a lot of learning to do though.