There were five of us students who were going to leave for France the day after our American Independence Day to travel with our 8th grade French teacher to France. We had a couple of cities in France that we were going to be visiting before making the trip home again. As we were sitting in Denver International Airport waiting to board our first plane, our teacher sat us down and we had a talk about what we were to do if we got separated for any reason during our trip, especially if we got separated on the metro in Paris.

We had all agreed that if we were to get separated from each other on any sort of public transportation we would all meet up at the next stop and continue on together.

I remember sitting in my college composition class, and my professor asked the class to write a story using six words. No more. No less. It had to be a six-word story that had meaning and made total sense. And we had probably about 15 minutes to do it.

At the beginning of 2018, I came across this Facebook advertisement with information about a "Trailblaze Challenge" and Make-A-Wish Colorado. Me, being a "Wish Kid" myself and a strong supporter of Make-A-Wish's mission, clicked on it to find out what it was all about. (Yes, this is an instance in which a Facebook ad worked).

That led me to a bit of information about what it was and to sign up for an info session in April. They were all in Denver, but there was an online info session. So, that's the one I took part in. I listened to this wonderful woman named Caitie talk about Make-A-Wish and the challenge, which would be the first of its kind in Colorado. They had done it in other states but she was brought on by Make-A-Wish to create Colorado's inaugural Trailblaze Challenge. It sounded interesting and since "It's Not A Race, It's A Journey," it seemed to be more up my alley.

Remembering 2020

Ever since I was probably about 10 and taking my first several Taekwondo classes, I was told that we never say the naughty four-letter word that starts with the letter q – quit.

I feel like giving the bow that Katniss Everdeen gave after trying to show herself and her top skill to the judges in the very first "Hunger Games" movie. You know that scene well. It was when she shot the arrow right at the apple in the boar's mouth, sending it to the wall right behind it, startling the judges.

She then looks at them an lowers her chest, arms spread wide, and then she says, "thank you for your consideration."

After that she turns around and leaves.

As I look back on the year I've had, I've been pretty darn lucky to have the opportunities that I have had. No, really. I've been incredibly healthy, I somehow managed to graduate from CSU, and I have a lovely job that is, well how do I put this lightly, totally out of my league.

Regardless of who you are going to vote for tomorrow, I would hope that you would consider a few things.

See you on the other side…

I think one of the strangest thing that has happened since I have been up here has been the fact that I cannot just throw everything into a bin, and at the end of the week, throw everything from that bin into the recycling dumpster outside my apartment.

As a journalism major, there are a few things that I have found are hard to do, or things that make me cringe  that many probably don't understand.

Now no need to worry; I only silently judge your grammar in emails and social media posts. I know, I know. But other than that, here's a little list of things that I'm pretty sure only journalists and photographers think/do/live.