Summer 2016: A Very Eventful Summer

My first summer as a resident of Salt Lake City, Utah is now coming to an end! I have one more day of vacation and then starting Friday, August 19th, I have 7th grade orientation at Hillside Middle School. I am really excited to begin a new year with the Hillside Huskies. I really enjoyed working here last year (even though I was only there the last couple months of the school year), and am looking forward to the experiences and life lessons I will be learning this year as I progress toward my goal of becoming a Special Education Teacher.

One thing I can honestly say about this summer is that it was probably the most eventful summer I have ever experienced. Most of my life's summers were a bit of a grind for me. I get done with school, I enjoy a couple weeks of vacation and then I get relatively bored and feel ready to get busy again. That was not the case this year! At the moment, I am ready to get back to work and get educated but overall, I was actually able to enjoy this summer. Do mind, that during my grade school days, I was a pretty picky and stubborn guy. If there was a trip planned, I often chose to stay home and do my own thing. Now I have grown out of that phase and choose to enjoy more things. I am way more flexible than I used to be. That could very well be the reason I make friends a lot easier now than I used to.

 Every week had something to look forward to. With very little work doing the extended school year program, I had  a lot of free time.

Some highlights include: going out fishing once a week with my good friend Colter, a grueling backpacking trip to White Pine, Hemlock with friends Landen and Trevor, and a fishing trip at Lake Fontanelle, Wyoming. I often told friends that the Wyoming trip was going to be the highlight of the summer because I was excited to explore a state I have never been in before. However, now that it has happened, the highlight honestly had to be my brother J.J. (Jenson) returning home from his LDS mission in Mexico City. This was a moment that I will embrace in my memory for quite a while. Not only was it amazing to hang out with my youngest brother for the first time in 2 years, but just seeing the family emotions, especially Mom and Dad made it a truly incredible moment. I really loved when the 3 of us Walters boys hung out at a hotel with Dad and we were so excited to all be with each other, that we couldn't sleep the whole night. J.J. claimed to have gone a few days without sleeping, and even he could barely sleep.

After hanging out with Dad, it was Mom's turn. I got to see her new house, which I have to say is really impressive compared to the house we grew up in. That house will always be full of memories but this house just looks like a step up. The backyard is bigger and nicer in my opinion, and the interior of the house looks a lot richer, especially the kitchen.

After spending a couple days at Mom's house, we then had a Summerhays family reunion at Bear Lake celebrating J.J's return. The lake was beautiful and Uncle Josh and Aunt Nicole who own a little hut up there provided a lot of fun activities. I really enjoyed riding the boat and holding onto the tube for dear life. Another highlight came at this moment and that is my other Walters brother, Brennan proposed to his girlfriend, Mars on the boat in the middle of the lake and he did it in a very classic Brennan fashion.

I do have one more event I am looking forward to before I start becoming truly busy and that is going to see Rebelution with my friend Samantha. I am really excited about this. I met Samantha working at Danville last summer and we still have a good bond even after me living in Salt Lake for a year. I am still amazed that she is willing to drive from St. George to go to a concert with me. It is going to be a blast.

I have been making some personal goals to work on this year. One goal is to cook more, and eat out less. I admittedly ate out quite a lot last year. There were some weeks I did not even eat at home. It was the Freshman 15 all over again!! There were so many places I wanted to try in Salt Lake City, and I still have some places on my list, but not near as many. I have found a renewed love of cooking this summer. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos (some favorite channels include HellthyJunkFood, and Brothers Green Eats) and food network (I love Alton Brown) to inspire me. Cooking is becoming something I look forward to because I can imagine a certain food I am really craving at the moment, and truly make it my own. My favorite thing I made so far was my own version of Taco Bell's Beefy Crunch Burrito. I made it spicier and meatier than taco bell's and it was so worth the extra time and effort to make.

I also am trying to drink a lot more water, and hopefully even give up carbonated beverages for good, except on special occasions. I got this new water bottle that I will carry around with me and that should help me with this goal a lot. The plan is to drink so much water, I won't even be thirsty enough to crave a soda. My fluid intake is going to be limited to water, tea, and coffee.

The rest is obvious. Continue doing well in college, gain a lot of experience and ideas through my job and just simply enjoy life. I have some fun plans this year and look forward to telling you about them on the next blog entry which will be around Christmas time. Thanks a ton friends for following me and I hope you all have a good Fall 2016!

Spring Semester 2016-A Very Successful Semester

This semester has been one of my most successful, if not the most successful college semester I have experienced yet. I guess one could argue that last years Spring semester was the most successful because that was when I graduated with my Associate of Science degree. Even so, this has been one of my favorites. Notably, this is the semester I got approved into the school of special education!

This has been my 2nd semester as a student at the University of Utah. It started out rough, but ended at a very high note. My job as a PE Paraprofessional at Indian Hills became more of a rocky road than last semester. I was considering toughing the year out and than requesting a different job, despite how tough of a job it was while being a full time college student, but it just ended up not working out so well.

That moment led me to the best decision I made since moving to Salt Lake City. I got moved to Hillside Middle School as a severe paraprofessional. The same kind of job I had in St. George at Snow Canyon High School. My job at Hillside so far has been as great as it could get for this point in my life. I feel the teacher I work for is very supportive of my college education; which is one thing I did not feel much of working at Indian Hills, although I have to mention a few teachers who helped me through the tough times there-Tara Black, Susan Decker, and Ann Melville. Also, more importantly, I don't feel pressured to be perfect at the position. When I was working as a PE Paraprofessional, I felt too often like I was expected to know how to be a PE teacher, despite no prior experience and only 6 hours of training. My principle and the teachers at Hillside seem more understanding that I am learning as I go, which I have appreciated much. Also they do a good job at helping me feel appreciated. Overall, they just seem much more flexible and willing to do what it takes to further me into my goal of being a severe special education teacher.


Outside of work, many other great things happened this semester. I got to make some great new friends. One friend, I met in my Research and Inquiry course whose name is Colter. We started simply as study partners, but as the semester furthered through, we eventually became good pals. Especially when we had one conversation that literally dragged on for 4 hours straight just sitting on a bench in Presidents Circle. Him and I plan on doing some fun stuff this summer break.

Another notable friend I made, I met through Xbox live admittedly. However, that has not devalued how we became friends. He prefers to be "incognito" so I won't mention his name online. Some fun stuff we have done is seeing Hemlock live at the Royal Bar and Grill. Also he has trained me well in the art of the Sun Singer Warlock in Destiny. We plan to see Hemlock again when they go to Mt. Pleasant so that should be tons of fun. Not a bad friendship if you ask me, at least for one that met through online video gaming. LOL

Some other fun things I have done this semester was going to a Jazz vs Spurs game with my Dad, seeing Killswitch Engage in concert and meeting WWE Hall of Famer, Mick Foley in person!

The last thing I would like to mention in this post is how I have felt about myself this semester. I feel like this was the first semester I truly felt comfortable being myself. As many of my close friends know, I have gone through many changes in philosophy and views of life. What I believe now is not the same as when I was a high school student. It was difficult at first, but overtime I feel I found my niche again, and I have been able to develop some new and great relationships. I think moving to Salt Lake helped me with this more than anything. Moving to a new city has allowed me to start a new life. I did not have to worry about surprising anybody because not many people knew me yet. I got to start fresh up here and that relieved a lot of pressure on freely going through life the way I felt was best for me.



By the looks of it, I should have my bachelors degree within 2 more years. I am very excited to continue progressing toward my goals. I am very grateful to have many great friends and supporters. Thanks for following!

Fall 2015 Semester in Review

I just completed my first semester at the University of Utah! It was overall a successful semester with me achieving a 3.675 GPA and making the Dean's List. Despite the success, it was a pretty basic semester. More days than not were go to work from 8-3, come home, relax a little, get homework done then go to bed. It was exactly the kind of semester I needed considering I did not just transfer to a new university but also a new city. The fact that it was not an overly full schedule gave me plenty of time to adjust to the city and get comfortable. Now that I have finished with the semester as well as I did, I am ready to increase the intensity. This next semester won't be mostly online classes which means I will be home less and have a more loaded schedule.

My favorite class this semester was easily strategies for college success. Even though most of the information was review of what I learned at Dixie about tips for surviving in college, I really appreciated Professor Soma. She always seemed willing to offer advice and support when ever I needed it. She was the perfect first semester mentor!

Some highlights of the semester include attending the Utes vs Aggies football game, going undefeated in a Pokemon trading card tournament, visiting Logan, Utah during fall break and seeing the Warriors play at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Like, I said it was a pretty basic semester so this won't be my most exciting post ever, but at least it is an update. Thanks for following!!