Poem: Monet Coppersmith

Monet Coppersmith recently won second place in the 2023 Southern Arkansas University for her poem:

Encephalon Empyrean

The ether of the sky and mind are one and the
same,

Toying with the firmament and capricious
brain,

The stygian sky rises when the clock hits 1,2,

And the ardor of the soul fills with colors of
every hue.

At zero hours the encephalon fills with
blossoming flowers.

Then when a chronograph anxiously strikes
three,

The cerebrum at last is truly free.

Lost in the landscapes of places never
traveled,

Fathomless fears vigorously come unraveled.

The spirit yearns for a chance to take flight,

Soaring into the empyrean of twilight.

Emotions themselves mourn, filled with
forlorn,

As the body shivers with vehemence that’s
freshly born.

The welkin begins to fill up with light,

Scarlet, carmine, and vermillion take over the
night.

Swirling shades pulled from the recollection
with a hush,

And gifted to the sky so it may once again
blush.

The consciousness rises and stirs with gelid
somber,

As it tries to recall memories that it can never
ponder.
 

6th Floor Museum Visit

 I told several students on the trip that I was in the ninth grade in Kensington Junior High School in Maryland on November 22, 1963. I was in Civics class when the announcement came to each class, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas."

When his body lay in state at the Capitol days later my parents drove the 15 miles into Washington DC to briefly pass by his casket.

Since then, memory of those days has faded but the 6th Floor Museum keeps them alive. The museum preserves a dark day in American history, one that had major effects on the country.

Here is a photo of what the Textbook Depository Building's 6th floor looked like that day

 The following two photos show the Kennedy's and the Connaly's before Oswald began to shoot.

The next photo shows Jackie Kennedy trying to leave the limousine. Secret Service agents stopped her.

Here is the view Lee Harvey Oswald had from the 6th floor

Dallas Trip: Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

 The Honors College took its first trip since 2020 with 11 students, 3 staffers, and one guest. We traveled nearly 500 miles (round trip) in an SAU bus. Our first stop was the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum. It hosts a positive exhibit spanning the worst to the best of human nature.

Above is the door latch on a cattle car used to transports victims to Nazi concentration camps

 These are the actual uniforms worn by survivors

The Museum emphasized the role of "upstanders" or people who actively worked against the Nazi Holocaust. Also emphasized was the positive response after World War II evinced by the UN's Declaration of Universal Rights (below)

 

We also saw the interactive hologram where Israel (Izzy) Starck answered live questions from the audience. Here is a video (below) of another survivor who made a hologram through Shoah, Pinchas Gutter.

Pinchas Gutter's hologram

Future blog entries will cover our visits to the 6th Floor Museum and the Perot Science Museum

December 2022 Honors College Grads

 December Graduation

Southern Arkansas Honors College

 

Left to right: Stephanie Tabor, McKenzie Brown, Kayla Hawkins

 

Left to right: Blake Barber, Kofoworola Afolabi, Gillian Wells, David Gustafson

Opeyemi Miracle Daramola

The Honors College is proud to send off its latest class into the future. Congrats to all

Bucket List: Madison Carter

 I have several things I have always wanted to do. Some are more likely to happen than other, but these are the ones I want to do the most;

• Grow my small business and turn it into a store. I would like to get my products into stores and then also open a store front for them as well
• Continuing in my nursing career. Currently I'm a CNA, but I want to eventually get my RN/BSN and maybe go back to become an APRN.
• Travel to another country, especially to Costa Rica or Bali. I love nature and the beauty of these places.
• Have a family of my own. I am a family person, and it is one of my main dreams to become a mom one day. I love children and it is something that I have always wanted.
• Have a house of my own. Nothing says independence more to me than being able to support yourself and I have wanted to be financially independent enough to have my own place soon.
• Being comfortable enough in life to give back to the community that raised me. There are so many people I must thank for helping me get to where I am. If I could help even half of them in any way/ by any means, then I would do so. It would be an amazing place to be in life when I am able to finally do that.
• Graduating College. It is important I get through this part of my life the best I can. It is important to me that I give the next few years my full dedication so I can be comfortable and enjoy the rest of what my life has to offer me after giving school my time and everything I have to offer.

Bucket List: Evan Reel

 1. Creating my own successful video game, doesn’t need to be a smash hit, just recognized by at least a small niche group of people

2. Moving away from my home town of Texarkana

3. Make a career out of 3D modeling

4. Learn how to cook good

5. Learn how to play the piano

6. Get my own Keytar and learn how to play it

7. Start a Youtube Channel (doesn’t even have to be famous, just to have an outlet)

8. Get a home at Shreveport

9. Produce my own short film

10. Learn how to paint

Bucket List: Andrew Wood

For my bucket list, I don’t really have anything short-term because I see my life moving
too quickly to focus on the “Now.” In just 2 years I’ll graduate. In just 2 ½ years, I’ll be working
what I hope to be a fairly stable job. In about 3-5 years, I hope to be married, and all of these
hopefully combine to my happiness.

Getting good grades is something I always strived for in high school. I tried making as
high of grades as I possibly could to get into college, but now that I’m here, I realized that I still want to make good grades. Not just because of something like honors college, but because I
want to truly live to the best of my abilities, and doing that for me means to get A’s and B’s in
college.

My future job is something I fantasize a lot about. I hope to be making at least $70,000
when leaving college, and hopefully working my way up to the $100,000+ range. Making money
to me means that I have shown I can succeed in something and I put in a tremendous amount
of work, corresponding to my pay. I want to show myself I can do it, and the best measurement I can personally make for myself is the compensation I can get for the work I put in.

Marriage has always been something I’ve looked forward to. I want the love of my life to
show up one day dressed in all white and have that magical moment in front of our families. I
plan to wait until I am in a stable economic situation before doing it, but either way it pushes me to want to be great. Being great for yourself is one thing, but when you’re doing it for someone
else makes a major difference in my opinion.

Being happy is a hard thing to put on my bucket list because it’s not just a basic
happiness. I have happiness every day, but once my life has been put into motion, I have a
high-paying job, I have a wife, hopefully a kid, and I see myself as truly “Making it”, then I think I can finally say I am content and I will not just have momentary happiness, but I will be truly
happy.

At some point in my life, I want to go to graduate school. I’ve considered doing it right
after my undergraduate. I’ve also considered doing it as soon as I get my first job. But right now, I am most likely going to do it when I have been working for around 3 years. At that point,
adding a masters degree seems the most beneficial, and it doesn’t cut into my time as a new starter to the industry.

Overall, these are my goals. Going skydiving or having a fridge full of gatorade don’t
really appeal to me, but the constant thoughts on how to become the best me I can be for both
myself and my future family stand firm as the main, and only, things I can really say speak to me for a bucket list.