Hello and welcome to my new blog! I’m stoked to start sharing all of my UST experiences with you. Before I get started, I’ll introduce myself. My name is Bianca, I’m from Roseville, MN (about 15-20 minutes away from St. Thomas’ St. Paul campus) and I’m in my third year here at UST. I’m a communication and journalism major (COJO, as we call it) and I absolutely love it. I’m involved in a couple of clubs on campus, like UST Invisible Children, KUST (University of St. Thomas Radio) and Tommie Ambassadors.. You’ll hear PLENTY about those in the blogs to come.

School doesn’t completely consume my life though; when I’m not at school I work at Coffee Bene – a coffee shop located in both the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library and at the Cleveland & Grand location. I also have a job in Downtown St. Paul working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Public Affairs.

You may be looking at this and thinking, “Does she have a life outside of work  and school?!” (I say that to myself all the time) and surprisingly I DO! I absolutely love the Twin Cities, and you can often find me at a restaurant, going to movies or catching a band playing at the legendary First Avenue.

Not surprisingly, all of the above is pretty much what I did during the summer! But I did get opportunity to do some really cool things here in MN.

Over the summer, I got the opportunity to be an intern at St. Paul City Hall working for Councilmember Melvin Carter III who represents Ward One in St. Paul. I met Mr. Carter when he had a speaking engagement at St. Thomas last year, and I applied for a summer internship shortly afterwards. It was a great experience, and I learned so much about city government.. They make a LOT of decisions that affect us.

I went to a couple of MN Twins games at Target Field. This particular picture was taken on the day where the heat index was over 110 degrees! Needless to say, I consumed a lot of water. It was a miserably hot day, but well worth it.

Anddddd the BEST part of my summer? THE MINNESOTA STATE FAIR! I love the fair so much that I went three times. I’m still trying not to think about how many calories I consumed over the course of those three days.

All in all, a great summer and now school has started again! We’ve been in session about a month, and I’m loving my classes so far. I’m excited to share with you all of my experiences!