Okay, who am I kidding, my life revolves around these stairs so I have to share about the latest happenings with my project. On December 4th my professor, Shae Smith put together a ribbon cutting ceremony and invited several other professors and the assistant Dean of students to the grand reveal of the painted staircase. I've been to a ribbon cutting before and didn't think much of it. This one was different though. For me to be one holding the pair of scissors, preparing to cut the black and gold ribbon withholding the product of my semester long project, was one of the most fulfilling moments of my life.
Since the ribbon cutting, I have been busy making international calls and sending emails over to London as I have been in contact with the StepJockey project manager, Nina Whitby. StepJockey is a company with a mission to label the world for calorie burn. They make signs that can be posted in stairwells throughout the world that encourage stair usage and provide a calorie count tracker. StepJockey signs have QR labels that can be scanned with a smartphone through the StepJockey app to track calorie burn history. I am excited about the technology aspect that StepJockey has to offer and I feel that this is exactly what KSU needs to further encourage stair usage . Hopefully if everything works out, we will have StepJockey signs posted throughout the KSU campus so students can track their progress on every stairwell!
Aside from the stairs, however, I started my second semester here at KSU two weeks ago. I had an incident on my way to class one morning and tore my meniscus (not to mention I already had a torn ACL). Friday morning I went in for emergency ACL and Meniscus reconstruction surgery. Ironically and unfortunately enough, I will have to take the dreaded elevator for the next 6 weeks. I am getting around campus by means of purple, sparkly crutches that my wonderful and loving friends decorated for me. Even though they are cute, they are by no means convenient. At this point in my recovery, I would say that my arms hurt worse than my knee. Ouch! KSU's campus seems so much larger when I'm on crutches. Week one has been rough but I know that it only gets easier from here.
They never said it was going to be easy, but like always, Climb On!