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I grew up in a house full of football fans. I loved the sport so much that my high school PE teacher let me teach the unit on flag football to my peers. Doing that convinced me I wanted to become a football coach, and not just a recreational football coach – a National Football League coach.

I went to my PE teacher, Mr. Brown, and told him I was serious about becoming a football coach. He then contacted Coach Bush Hamdan, the Mizzou quarterbacks coach.

Coach Hamdan agreed to mentor me and I got the blessing from Coach Drinkwitz to come on board. It all happened so fast, and within a couple of months, I made the decision to come to Mizzou. I knew I was getting an amazing opportunity to work with the football team. It was basically a dream and when something like that opens up to you, you have to take a leap of faith.

Before I arrived on campus, I worked closely with my academic advisor. I told her I was going to be involved with football and needed my fall schedule to be flexible. She set up my schedule to make sure that I had all my classes before 1 p.m. Because after 1, I would be in the football facility until 8 or 9 at night. She was a huge help and still is to this day. I know I can go to her whether it’s for academics or just to talk.

The first time I was on campus was to start football practices and classes. The thing that really impressed me was that for an SEC school, the campus was not overwhelmingly big. Everything is within walking distance and is super easy to access. Everyone at Mizzou is nice, personable and outgoing.

I know to do my best I have to have a schedule and know what I need to get done each day. I am in the football offices, or at “work” with football, whenever I’m not in class.

Coach Bush and the entire team have accepted me with open arms, and I’m not treated any differently because I’m a woman. Together, we just want Mizzou to be the best team possible. We are all in the same mindset just trying to get better every day. While I’m learning in my classes about sports management, I’m learning a tremendous amount watching and working with the coaches and the team. I don’t think many coaches would say they learned much about their career from a football textbook, so the hands-on experience is important.

From an academic standpoint, I made the dean’s list in the fall, and so one of my academic goals is to make the dean’s list every semester so I can get those honor cords to wear at graduation. Then I want to get my master’s degree and live my life in a way that impacts the next generation.

I feel blessed to have this opportunity at Mizzou. I know a lot of women at the college and high school levels who are grinding and trying to make it. I’m fortunate that there is a network of women looking to help each other, and that there are men such as Coach Hamdan and Coach Drinkwitz who are willing to give me a chance.

Beyond classes and football, I’ve been able to build friendships and a find a support group through a local church. I also play intramural basketball once a week. Having those activities outside of football and academics helps me stay balanced.

Whatever you want to pursue in life, you’ve got to go and chase it. At Mizzou I’m forging a path and being a leader in a field not many women pursue. I hope I inspire other people to pursue their dreams.

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With a name like Truman Gouldsmith, you’d probably think that all my ancestors were Mizzou graduates and I was born with Tiger stripes. The reality is my parents liked presidential names, and I was going to be named George until two hours before I was born. My mom saw a copy of the biography of Harry S Truman and decided that she liked that name better, and since it was still a president’s name, and we are from Independence, Missouri, where President Truman is from, it all made sense. I am a first-generation college student and don’t have any other connections to Mizzou.

I chose Mizzou because I was admitted to The Cornell Leadership Program (CLP) in the Trulaske College of Business. The CLP provides leadership development and honors-type experiences for students. The CLP also creates a small-scale environment within a big campus, offering opportunities to hear guest speakers, travel and learn from leaders in industry.

One of my favorite parts of Mizzou is that I can walk from the Mark Twain residence hall to the Student Center or the MizzouRec center and always see someone I know. With 30,000 or so students you wouldn’t think that is possible on any campus, but through organizations and activities on campus you get to know so many people and shrink the campus. I was very involved in high school in all the activities, math club, varsity tennis, NHS chapter president, but there is exponentially more to do at Mizzou. While here I’ve been in the Chess Club, on the Homecoming Steering Committee, Alpha Kappa Psi (Business Fraternity), CLP class coordinator, student ambassador for the Trulaske School of Business, and a counselor for Camp Trulaske (a new student program).

One of my teachers in high school always told us to “take healthy risks,” meaning to try new things and to get out of your comfort zone in safe ways. Then in my first accounting class at Mizzou the instructor reinforced this when he told us, “say yes.” He went on, “if someone invites you to play chess, say yes. If someone asks you to study after class, say yes.”

Some freshmen come in and think they have to be in every club or activity offered just like they might have been in high school. That is just too overwhelming. I’ve found that if you choose one thing your first semester, then that will introduce you to enough people with whom you’ll find other common interests, join other activities and pretty soon you are really busy and you can’t walk across campus without seeing someone you know. I started off my first semester joining the Chess Club. That led to finding people who wanted to play tennis.

It’s a similar situation with your classwork. A lot of students arrive at Mizzou from the top of their high school classes feeling overconfident in their academic abilities. I quickly had a humbling experience. There is so much to learn, and you must be open to that and not think you know it all. You go from being in school all day in high school, to maybe being in class 3-4 hours per day. It’s on you to figure out how to spend that extra time when someone isn’t telling you what to do. Along with how you spend your time, it’s important to learn how to monitor your money. If you don’t stay on top of where and on what you are spending money, it can get out of control quickly. Mizzou has an Office for Financial Success where they offer one-on-one financial counseling, workshops, and other resources. It’s great for learning to manage money during college, but it will also pay off once you graduate and navigate the adult world.

I’m really impressed that at Mizzou we are all on the same team. Everyone is a potential friend and someone you can connect with. I’m a regular at the Starbucks in the Memorial Union and within a few weeks I noticed the employees remembering my name and my usual order. Yes, there are a lot of people at Mizzou, but it is at the same time a close community. I was pretty rigid and uptight in high school but what I’ve learned Is that you don’t have to have it all figured out. You are not on your own, but with Mizzou’s help, you have the ability to be in charge of what you want to do.

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Once on campus, our tour guide was so excited for us and the fact we decided to visit during Homecoming weekend. In his words, “It’s the best time to see Mizzou.”

My high school didn’t have a lot of school spirit, so it was really cool to see this at Mizzou. We ended up changing our travel plans so we could spend a little more time in Columbia and experience more of Homecoming at Mizzou. I was blown away by the fact that it wasn’t just college kids celebrating this weekend – it was all the alumni who came back and the little kids that came to campus decorations on Friday night. I loved that it really drew in everyone in the community.

I graduated high school with 1,000 classmates. Coming to a big university wasn’t intimidating. The classes I took in high school helped me figure out what I wanted to do for a career. I always loved my science classes. My senior year I was able to take both an anatomy and psychology class and those two classes helped me decide that nursing was what I wanted to do.

Seeing that the nursing school is in the center of campus was really important to me. It was the only school I visited where I wouldn’t have to drive three miles down the road to get to class. I loved that. Being a part of the community is really important to me. Mizzou was the perfect balance of everything I wanted. It was also helpful to learn that I could get in-state tuition as an out-of-state student. This was a big factor for me in my decision to choose Mizzou.

Admittedly, initially I chose to attend a different university. But I didn’t tell any of my friends about it and wasn’t really excited about my choice. On April 26, 2019 – I walked into my parents bedroom and told them, ‘I think I really want to go to Mizzou.’ They knew my initial choice wasn’t going to be the school for me. They love Mizzou as well and they were glad I figured it out on my own.

I’m on track to graduate from Mizzou this December and plan to move back to Chicago and work as a nurse in an Intensive Care Unit. I really want to be a travel nurse in a couple years.

Going away to college and taking on a career as challenging as nursing has allowed me to become much more independent. I’ve learned I need to make decisions that I am confident in and while you love those all around you, they can’t make your college choice for you just like they won’t be here to do your laundry and cook your dinner.

The same goes with your friendships and relationships. You need to make the decision that is best for you and recognize that your friends aren’t going to college with you. You will always have family and friends from home, but you need to allow your new college to become home, too.

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When I was looking at colleges, the one thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to go to college with the same people I went to high school with, and I thought too many of them would be at Mizzou. I had committed to another school and thought I was going there, but having to pay out-of-state tuition, being a first-generation college student and not getting any scholarships made me keep looking.

I visited Mizzou in April of my senior year and was accepted in May. When I saw the Wildlife Pond that is part of the Botanic Gardens, Laws Observatory, and all the beautiful flowers and trees on campus I fell in love. Mizzou has all these incredible traditions, like Tiger Walk, and it even created its own ice cream, which I think is really cool. I also liked that Mizzou offered American Sign Language as an option for students who need to take a foreign language. I have taken all three ASL classes.

The initial adjustment my freshman year was challenging. It was so different from high school. I had some anxiety adjusting and fitting in, but there are so many resources to help with that, and it’s important to remember that everyone is going through big changes.

One of the ways I got involved was to sign up to be a tutor at the Academic Success Center. I tutor biology, chemistry and other life sciences. I’m also involved in Tri-Beta (Mizzou’s biology honors society), the Multicultural Society, the Association of Pre-Physician Assistant Students, The Mizzou ASL club, Med-Zou, and I’ll be a Summer Welcome leader this summer.

Through Summer Welcome, I hope I can help first-generation and minority students understand all the resources at Mizzou and encourage them to use those resources to help find their place here. It’s important to know that whatever challenges you might face in adjusting to college and being on your own, there is someone, and probably many people, going through the same thing.

Plus, Mizzou has caring faculty and staff who want you to succeed. It is competitive in a certain sense, but the professors, staff, and even your fellow students want you to succeed. I was really impressed that Dr. Watts and his teaching assistant Lauren reached out and checked on their students during the pandemic, reinforcing that they were more concerned about us as people than just as students.

When I arrived at Mizzou, I was shy and introverted. I pretty much just studied in my room a lot freshman year. You don’t want to go overboard either direction, but you need to find a balance between studying and having fun. The past two years, I’ve done much better at enjoying college life. Last summer, I became a licensed Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). I’ve worked at MedZou Community Health Clinic, which has professors and medical students providing free primary health care to members of the Columbia community. I update charts, check out equipment to the doctors, and do inventory, which has allowed me to learn more what a career in medicine will be like. Working at MedZou and being an EMT have prepared me well to begin applying to physician assistant schools.

After being close to going elsewhere, I am thankful for the opportunities to apply what I’m learning in the classroom to prepare for a medical career. I’m so glad I came to Mizzou.

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I did not have a great experience in high school, and I certainly didn’t love high school. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I was involved and all that but coming from a small high school in a small town I sought more diversity and more diversity of thought, especially. Although my mom graduated from Mizzou, and I was actually born in Columbia, I didn’t grow up as a big fan or spend a lot of time here.

But when I visited in fall of my senior year, it just felt right. I knew Mizzou was where I needed to be. I was ready to commit right then. I felt this immediate connection because everyone here is so friendly. There is a place for everyone here and I found my people quickly. There are many people here with different experiences and world views.

One of my first opportunities to see the world from a different perspective was with Mizzou Alternative Breaks my freshman year. My work with disadvantaged schools led me to the social work major. There is so much need in the world, and so many things that should be fixed. The world needs helpers and those willing to push for change.

That trip made me realize I want to work with adolescents and teens. I also want to get involved in policy to help make changes that benefit teens. Getting involved on campus has been so important for me. As the leadership development director for Mizzou Alternative Breaks, and as an ambassador for the School of Health Professions, I’m trying to create a welcoming place for incoming students so they can find their own spot here.

It’s important for students to recognize that life in college is going to be okay. You don’t have to know everything at once. Once you get on campus, go to office hours of professors, ask questions, talk to people. Mizzou is so welcoming, but you must reach out and get involved.