Today was the first day of 2009. I feel that 2008 was a really good year and I’m thankful to God for what he’s done in my life during that time. As I look back at what transpired in 2008, I can see His hand working in my life, so I wanted to share some of the ways God has blessed me in 2008.

College Acceptance

Because I was home schooled and was graduating a year early from high school, I was unsure whether I would be accepted at Rose-Hulman. Thankfully I was. This was a great blessing for the following reasons (not an exhaustive list):

1. As a child of a Rose professor, I get free tuition (this of course is the biggest blessing).
2. Going to Rose meant I could live at home. I’m an independent person, but being able to live at home has really been great because I’ve been able to save quite a bit of money not having to pay rent.
3. Rose is one of the best undergraduate engineering schools in the US. An education from Rose gives students a jump start upon graduation.

I feel that God has really brought all of this about through (just) enough intelligence to learn, parents who gave me a stellar education, and many other blessings to numerous to count.

Job Opportunities

Toward the beginning of this year I had the opportunity to help IRPA as they transferred their static website to a WordPress based CMS. Beyond introducing me to WordPress, my work with IRPA gave me a connection which has proved pivotal to to several other work opportunities that have presented themselves to me during the past year.

About the time I began working for IRPA, I also applied at Rose-Hulman Ventures for a summer internship. My connection with Dr. Williams (executive director of IRPA) helped me gain a position in the RosEval project (a project sponsored by IRPA/Rose-Hulman). Exceeding my hopes for a summer position, I was able to begin working for Ventures well before the end of the spring term. Working for Ventures, I was introduced to a multitude of things. I learned a lot about C#/.NET and Microsoft SQL. I learned a bit about general database design practices, project management practices, how to interact with clients, organizing meetings… Like I said, a multitude of things. I also was able to participate in the Leadership Academy hosted by Rose-Hulman while working at Ventures. This was an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot, got to know some people, and strengthened my confidence.

Now, RosEval is a plugin for ANGEL, a learning management system developed by ANGEL Learning (it is also the learning management system of choice at Rose-Hulman). While developing RosEval, I was able to get a look at some of the inner workings of ANGEL. Well, the summer ended and my Freshman year began. A few weeks in, I attended the Career Fair that Rose hosts each term. I only had about 30 minutes to talk to companies, but as I was walking past the booths, I noticed that ANGEL Learning had a booth up. The thought crossed my mind “Hey, I have development experience with ANGEL, I wonder if I could get an internship with them.” As I thought about it though, I decided that they probably wouldn’t be interested in a Freshman, so I moved on. After walking around for a little while and not finding anything terribly interesting, I decided to go ahead and talk to the ANGEL people. “What’s the worst they can do, turn me away?” I thought. I had a nice chat with Tim Tomlinson, gave him my resume and told him about my work with RosEval. He told me my work experience seemed promising and said they might bring me out to Indy for an interview within the next view weeks. Dumbfounded, I walked away, thinking “Wow, OK. Um, Yeah. Didn’t expect that”. Logic kicked in and I though, “Maybe he was just being nice.” As it turns out though, he was serious. I got a call from ANGEL a couple weeks later offering to bring me to Indy for an interview. I went to the interview, still wondering whether they would even be interested in a Freshman. The interview went well, and I was offered an internship for next summer (EDIT: Which I accepted! Thanks, Nick, for pointing out that I’d missed this detail). I’m not sure I would have been offered a position if I hadn’t worked on RosEval last summer. Again, everything seemed to “fall into place”.

OK, that section was a little longer than I was planning, but I think it’s really cool what God has done to provide me with work opportunities.

Beginning School

As I mentioned before, I was accepted at Rose and begin my freshmen year this fall. I’ve gotten to know many new people, learned a ton of new things, and had several opportunities to share my faith. The community at Rose is really an amazing thing and I’m blessed to be part of it.

Starting This Blog

While there are no miraculous stories associated with this site, I think it has been a great experience for me. I’ve created about 50 posts since the beginning of the school year and had 350 unique visitors (and counting). While these numbers certainly aren’t impressive, it’s encouraging that people are reading what I have to say (and that some of them are even coming back). I’ve gradually been increasing the rate at which I post and I hope to be able to write even more frequently in 2009. The theme I created for this blog has gone through several iterations and I’m pretty pleased with the way that it turned out, but I think I might do a total redesign for 2009 (If you like this theme though, let me know and I might keep it). I’ve gone from a WordPress novice to someone who, while not exactly a “professional”, is at least competent enough to get things done and to help friends who are involved in the blogging world.

In Conclusion

I can say without a doubt that this has been one of the best years of my life. It’s been amazing to see what God has done and I’m excited to see what he has in store for 2009.

Happy New Year!