Hello from Colorado- Holly Huser

Hello from beautiful Colorado!  My name is Holly Huser.  I am a 3rd year Business Administration major with a Management concentration and Psychology and Leadership Certificate minors.  I hope to work in the Human Resources area after college.  My interest in both business and psychology has sort of molded me to this direction over the past few years.  I have always enjoyed working with people and being the motivator in group situations to keep everything working smoothly and everyone working together and I hope that's the type of role I can play in HR someday.  My internship is at a non-profit organization called Mercy Housing in the HR department.  They are the largest affordable housing provider in the nation and their headquarters are here in downtown Denver in a beautiful high-rise building.  I have had such a great experience there so far this semester.  My supervisors are great and providing me with awesome learning opportunities that are so beneficial.  I am currently working on a project analyzing benefit participation in recent years that will be presented to the company's executive board to hopefully change and update their current benefits program, which I am really excited about!  Otherwise I work on smaller projects here and there and am being exposed to all areas of HR so I can get a feel for what specific area I will want to work in the future.

The classes some of us take with Nelson and Bonita are so interesting and engaging.  We have been shown so many different areas and taken part in different activities that many people who actually live here haven't taken part in or don't even know about.  Nelson and Bonita have so many connections with people and organizations to show us all of these interesting aspects about Denver and city life and how important it is to be involved.  I've just started my community engagement project with an organization that develops affordable housing (different from my internship) where I will volunteer hours with them and learn more about the organization and everything they do.  We also are all following a piece of legislation and getting involved with different political organizations through the rest of the semester.  Our classes really get us involved and give us experiences we wouldn't get back home, that's for sure!

Adjusting to city life in Denver after living in Waverly, Iowa my whole life was quite difficult at first but that is why I wanted to come out here in the first place.  I just absolutely love Colorado!  I don't think I would want to live in a city the size of Denver permanently, but being in this program has taught me many life skills that will be very important after college when I'm truly living on my own.  Learning the public transportation system alone felt like such an accomplishment! I will never take the luxury of having a car for granted again once I'm back home.  It's also opened my eyes to so many opportunities that a city holds not only for work or recreational activities, but to really get involved and give back and I have learned how truly easy that can be.

I will say that one of the highlights of my time out here so far was seeing Tim Tebow this past Monday!! I have to go to physical therapy once a week from my ACL reconstruction surgery I had in October.  The place I go to is very nice and there are many popular athletes that go there for therapy and personal training, but I have never recognized anybody yet.  Then, I was just going about my usual exercises and overheard someone point out that Tim was there with a personal trainer! I ended up doing some of my exercises literally 10 feet away from him! Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to talk to him or say hi at all because he was busy working with his trainer and I decided it wouldn't be appropriate to interrupt since nobody else was.  Trust me, I have heard from everyone that that was "the biggest mistake of my life" and that I'll "never get the opportunity again" but truly just being at the same place as he was was a big enough deal for me!

Every now and then I miss home and the more peaceful sense of little Waverly and the Wartburg bubble, but this experience keeps us so busy and entertained that it's flying by already and I know I'll be back soon!  I can't wait to see what the rest of my time here brings but based on everything so far, I know it's going to be great!

Hope all is well J

-Holly