My journey through college to this day as a senior has been establishing who I am as an individual. Throughout it all most things have stayed the same. My name has always been Jonathan Rogers. I’ve always been gangly, and I’ve always been focused on school. I love to learn new things but nothing fills my bucket more than mindlessly playing FIFA on PlayStation.
Even though these facets are the same, my life has completely changed. I’m newly engaged to the girl I fell in love with on our second date. I love OU only slightly less than her; we met as tour guides. Even our relationship was sooner bred! This event completely shifted my priorities and has really shown me what things are important in life. I believe that God comes first. My faith has guided my life to this point and I cannot thank God enough for all he’s provided. No matter what is going on, I know that my relationship with Christ will be the deciding factor in my success, and the thing that rescues me from my failures. After Christ, my family comes second. My fiancé has been an amazing example of love and I have been blessed beyond belief.
After these two core statements, I truly believe it is best to give back to the people around us. Something I aspire to do is motivate and empower others. Throughout my life I have been constantly poured into by incredible people. Whether it was at home, school, or church, I have always had an amazing foundation of people cheering for me and supporting my decisions. As I approach not only my senior year, but also adulthood, being able to give back to those around me and spread God’s love to others is something I hope to do.
What excites me is that this is entirely possible to do throughout all of the current activities I am involved with. I wear the hat of a campus tour guide; a job I enjoy endlessly. I wear the hat of a nonprofit consultant through The Oklahoma Group; a new challenge I am excited to take on. I wear the hat of a future law student; the next step in my career. While participating in each “hat”, I am motivated mostly by affirmation. I love hearing that I’ve done a good job. I am also motivated by failure. Throughout my life, I have truly never been great at something without practice. I’ve had to learn, often the hard way, that success doesn’t come easy. I refuse to not know something or not succeed and this has driven my career to this day.
To this day, design has played a large part in my life. Being someone who hates to fail and desires to learn pushed me to learn Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop my senior year of high school. Since then I have used graphic design as an outlet for my otherwise unusable creativity. As a person who cannot draw, paint or sculpt, graphic design became something that I didn’t necessarily excel at, but enjoyed. Throughout college I’ve played the part of “graphic designer” for several campus organizations such as the Big Event and Campus Activities Council. These small roles allowed me to use my creative outlet to not only design publicity materials for my portfolio, but also to make friends and meet passionate people within these incredible organizations.
My journey through college has been one of finding foundation. Each new skill I receive or challenge I take on adds to my journey, and I know PR Publications will be another stop along the way.
