By | Kyra Skylark

Casey Goldberg, a freshman in her first semester at HSU is just getting to know the HSU community and campus. Yet, in her first few months of being here Goldberg has made strong connections.

“I hope to keep the ties that I’ve made with friends, I’ve met a lot of cool people here so far,” said Casey Goldberg.

As a Botany major Goldberg, appreciates being surround by nature on campus.

“I really like that in Botany I can go out into the forest and I know exactly what is going on inside that tree or like, I know what kind of bush that is,” said Goldberg. “It’s pretty cool.”

Kayla Grove is studying Kinesiology with an emphasis in Exercise Science and Health Promotion. From Ventura county, Grove was drawn to HSU by the beauty of the campus’s environment.

“The trees, definitely the nature, I was never exposed to that growing up so I fell in love with it as soon as I visited,” said Kayla Grove.

In her fourth year at HSU, Grove has taken many classes that have greatly influenced what she wants to do after she graduates.

“It’s all still coming together for me from each class, I’m just piecing it all together,” said Grove.

One class that she is currently taking has helped give her an idea of the kind of career she’d like to pursue.

“Right now I’m taking a Structural Kinesiology class with Justus Ortega, and we’ve been talking a lot about the forces of muscles and the biomechanics of muscles,” said Grove. “I think I’m leaning towards working with older people and that’s what he [Professor Ortega] specializes in too, so he talks about it a lot and how it relates to our field.”

While it is not always considered the most glamorous of careers within exercise science, working with older individuals is what really speaks to Grove.

“They’re facing a lot of health problems usually, specifically exercise issues, like they need more exercise in their life and they don’t know how to go about it,” said Grove. “Sometimes they will do something that is too much on their body or not enough for them.”

Grove wants to teach others to live their lives in a healthy, happy body.

“I just want to give back to the population, to use all the things I’ve learned about exercise and health promotion and educate people on it,” said Grove. “I want people to live longer healthier lives.”

Also looking for a change from the environment, as well as the social scene in Southern California, Ariel Robinson is a mathematics major. In her fourth year at HSU, Robinson has gone through many math classes and is working on understanding the smaller intricacies of some subjects.

“I would really like to be a teacher at a collegiate level so I’m hoping this stuff really sticks with me,” said Ariel Robinson.

Not only is Robinson learning mathematics, but she is also learning teaching habits from her professors. As a future teacher herself, there are certain things from her own learning that she plans to take with her and use in her own career.

“I’m really happy with the way I have been treated by a lot of my math professors, they understand that I’m coming at it from a new point of view,” said Robinson. “That’s really one of the things that I’d like to carry on, this sense of understanding that we are all just learning something new, and that we can all help each other to learn something new.”

The communication and understanding Robinson has experienced in her classes and on campus have made her happy to be an HSU student.

“A lot of people down south don’t really understand the different struggles people have to go through and are really self centered,” said Robinson. “But up here I feel like it’s more community oriented and people really care about those around them.

Robinson hopes to carry the sense of community and understanding she found at HSU wherever she goes after graduating.

“Really just the overall attitude that people have here, that differences are accepted and that anybody can have a chance, that was really the most heartwarming thing when I came up here,” said Robinson.