The Next Chapter

I made it Twitter official last night and Facebook official this morning, so I guess it's time to make it official on my blog.

Today is my last day at SCC. And believe me, I write that with a very heavy heart.

My office just took me out for my last lunch at Red Robin, which I chose because it also happened to be the first place my office took me back on Jan. 25, 2010. I remember that day fondly. I was so excited to begin a new chapter in my life, meet new people, learn new things and gain new experiences. I got all that and more here at SCC.

I never knew what amazing people I would meet and get to know at SCC, nor did I realize I would make, what I hope to be, long-lasting friendships. I've grown both professionally and personally here at SCC, and I will be forever grateful for all the opportunities I've had in my time here.

What I think I might remember most about the people I've worked with SCC, what I like to call my "SCC family," is how much they supported, encouraged and helped me during one of the toughest times in my life, when I lost my father to cancer in December 2011. I will never forget all of the people who reached out to me, whether it was personally, via card, or in an email... you all touched me one way or another.

Of course I'll remember all the good times, too, like all the incredible students I've been fortunate enough to meet and capture their SCC story, filming commercials, helping out on photo shoots, expanding my knowledge of social media, planning events and much, much more.

I cannot forget to mention all the people I was able to meet and get to know through NCMPR (National Council of Marketing and Public Relations). I've learned so much through all of you. I will never forget my first time presenting at a national conference, going to San Francisco, and last, but not least, my most recent trip to the district conference in Wichita. It may not sound like an exciting place, but that was the most fun I've ever had at a conference.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. But with endings come new beginnings. While I am very sad to leave SCC, it is time for me to move on to the next chapter of my life.

Next week I will start my new job with the American Cancer Society,which many of you know is very near and dear to my heart. This was an opportunity I couldn't pass up, but it was a hard decision to make.

Either way, I think my dad would be proud, which is what I still strive to do every day.

I wish you all the best, and I hope we can keep in touch. You can reach me via email at kanna.taylor@gmail.com, or follow me on my other blog for St. Charles Patch.

Top 10 Summer Highlights

The fall is finally here, and I am thankful for many reasons. This summer has been pretty busy, between weddings, weekend out-of-town trips, Cardinals games, Relay For Life, and playing softball and soccer. So I'm pretty glad my social calendar is starting to wind down a bit. I certainly could use a break, and my past few weekend nights of staying in or going to bed before midnight have been proof of that.

I've been so busy, that I have completely neglected my blog this summer, so I'd like to do a little summer recap (mostly so I can explain why I haven't been blogging as much as I should):

10. Getting hardwood floors. 

OK I know this one doesn't sound exciting, but when you get older, this is the kind of stuff you get excited about! Something to look forward to, ain't it? :)

9. SMCSTC. 

SMCSTC stands for Social Media Club of St. Charles, similar to SMCSTL, which I've talked about quite a bit before, but it's just for us St. Charles folk! I'm on the board, and I am in charge of the SMCSTC blog. (Yes I am now am the writer of three different blogs!)

We had our first event back in August, which was just a networking happy hour at Quintessential on Main Street in St. Charles, and we had a pretty good turnout.

My friend Dave and I at the first SMCSTC event on Aug. 2 at Quintessential.

Our next event is scheduled for Sept. 27 at the Cottleville Wine Seller, featuring guest speaker Robyn Wright, a professional blogger in the St. Louis area. If you're interested in attending you can register here.

8. Ingrid Michaelson Concert.

Ingrid has gotten me through a lot of rough days, and I know most of her songs by heart, so it was pretty amazing to see her live, and, of all places, at The Pageant, one of my favorite and most intimate concert venues. Plus getting to see her with a fellow Ingrid-lover, my good friend Carrie, and seeing two of my other college friends, was pretty great, too!

7. Bike riding.

My dad was a huge bike rider. Anyone who knew him knew it was one of his passions, and if he could be anywhere, he'd be out riding his bike. He had five bikes when he passed away, and I took two of them.

This was how many miles my dad put on his bike before he passed away. I've since then hit 1,500 miles on it!

Finally, seven months after he passed, my sister, Tyler and I decided to go on our first bike ride of the year. It was totally random, because my sister was actually in town for Relay For Life, which was inadvertently cancelled due to "inclement weather." Don't get me started.

But, it was a blessing in disguise because instead of sleeping the day away on Saturday, we got up, had brunch and went over to our good friend Frank's house to have all of our bikes tuned up. Once we were all fixed up and ready to go, we decided to do the exact same trail my sister and I used to do all the time when we were kids.

We started at Greens Bottom on the Katy Trail, and rode south 'til we hit the 40 bridge, where we usually stopped for a break and turned around. Once we got there though, we said, "This is it?" Because it was only about a three mile ride! We used to think it was much longer than that when we were kids! So we kept going, and actually found a new side trail that went off the Katy Trail for a bit. It was a great day and it felt so good to get out on the bike.

I've gone bike riding a few more times since then, including a couple weekends ago with my aunt and cousin, who also took my dad's bikes. We rode the Katy Trail, too, but started at the Page Extension bridge and went north to Main Street, had lunch at Big A's, one of my dad's old favorite restaurants, and rode back. The weather was gorgeous!

6. Birthday suprises for the boyfriend.

My boyfriend, Tyler, turned 27 this year, and I decided to give him a few surprises. The first of which was giving him his new Google Nexus 7 tablet a week early! I went in on it with his family and it was everything he had hoped for and more!

Then, on his actual birthday, I surprised him with a new pair of red Chucks, which I told him he should wear for the Cards game I was going to take him to. I kept the location of the seats a secret though, and the fact that we were going to be meeting a few of our friends at the game.

When we got there, he was surprised again to find out we had all-inclusive seats in the Coca-Cola Scoreboard Patio! 

We ended up losing that game horribly, something like 15-0, but we tried not to pay attention to that. And the last surprise of the night was when we saw his name appear on one of the scrolling digital scoreboards at Busch! It said "Happy Birthday T. Rook!" It's free as long as you submit it online 48 hours before the game you're going to. Pretty cool!

5. Herman Wineries Trip.

This is the fifth year in a row I have done this trip to the Herman wineries with my college friends, and it has always been one of my favorite weekends of the summer... Next to the KC road trip we take every year to see the Cards take on the Royals, even though I've had to miss it the past two years.. and they won't even have a weekend series in KC next year!

Anyway, this year was no different. A little warmer than usual, but still an overall successful trip!

4. Chicago Trip.

This was the first time we decided to see a Cards/Cubs game in Chicago as a group... and while it was a little chaotic at times, being in a big city and all, it was a pretty good trip overall. The Cards lost, which wasn't cool, but hanging out in Wrigleyville before and after the game was fun. And of course we got some deep dish pizza!

My Cubs friend Mattie, who planned the whole trip for us. Despite the fact that she's a Cubs fan, she's pretty awesome!

3. Relay For Life.

This would take too long to talk about here. So I'll let you read the rest over on my other blog for St. Charles Patch. But, to sum it up, the first event was cancelled, which was a huge bummer, but our rescheduled and much smaller scale event went pretty well, and I shared my caregiver's story with 200+ people. I was the top overall individual fundraiser with $1,800, and my team, Bobby's Big Shots, was the top fundraising team with $6,572 raised. Pretty amazing.

2. My best friend getting married!

I think she is going to feel pretty excited about being the #2 highlight of my summer, but it's true!  I helped her out a lot with her wedding and while it was stressful sometimes, it was a lot of fun! Plus it was cool that my boyfriend was in the wedding party too, since he is best friends with the groom (they were the ones who set us up!) We had so much fun doing everything before the wedding (bachelorette party, bridal showers, dress fittings, shopping, getting mani/pedis) and the day of the wedding couldn't have been more beautiful.

And the #1 highlight of my summer was...

1. Cardinals games.

To most of you this probably isn't a shocker, since going to Cards games is what I DO in the summer... but I surprised myself a little with this being my #1 highlight of the summer. (I also realize I'm kind of cheating since this actually counts as 12 separate events.)

See, the thing is, out of the 12 games I've been to this season, the Cards have lost nine of them. NINE LOSSES. That's no bueno. 

But still, despite the losses, we went to some good games, and what's more important to me, is the memories I'll have of those games.

A few of those highlights include: 

The home opener against the Cubs.

The night they honored Tony LaRussa (and yes we got TLR bobbleheads!) and the last game we will probably see Chipper Jones play in.

Sitting in the lower seats once because we paid for it, but two more times because we got lucky. 

The American Cancer Society game where we got to walk on the field. (And yes this was the game that went 19 innings and we eventually lost.)

Eating a two-feet long hot dog, AKA the "Giant Slugger," with the tag line of "Go Big or Go Home." We went big and finished the whole thing in about 15 minutes.

Taking off work for a day game and seeing pitching prospect Shelby Miller's debut on Sept. 5.

Source: KTGR.com

And all of the great promo nights where we got beer steins and the championship rings! 

We have one game left that we are "scheduled" for tomorrow, so hopefully the Cards can pull out a win for our last game of the season and end our summer on a high note!

The Pitch

Nearly three weeks ago, on Aug. 17, my boss presented the Marketing and Communications Department (MAC) with a new project based on the AMC TV show, "The Pitch." If you haven't seen or heard of the show, here's a short trailer:

Basically, it's a show that pits two advertising agencies against each other in a competition to win a client in a "head-to-head, cut-throat, winner-takes-all showdown," otherwise known as "The Pitch."

On the show, they are given a week to prepare, but fortunately we were given two, since we wouldn't be able to stop everything we were doing and work solely on this project. 

But, I still believe the "whining, the brainstorming, the blue-sky thinking" that is present on the show was present in our competition, too. Maybe not so much on the whining part, but more on the brainstorming and thinking out of the box. :)

So who was the client we were going to try and win over? The Human Resources (HR) Department. They wanted a "marketing makeover" for their Staff Training and Education Program, otherwise known as "STEP." The "brief," which is what they call the project in the advertising/marketing world, was this:

"The STEP Program helps to develop individual training needs, provides professional development, and supports the mission and values of the college. HR would like to stir up some excitement and urgency in staff signing up for training. We would like a marketing makeover in our announcements of classes and training awards as well as the STEP Web page."

HR staff members met with MAC staffers on Aug. 17 to go over the brief, and to allow time for questions, that is, after the teams were divided up. Fortunately, we have eight people in our office, and we were able to divide into teams quite easily (a marketer, web specialist, writer/PR/social media pro and designer). Once the brief was finished, it was time to get to work. 

Most teams get to go back to their respective offices after a brief, however, that proved to be a little trickier for us, since we all worked in the same office, and the most tricky for me, since my "office" is a desk in the middle of the main lobby of our office. Plus my computer screen is the size of a car window so everyone can always see what I'm up to. Not good for doing "top secret business," especially after we discovered a spy. :) And so began the "friendly" competition in our office. 

We were given one hour a day to work on "The Pitch," and to my team's surprise, we quickly discovered we had a our own personal timekeeper... AKA a member of the rival team who was making sure we weren't putting in any extra hours! 

As you can see the competition heated up quickly. There were lots of meetings behind closed doors, meetings that were never officially scheduled on Outlook calendars, meeting locations that said "You Know Where" and even meetings that were titled "Secret Meeting." It was all in good fun, of course. 

Perhaps the hardest time my team had keeping something secret was the day we decided to film our commercial, featuring the SCC mascot, Scooter McCougar. We made it out of the office to film one of the scenes off campus just fine, but when we filmed a scene on campus, we got caught red-handed. 

And yes, yours truly put on the Scooter McCougar costume for the first time ever (I almost made it to the three-year mark without having to do it). Of course it had to be one of the hottest and most humid days of the week, but I can now say, I have complete empathy for anyone who ever has to put that thing on, and I don't understand why anyone would want to do it for a living!

Yup that's me, in Scooter's costume, attempting to fit in my car. Fun times. :)

But in the end, it was all worth it when we saw the finished product, which featured narration by our very own SCC president, Dr. Ron Chesbrough! If that didn't win over the HR Department, I don't know what would have!

After hours of brainstorming, note-taking, designing artwork, updating Web pages, and coming up with the best ideas, I put it all together in a Prezi, my new favorite form of presentations. For those of you who haven't used it or heard of it before, there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's so much fun to use once you get the hang of it! I don't think I'll ever go back to PowerPoint again.

Then, finally, the day had come. On All College Day, Sept. 4, it was time to give our pitch. My team, CHiKK Marketing (which stood for Chris, Heather, Kanna and Kelly) was up first. 

Oh yes, we even had our own name tags, notepads and pens! :)

I think we were all a little nervous, but since we had already practiced it one time I think our nerves wore off once we got started. It seemed to fly by, and 20 minutes later, we were done. I was pleased with the overall reactions we received from both HR and the opposing team. And of course I couldn't wait to see what the other half of our department had come up with. Boy, were we surprised.

Apparently at lunch before our 3 p.m. presentation, they decided to scrap their entire presentation approach and go with something completely different. They certainly accomplished "different." They had a fun approach to introducing themselves as Blueprint, Ink., and instead of walking through a Prezi like we had, they laid out what looked exactly like a large blueprint of their "plan" for the new STEP program on the table, where they all gathered 'round to have more of a "discussion" than a presentation. It was creative, fun and much more intimate.

In the end, it was interesting to see what ideas both teams came up with, whether they were exactly alike (which there were a few of those) or totally different. It's amazing what you can do when you start to think outside the box. 

Unfortunately, we wouldn't find out what HR's decision would be until two days later, which was fine with me because I had already planned a day off to spend at a Cardinals' day game!

In case you're wondering they lost, but I did get to see pitching prospect Shelby Miller's debut!

The next day we convened in the MAC office to hear HR's decision. They played it up a little by bringing a baseball to throw to the winner, and our two team captains even brought their own gloves. 

And then right as they were about to announce the winner, in true reality TV show style, they said, "We'll be back after the break," and they all walked right out the door! We were all laughing, but we were also dying to find out who the winner was! So we counted down and... drumroll please... they threw the ball to Heather, my team captain! Needless to say the team members of CHiKK Marketing were pretty thrilled! We each got our very own baseball signed by each HR employee, and there was cookie cake for all!

Forgot to take a picture of the cookie cake before we devoured it... and this was all that was left.

Time to Party!

After a whole year of planning, meetings and events, the college's 25th anniversary is finally coming to close... and that means it's time to party. :)

And by party, I mean going to the Silver Social! The 25th anniversary task force has been planning this event for a few months, and we can't wait for everyone* to see what we have planned!

*Sorry, this event is closed to the public and is open to SCC employees, exclusively.

I have personally been helping out with the entertainment portion of the event... which includes music from the 80s, 90s and 2000s, trivia, Minute to Win It games and prizes for all the winners.


We have lots of different prizes, including mugs, tote bags, T-shirts and even a $25 gift card to Applebee's for the ultimate trivia winner.

And not to worry, the trivia won't be just about the college, there will be some pop culture questions, too.

We also have something special that will be unveiled at the event, but you will have to be there around 5:15 p.m. to find out!

Doors open at 4:30 p.m. but the party goes until 7 p.m. All SCC staff and faculty are encouraged to come and go as they please, but please note there will be a special program from 5:15-5:45 p.m. including a message from the president. 

It's going to be a blast... and after a year of promoting the college's 25th anniversary, I have to admit I think this party is as much for the committee as it is for the guests. :)

You will probably want to check out the 25th anniversary blog for photos next week.

Hope to see all of my fellow SCC employees soon!

Losing My Mind

I think I'm losing my mind. The past 48 hours have been one forgetful moment after another, and I'm not sure what the reason is. Let me enlighten you:

4:30 p.m. Monday, June 4

Huge hailstorm blows through SCC. We get paintball-sized hail for a good three minutes, with lots of rain before and after.

Not once does the thought occur to me that it was sunny and hot earlier that day, hence why I decided to leave my windows cracked open. That's right, just enough to get my seats soaking wet.

5:00 p.m. Monday, June 4 

Go home to change clothes, let my dogs out and get a towel to dry my seats. Keep forgetting things in the house, so I probably walk back and forth from my car to the house about three times. On the third time, after I lock the door, walk out of the house, and get into my car, I realize I just locked myself out of my house. I try the garage door, then go around back and luckily the sliding glass door is unlocked (one of the few times being forgetful came in handy). Whew, crisis averted. Or so I thought.

2:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 5

Go home for lunch, let my dogs out, eat lunch and read on my Kindle. The normal routine. When it is time to go back to work, I go to my backyard to call my dog Bailey inside, and she is nowhere to be found. This is a usual occurrence though. She is a mischievous little one and can often be found underneath our deck or hiding behind a bush digging holes and getting into things. So I didn't freak out, at first. But another minute goes by and I still don't see her. Then it hits me.

I left the gate open from yesterday when I had locked myself out of the house. Now I'm freaking out. I take off from the porch and run frantically around the house screaming her name, my heart pounding. Two thoughts run through my head:

1. She is never coming home. 
2. My boyfriend is going to kill me. 

Tears well up in my eyes as I run to the front yard and still no sign of her. I run to the backyard again. Nothing. I run inside to grab my car keys to take off looking for her, and guess who is sitting in my living room looking as innocent as can be.

Yup, it's her. I want to scream, cry and hug her all at the same time. So I hug her and shower her in kisses and vow I'll never be mad at her for anything again (yeah, right). Who knew I loved this little trouble maker so much? I still haven't summoned up the courage to tell my boyfriend about this yet, but I don't think he reads my blog unless I tell him to so I think I'm safe. :) Although this was the worst part of my forgetfulness, my story's not over yet.

1:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 6

Go home for lunch to find out my Kindle is missing. Look all over the house for it, even email a few people. Text my boyfriend, who smartly replies with, "I don't know, but it's probably with my Nike hat and Macy's gift cards that you lost." I reply, "Not funny." But it's true. I not only manage to lose my own things, but his stuff, too.

I retrace my steps for the last 24 hours, remembering the last time I saw my Kindle I was reading it at lunch yesterday. Still can't find it. Decide to read an actual book instead, Heaven is For Real. While reading it, I try to turn the page by tapping it. I literally laugh out loud, forgetting (again, notice a theme here?) that I'm not reading my Kindle Touch. Then I do it again. Ah, technology. How you've managed to help us yet cripple us at the same time.

As I get ready to leave, I'm still trying to figure out where in the heck I left my Kindle, when it hits me again. I get a flashback of yesterday, running outside in a panic to find my dog. I walk out to the back porch to find my Kindle sitting outside on the railing. Thank GOODNESS it didn't rain in the last 24 hours!

Doesn't this sound like one of those DirecTV commercials about how one decision can set off a terrible chain of events?

When it's sunny and hot out, you want to leave your windows cracked open. When you leave your windows cracked open, it hails and your seats get all wet. When your seats get all wet, you go home angry and in a hurry, lock yourself out of your house. When you lock yourself out of your house, you leave the side gate open. When you leave the side gate open, you think your dog has escaped and ran away. When you think your dog has ran away, you get upset and misplace your Kindle for 24 hours. Don't lose your Kindle. Roll your windows up, even if it's sunny out.

Busiest. Week. Ever.

No, not this week. Last week. Although I'm always relatively busy, last week was the end-all, be-all of busy weeks. Let me sum it up in one sentence:

Spring Fling, Film Festival, Black Keys concert, bachelorette party, Swan Lake ballet performance and RUN. LIVE. LEARN.

Not exactly in that order, and four of those things were just in a weekend. I have to admit, I'm glad it's over, but it was also a lot of fun!

On Thursday at Spring Fling I represented the Relay For Life of Central St. Charles. We passed out a ton of flyers, beads and these cool bracelets (minus the Livestrong one, that's mine).

Our Relay event is going strong and gearing up for "Cancer's Unlucky Day" on Friday, July 13! All of the St. Charles County Relays were recently mentioned in a news story by The Suburban Journals last week. And my team raised almost $100 at our fundraiser at Orange Leaf last month. If you didn't get a chance to go, no worries, we have three more coming up!

You can see all of Central St. Charles Relay's fundraisers here, and download the flyer for my team's next fundraiser on May 23. Of course, we're also accepting donations and still looking for new teams and individuals to join our event! OK enough for my shameless Relay plug. :)

The next day was pretty crazy at work, getting ready for RUN. LIVE. LEARN. That night I saw The Black Keys at Chaifetz Arena with a friend of mine. It was good to get out and have some fun dancing and rocking out.

And if you've never heard of the Black Keys, watch and listen.

Then after months of preparation, RUN. LIVE. LEARN. was finally here! And we ended up having a great turnout with 751 runners, which exceeded last year's numbers by almost 200! Plus we had great weather, which always makes for a good turnout.

I had a few friends run in the 10K, 5K and Fun Run this year, which was fun, including my great uncle Tom, who is a 71-year-old ultra runner, which basically means he's hardcore. He ran in a 50K the weekend before, and he is training for a 50-mile run. He's crazy. Then he not only ran the 10K, but then he ran the 5K with his son! I can only hope to be half as healthy as he is when I'm his age!

Then right after that event ended, I had to meet my friend at her house to go ziplining for her bachelorette party! If you haven't gone ziplining before, you need to, it's a blast! I've done it twice now, once at Meramec Caverns and this past weekend we went on the Eco Zipline Tour in New Florence, Mo. Our tour guides were awesome and they made it really fun for all of us girls!

As you can see, I was still sporting my RUN. LIVE. LEARN. shirt because I didn't even have time to change! After ziplining I was able to rest for a bit before getting ready for dinner, which was at Kitaro, my mom's Japanese steakhouse/sushi restaurant in O'Fallon. We did the hibachi tables where they cook the food in front of you, and it was delicious as always!

Then it was time for our last stop, the Pepper Lounge in downtown St. Louis, where we had a VIP table waiting for us. It was a blast!

The next morning we had brunch at 12th Street Diner because it was one of my friend's birthdays. If you ever go there for brunch, I'd recommend their biscuits and gravy! Then I had to rush home, shower and get ready to see Swan Lake at the Touhill with a couple of friends. It was fantastic. Here's a glimpse of what we saw. Ballet is so beautiful, and I'm looking forward to seeing many more of the St. Louis Ballet's productions, including the Nutcracker again this Christmas, and Romeo and Juliet next year!

I ended the weekend with a soccer game that we unfortunately lost. I got home around 8:30 Sunday night, ate my leftovers from Kitaro while watching Mad Men, and crashed.

Fortunately though, most of the plans I had made for Monday-Wednesday of the following week fell through (mostly because of the rain). Honestly, I think that was someone telling me I needed a break. :) Now I am fully rested and ready to take on this weekend, which will be nowhere near as busy as last weekend - but that's a good thing!

RUN. LIVE. LEARN.

The 20th annual RUN. LIVE. LEARN. event (formerly known as the Spring Wellness Festival) is coming up at SCC on Saturday, April 28. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a bunch of family-friendly events focused on health and wellness, including a 10K, 5K, Fun Run and a Health and Wellness Expo. Plus there's a ton of free food and giveaways. So whether you're a runner, walker and/or health enthusiast, there is something for everyone.

I'm on the committee that plans this event every year, and I asked my fellow committee member, Brad Kretzer, who works in the SCC Bookstore, to tell me why he's been running in the 10K race for the past six years in a row.

So here are his top six reasons for running in the 10K at SCC year after year:

1. The camaraderie of the SCC faculty, staff and other runners during the run.
2. The always-challenging course highlighted this year by the addition of a chip-timing system.
3. The number of race marshals stationed along the route to provide adequate safety for all the runners.
4. The competiveness of the lead runners.
5. The collection of delectable eats and drinks provided after the race.
6. The cool race swag featuring a custom designed shirt that becomes more unique each year.

Have you run in our 10K before? What do you like about it? What do you like about running in general?

Unfortunately I haven't been able to participate in the event before, because I am in charge of the volunteers (and I'm also the escort for the mascot, Scooter McCougar), but even if I could, I've been out of the running game for a while now, so I'd probably do the 5K and walk most of it. :)

But there are probably two main reasons why I would do it:

1. T-shirt.
2. Free food.

The T-shirts this year are dry-tec and they come in men's and women's sizes:

And we'll have a ton of free food at the finish line for all the runners, including free chicken sandwiches from one of my favorite places, Chick-fil-A, smoothies from Smoothie King and samples from Qdoba! What's not to love?

I think between Brad and I, we've given you enough reasons to come out and join us on April 28! So sign up at stchas.edu/run and we'll see you there!