June has been a huge month for me professionally, and I’m only just now beginning to process it.

I attended my first weekend intensive trip in Louisville as a Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange Cohort Member.

I got accepted into grad school in University of Kentucky College of Education‘s Instructional Systems Design program.

I helped cover the final revisions of Lexington’s Comprehensive Plan, which is by far the most important city process I’ve been a part of in my time at CivicLex.

My neighborhood association, which I’ve been working with a team of neighbors on reviving after it dissolved in 2012, hosted a neighborhood litter cleanup and held its first meeting. (Frankly, I may be the most excited about the neighborhood association out of all of these! I am confident that we’re going to evolve into a dynamic group that other neighborhood associations start to take notes from.)

I’m also prepping for my first full semester as a First Generation Student Program Advisor at UK, but you’ll have to wait a little longer to hear what we have in the works. 😏

If you know me personally, you have probably heard me say this many times: when I moved to Lexington, I moved here essentially to follow all of my friends who were moving here. I had no real connection or pull to Lexington itself at the time, and did not really expect to gain a connection.

But over the past two years of being here, I am incredibly thankful to have ended up in a city so welcoming, so warm, and full of so many amazing people doing meaningful work to make Lexington and Kentucky a stronger place for our people. I fell into a great city that has given me a lot of opportunities and helped me build a professional and personal network that I could do literally nothing without. I feel so at home here in every sense and any accomplishment I’ve had or will have, I owe it to so many Lexingtonians that I couldn’t even begin to list them all.

I am very, very excited for my future here. Massive thanks to everyone who has helped me get to a place of optimism and wonder that I’m really proud to be in.