T-Wolves in Griz & Cat Country

Ever wondered how to go tour colleges with your school? Well, I have the answer for you! Join ETS (Educational Talent Search), a group at Lake City and other surrounding high schools. This group is for students whose parents didn’t attend college, and the group helps prep you for your college experience in every way. Over spring break, we took a trip to tour colleges in the state of Montana. The trip included University of Montana,  Montana State University, Helena College, Montana Tech, and Carroll College.

The trip started off early Sunday morning on the 29th of March at NIC. We all met at the Molstead building, received a snack pack and boarded the bus. Forty-one students from Lake City High School, Coeur d’Alene High School, Post Falls High School, Kellogg High School, and Wallace High School all attended the three-day trip along with five advisors. As it was early in the morning, most of us slept the couple of hours to Missoula where we were to tour University of Montana, Go Griz! The students from Lake City had the honor of giving the tour of UM, but first we ventured around Missoula. Being my first time in Missoula, I was very interested in the town. My awesome advisor Randy Palmer, who lived in Missoula and graduated from UM, was my tour guide for the city. He showed us some cool spots in the city. We also learned that actor J.K. Simmons was a graduate of UM. My favorite part of the city was all of the art and culture the city contained. There was a lot more present there than in Coeur d’Alene.

After we were done touring Missoula, we headed over to the UM campus. The Lake City students, including myself, had the responsibility of giving the tour of UM to the rest of our group. We walked around the campus giving interesting facts about who had graduated from there and some of the amazing things the college had done. One of the most interesting things to me was that Harold Urey, a physical chemist at UM, worked on the atomic bomb and won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of deuterium. The students of UM happened to be on spring break while we were visiting, so we didn’t get to see the hustle and bustle of the campus, but it was still an awesome experience!

After touring UM, we loaded the bus and headed over to Bozeman for the night. We woke up and loaded the bus at 8:30 A.M. and headed the 10 minutes over to the Bozeman campus where the students of Post Falls presented a skit about Montana State University. They covered things like admission processes, housing, academics, sports, and outdoor activities that you can participate. Then we went on a scavenger hunt throughout the campus. After our scavenger hunt, we met a Bobcat football player and he told us about his life in sports at MSU.Then we headed down to the cafeteria and had a delicious lunch.

But our day wasn’t over yet, as we loaded back on the bus and headed to Butte Montana. In Butte, we visited Montana Tech college. This technical college is a partner with University of Montana. The students from Kellogg and Wallace provided facts for us after we toured the buildings. We saw things like 3-D printers and welding machines. We also saw their nursing program and the new dummies they use to practice on. After the tour and facts about the college we headed to Helena for the night.

We woke up a little later than the day before, at 9 A.M., in Helena and went to Helena College and got a wonderful tour of their facilities. On this tour, we were able to see their aeromechanic program. We saw all of the planes and helicopters that they worked on and were able to walk around and take pictures of it all. We also saw their mechanics program and all the semi trucks they worked on. After Helena college we went to Carroll College in Helena. We toured the Catholic campus with big beautiful buildings. We learned about all the programs that they offer and about life on campus. This time, my tour guide was a female student and she gave a very nice tour of the buildings and how life on campus was.

All in all the trip was amazing. I had a wonderful time and my fellow T-wolf Bailey Camp told me what she thought about the trip via email, “The ETS trip to Montana for spring break was AMAZE BALLZ. It was so much fun I got to make new friends and go get the college experience. It was a good experience to some independence and to learn what could be in my own future. It was a great trip!! I had so much fun. With Randy Palmer as our ETS adviser. We got to go to a reading from an author. I really had a great time on this trip it was so much fun!” The trip was a great success all thanks to ETS and the amazing advisers that took us, Randy Palmer, Gayle Otto, Renae Strouse, Amanda Smith, Warren Jones.

If you are interested in being a part of ETS and you think you qualify you can go to the counseling office and they would be happy to help you set up a meeting with Randy. Thanks again, ETS.