Reilly's Ramblings

A man is in his office at the Krone Advising Center on a busy, November Wednesday afternoon. He is at his desk working on what’s going to be on his schedule for the next day.

His name is Alex Watters, and he is a first-year adviser at Morningside College and a member of the city council in Sioux City, Iowa. His regular schedule is full every day between city council duties and his responsibilities in Morningside College.

An interesting fact about him is that he graduated from Morningside College then came back and became an adviser to help out students who are coming out of high school and entering the college world.

He also said that he graduated with a major in political science and global history.

He came to Morningside on a golf scholarship. I asked him what his golf handicap was and he said that it was a plus three to plus four. He said that it “wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.”

But what makes him a unique individual is that he is in a motorized wheelchair. He sustains a spinal cord injury that was pinched and wasn’t severe. The damage from the injury made his spine become bend seriously like a banana and will stay this way for the rest of his life.

This injury hasn’t stopped him from doing what he wants to do in life. He was to be able to live his life to the fullest every single day.

One of his students, Hailey Barrus, talks about his personality as a first-year adviser.

“He’s a super cool guy and easy to talk to.”

One of his co-workers, Kate Miltenberger, who is also a first-year adviser at Morningside College talks about how she sees him as a co-worker on a day-to-day basis.

“He’s lots of fun. He has a smile on his face and a song in his heart. He always gets the mood up in the office when everybody is tired and stressed.”

He recently was in the city council election in November and won. He is now serving his first full term as a member of the city council. The length of a city council term is four years.

He talks about how he balances the city council and Morningside College duties by making sure that everything in his schedule and order when it comes to times in a day.

He said that you have to have “patience, time management, and be able to schedule what you need and can do for the day.”

Being a part of Morningside College and a member of the city council means that an average day is a very busy one for Alex. He only gets six to seven hours of sleep, but he says that “six to eight hours is the sweet spot for me.”

With the busy schedule on his plate, that means he doesn’t have a lot of free time on his hands. He said, “I do the best I can to have free time and have it whenever I can.”

Barrus also spoke about how she sees him handling his schedule as a student.

“He’s a very busy person but doesn’t make me wonder about it very much because he handles it so well.”

Miltenberger also talks about how he can do more than a lot of people.

“He wants to be as active as he possibly can.”

For Alex, there is not a goal at the end of the day for him. He says, “There’s always going to be something.”

Being on the city council and a first-year adviser at Morningside College, Alex Watters will always have something going on for the next four years. But Alex hasn’t decided yet if he wants to go for reelection in the next city council election. He said, “That’s a bit too early to know and who knows what the future holds.”

A young woman from Montana comes into the Fundamentals of Journalism classroom, ready to learn something new she didn’t know before.

Her name is Mari Pizzini, and she’s initially from Helena, Montana. Helena, Montana is 971 miles from Sioux City, Iowa.

She graduated from Helena High in June of 2017. She is a freshman and came to Morningside on a scholarship in bowling, which is a new program at Morningside.

It is unique and uncommon to be a bowler in Montana. She is the first in the state and the second girl in Montana to get a bowling scholarship.
That’s the reason why she came to Iowa. The bonus is that her boyfriend also got a scholarship from Morningside College and came with her to Sioux City.

Back in Helena, she in the high school band for six years, playing the clarinet, which is something that we have in common. Her first dream job was to be a band teacher.

She is a double major in Mass Communications and English at Morningside College; she has a lot on her plate at the moment. She wants to do two majors.

She says, “I wanted to do English and Music originally, and I want to be an editor one day. So, I decided to go with English and Mass Communications instead to have more abilities as an editor.”

Her dream job is to be an editor for a publishing company. She mentioned Penguin publishing company and wants to edit magazines too.

“It is hard to do a double major sometimes,” she said, “18 credits is not easy to do in a semester.”

She says that she’s earning 16 credits this semester. But for the rest of her time at Morningside, she’ll be working towards 18 credits a semester.

She talked a little bit about her position on the bowling team. She is the fourth position, which means that she sets up the anchor and makes sure that the fifth spot performs well.

I asked her what’s has changed about her since coming from Montana to Iowa and going to Morningside College this semester.

She said, “I have become more responsible. I have been meeting new people this semester. I like Sioux City better than Helena because there’s no snow on the ground right now. Helena already has about half to a foot of snow.”

Morningside College is improving the accessibility for handicaps, but he thinks that it’s not “fast enough” in his opinion.

Alex Watters is a first-year advisor at Morningside College who came into class to discuss how the college can be more accessible.

Watters said that “costs is a big issue to have more accessibility and demographics of who’s going to use it.”

The college needs to be updating and add on more accessibility in the older buildings. Morningside is an old college that needs to be often updated.

The older buildings have ground level opening in the back but no way of getting up to the upper levels. Getting to the higher levels in the buildings more accessible is something that Morningside needs to think about when renovating the buildings.

He said that “build an elevator outside of the buildings” could be a possibility but it all goes back to costs.

The college needs to “address some concerns” when it comes to updating the accessibility all around like the older dorms also need to become more accessible for handicaps.

He said, “Adapt to some things at the campus like the Student Center.” There used to be an elevator, but it was taken out to make the dining hall “more presentable.”

He mentioned that if the updating and add-ons do happen, that means tuition goes up for every student at Morningside. The increase in expenditure is one thing that students don’t want to deal with when paying for their education.

It is all about the costs of updating and add-ons that the college has to worry about if it is needed or not.