M-I-Z...

"Own it like it's your own."

I'll never forget how it felt when I heard those words. I was a first year intern with InterVarsity getting ready for my first regional function as a staff. A veteran staff took a few of us young folk out to lunch prior to the meetings and he gave me that one piece of advice that has stuck with me for my entire staff career in Mid-MO. I have to own Mizzou like it's my own.

Growing up in Southern California, school pride is a thing but it's a different kind of thing. There's UCLA. There's USC. There are transplants from all over California who went to Cal or Stanford. There are transplants from all over the country too. Growing up, I had allegiances to none of those schools. My parents didn't go to any of those schools. I'm sure I had friends whose parents went to those schools but we didn't talk about it much. College pride just wasn't a part of my upbringing.

Fast forward to college. Washington University in St. Louis is known for a lot of things. It's got an amazing campus, a top notch med school, wonderful students, and engaged faculty, and back when I was living there, some pretty tasty dorm food. The one thing it didn't have was school spirit. WashU was a place people went so they would get a better shot at going somewhere else after they graduated. We didn't care much about the city beyond our walls. We didn't care much about the campus beyond our classes. We didn't care much about our classes beyond our grades. (To be honest, I didn't really care much about the grades either... #graduated). As far as athletics go, we cared more about our intramural teams than we did the varsity teams. There used to be a student org called Red Alert that tried to build up school spirit. If you went to a football game (which was free) you'd get a Red Alert T-shirt and 2 slices of pizza. It was not a well attended event.

So, when I heard that I need to "own it like it's your own," I was ripe for the picking. The staff was trying to say that if I'm going to really make it in a new place, I have to adopt the new place as my home. I can't have differing allegiances to other schools if I want InterVarsity to thrive at Mizzou. There could be no equivocation. I had to be #MizzouMade from day 1. I was ready.

Mizzou is the best. I've loved being a fan of the university these past 10+ years. I've been to games. I've read up on the scouting reports. I've been inside so many of the buildings. I've experienced some of the cultural events there. I've been a part of protests. I've met so many students and adopted so many traditions. I can't ever officially say that I'm an alumni of Mizzou, and if WashU and Mizzou were to ever play in any sport (SOOOOO unlikely), my heart would still be with WashU (Go Bears!) but I can honestly say that I've owned Mizzou like my own.

Thankfully, in my next role, I won't be doing much campus work so while I'm living in Omaha, I won't have to be owning any of those local schools as my own. Ezra and Thaliea will NOT grow up fans of Big Red (read: University of Nebraska). If they want to root for Creighton (Go Jays!) or UN-O (Go Mavericks!) then we can make that work. But you'd better believe this won't be a Husker House. Lincoln is an hour away from Omaha, which hopefully will be enough of a distance to keep that fandom at bay.

M-I-Z... Z-O-U!!!

~Adam