APPLICANT #19: Is Crissy Lavery the Young & Free SC Spokesperson?
Y&F SC TeamCrissy Lavery is a 22-year-old university student from Columbia, South Carolina.
Here is Crissy's video application:
Here is Chrissy's current situation:
"I am a senior at the University of South Carolina and I'm the Communications Director of the Public Relations Student Society of America. I am also an intern in the Communications Department at the March of Dimes in Columbia. Becoming a student ambassador for the Australian Embassy is one of the roles I am so glad I took on because I want to help anyone make that extraordinary experience possible. And at last, I hope to be graduating in the next year!"
Here is Chrissy's blog post:
"Bungee jumping off of the highest jump in New Zealand is exhilarating, frightening and absolutely worth every terrifying second.
This I know, because I experienced it. The shortest, lightest girl in the group that day and the last to dive off the 134 meter jump. I teared up a few times but hid it, not wanting it to take over.
So, one might think, why would you do something so insane if you were so terrified? Because who knows the next time I will be studying abroad in Australia and having my spring break in New Zealand! That’s why. Plus, I didn’t know it was the highest jump when I signed up… Looking back I cannot believe I actually, free-willingly dove off the platform considering how scared I was, but I did and screamed half way down after I did it. And you know what, I appreciate the fact that I went on the highest dive, besides the bragging rights it gave me, I actually had the chance to tell myself to open my eyes half way through and experience it for what it really was. Beautiful mountain scenery was all around me and there was a calm stream of water below me that I quickly approached, until the cord snapped me back up into the air and I began bouncing up and down.
If you’ve never bungee jumped before then what you may not know is that there is a cord above your feet that you are supposed to pull up and yank after the second bounce. Then another rope lets go and you are sitting in an upright position so the bungee experts can pull you up easily and you aren’t dangling upside down as they do that. Well, my rope that I was supposed to pull was tangled and I was not trying to untangle it and pull the wrong rope. So I, embarrassingly got pulled up feet first, practically trembling from thinking I was going to slip out of my feet hold.
Being a young person in America right now is not too far from that feeling. Eighteen to 25 year-olds are terrified to graduate and get out in the real world and we are competing harder than we ever imagined for a decent internship or job. We worry about making our rent on time and paying bills, and the forever long student loans we are soon going to have to pay off. We aren’t quite sure what the future holds for us and are therefore taking other paths besides starting our careers right away like we might have preferred. What we need to remember is that even though our economic crisis seems to have no end is that there are people to help to us and that we have been trained well by the ones before us to also help ourselves. So maybe the jump will be terrifying and we will scream the first half of the way down but I bet we finally open our eyes to something beautiful. And maybe we don’t come up head-first right away but I predict we make it and come out even better than before it happened.
Crissy"
The Y&F SC Team
