Jill's Journal: She’s going to be a Jackrabbit!

My great-niece Makena will graduate from high school this year. It’s hard to believe she’s grown into such a beautiful young woman, who, nine months from now will be “on her own.” It seems like it was just yesterday that while on a winter trip to Mexico I was in the market bartering on an adorable dress for Makena when she was just a toddler.

Now at 5-foot-5, I’m forced to look up to my 5-foot-10 great-niece.

It was last year that I learned that she wants to be an elementary teacher. I applaud her career choice, and growing up with a mom who operated an in-home daycare, I know she has a deep love for the littles.

It was at our family Thanksgiving that I learned she was considering two schools: Minnesota State University in Mankato, and South Dakota State University in Brookings. The next week, she told me, she was scheduled for a campus visit at SDSU. As I drove home that day from New Ulm, I was convinced that MSU-Mankato was going to be her choice. For starters, it was close to home, yet far enough away that she could spread her wings a bit.

Fast-forward to Christmas Day, once again, seated around our family dinner table, I asked if her decision had been made. As it turned out, it had. South Dakota State, she told me, rose to the top of her list.

I smiled wide. Another Meier is coming across the border.

“What was it about SDSU?” I asked.

“Everything,” was her immediate response.

As a Minnesota native who became a South Dakota resident 30 years ago, I honestly have no allegiance to SDSU, the University of South Dakota, Augustana University, the University of Sioux Falls or any South Dakota higher-learning institute.

I will say that I cheered for the Jacks when Austin Sumner was the quarterback and Dale Moss was shooting baskets or catching footballs. I rooted for the USD women’s hoops team when Heidi Hoff was on the roster. I’ve been in the stands to watch football at Augustana, where a couple of brothers with the last name of Scholten were donning Vikings’ pads and helmets, and their older brother, Zach, played basketball. And there have been many, many more former Lynx student-athletes I’ve kept an eye on at the next level, from Dakota State University to Northwestern College and beyond.

While I surely don’t want to “invade” Makena’s soon-to-be-life in Brookings, I’ll be happy to help when called upon and her behind-the-scenes cheerleader as studies to become a future educator. And of course, years down the road, a semester of student teaching is probably in her future, and I, of course, put a plug in for her do that in a community and a school district that I’ve both come to love and so appreciate. There would be a few perks, of course: Free room and board, and the opportunity to live with one “great-aunt.”