Holli Rausch

Well, some of you may remember my previous post about working for the SD Space Grant Consortium and creating their logo and my involvement in the design of the website. Because of my involvement in that project, DSU sent me and friend Gil Blanchette to Space Days in Pierre; I took lots of pictures for you all.

I met “Astronaut”. He was born in South Dakota and was a part of the space trip to repair the Space Station in July. His real name is Mike Fossum. Except for the presentations he’s been making in the state recently, he technically hasn’t been back to South Dakota since he was like four. But I bet he saw it from OUTER SPACE!

We listened to his presentation, which was very interesting. There was a shot of him at 0 gravity, going down a ladder upside down. He then commented, “And I went down the ladder upside down. BECAUSE I CAN!” And that made me think of Miles…because he would do that for the same reason. He told Gil and I that if the picture he autographed is in the picture with us, then it’s worth more to sell on eBay. I don’t think I’d get squat for this picture, but I don’t care. The first night was still cool.

Gil and I set up a booth, like many other people. However, our booth’s goal was to recruit HS students for DSU. Unfortunately, most of the students there were K-8…very few HS students at all. Most of the time was spent having grade school kids standing at our booth asking, “What do we do here?” or “Can I keep this?”. At one point, I felt so bad that we weren’t prepared for them that I pulled out a deck of cards and performed a really lame magic trick for a class that kept staring at us. They thought it was cool, were satisfied that there was something there for them, and they moved along to the next booth. So the 2nd day was pretty disappointing.

However, the logo I created for the Consortium…it was everywhere. Schedules, information sheets, and shirts. There were about 50 volunteers and they all were wearing blue shirts with MY LOGO on them! What a proud moment for me. I had a couple people come up to me and ask, “Is it true that you’re the gal who made this logo?” I’d say yup and they’d tell me how nice it looked. Aside from tshirt designs I’ve made, this is technically the first major project I’ve completed and seen in action. (This includes my work with Daktronics.) It was very rewarding. (More logo sightings can be found here.) And all…because of DSU.

Dakota State is #1.