*Check out the Free Christian College Resource Center online. Visit http://www.christianconnector.com.
*Discover a Christian education through Hobsons. Go online at http://www.collegeview.com to learn more about Christian schools that meet your needs. Visit schools that interest you and search articles on topics such as student life, athletics, and academics.
*You may apply for The Prudential Spirit of Community Award if you have performed volunteer work over the past year. Ask Mrs. Gassie for information. Interested students can get an instruction sheet, apply online at http://spirit.prudential.com and then follow the instructions. The application deadline is November 1, 2010.
*Wendy's High School Heisman Award is for seniors who have 'at least' a B and play a school-sponsored sport. The online application is due by October 3, 2010 and can be found at: www.wendysheisman.com. Each student applicant must have their online application reviewed and confirmed online by a school representative.
*Are you active in your community? Have you led a project that benefits others? Have you overcome personal challenges? You may qualify for an AXA Achievement Scholarship. Learn more and download an application at: www.axa-achievement.com. Application deadline is by December 15, 2010.
*If you are a truly motivated, dedicated, involved high school senior, the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation is awarding $3 million a year in scholarships to 250 deserving students just like you. Apply online. For additional information and application, go to www.coca-colascholars.org. Deadline to receive completed applications is October 31, 2010.
*Are you considering a Career Technical degree program? If you plan on enrolling full-time (12 credit hours) in a designated vocational program in Kansas, you may apply for the Kansas Vocational Education Scholarship. Registration and testing for this program is process by the Testing Center at KSU. Information and applications are available at the Kansas Board of Regents website: http://www.kansasregents.org/resources/PDF/640-applicationbrochure2011.pdf. The test for this scholarship is given on November 6, 2010 and March 5, 2011 in multiple sites across Kansas. Application deadlines for these tests are: October 15, 2010 and February 28, 2011.
*An exciting opportunity for young women to receive a scholarship is available with The Miss Kansas Teen USA Pageant. Applicants must be single, never married nor given birth to a child, a United States citizen and at least a six-month resident of Kansas. They must be between the ages of 14 and 18 as of February 1, 2011. Complete and enclosed information sheet, (see Mrs. Gassie), submit a recent photo, and mail the completed form by October 1, 2010. For more information, visit the web sit at: www.misskansasusa.com.
*Do you know a high school senior looking for college scholarships? Elk's National Foundation, 2011 Most Valuable Student and Legacy Awards applications are now available! MVS applications, available to all high school seniors who are U.S. citizens, are due on December 1, 2010, to the Lodge nearest the applicant’s home. The student needs to list all his/her honors and awards (major ones), leadership and extracurricular activities, and exhibits of articles/photos to substantiate what has been included. For more details and to download an application visit www.elks.org/enf/scholars/mvs.cfm.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Forecasting Financial Need for College
Although everyone supposedly knows by now that your FAFSA can't be submitted for the 2010-11 year until after January 1st, 2011 (with your 2010 tax information), there is a way to track your financial need / request earlier than that.
Other benefits include:
FAFSA4caster will help you get an early start on the financial aid process by:
- Providing you with an early estimate of your eligibility for federal student aid.
- Giving you an experience similar to FAFSA on the Web
- Allowing you to transfer all of your FAFSA4caster data to FAFSA on the Web once you are ready to apply for aid.
- Providing you the option to apply for your Federal Student Aid PIN.
- Increasing your knowledge of the financial aid process, and providing information about other sources of aid.
Other benefits include:
- You will become familiar with the student aid lifecycle and begin to understand the roles of the financial aid players - students and families, colleges, Federal Student Aid, and banks and lenders.
- When you're finished entering your data, you can see your estimated federal student aid eligibility information, which is based on the answers you provided in FAFSA4caster. Your estimated federal student aid eligibility will help you better understand the types and approximate amounts of federal student aid for which you may qualify.
- Once you submit your data, we review your information and notify you if there are any issues you need to resolve prior to officially applying for federal student aid. This will save you time.
- We will automatically submit a request for you to receive a Federal Student Aid PIN in time for you to use when you officially apply for aid.
- Additionally, FAFSA4caster provides you with an opportunity to pre-populate a FAFSA on the Web application for the current processing year, to reduce the time spent completing the FAFSA if you choose to attend college now.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Hey All Y'all Seniors-
1. Now is the time to do some smart shopping...those college applications can start to add up the $$$, so check out with the school on-line or call their admissions office to see if there is a free period of time to apply. (Don't ask me!) Often, September and October are less expensive months because the colleges are trying to set up their mailing list. If you do apply and are accepted, you ARE NOT required to attend that college...unless Mom & Dad say so :)! You DO need to tell that institution that you won't be attending after you've made your final choice.
2. K-State will have a representative here on Friday, September 17th during the lunch period. Please be there. Even if you don't plan on going to the university, you'll learn lots of information about choosing a college. (Remember, you're shopping!)
3. Don't forget to register for the October 23, 2010 ACT. It costs $32.00 (no writing) or $47.00 (plus writing). Registration date is cut-off on September 17, 2010, this next Friday. If you do a late registration, you'll need to pay an extra $21.00. You can do this on-line but make sure that you have your credit card ready.
4. If you want / need to take the next ACT, it's on December 11th, 2010. Registration has to be in by November 5, 2010. Most colleges won't accept a SAT or an ACT after December of your senior year; this is the cut-off date that colleges use to award scholarship $$$ and grants.
5. ITT Technical Institute may be your education for the future. It offers six schools of study: Drafting & Design, Information Technology, Electronics Technology, Business, Criminal Justice, and Health Sciences. ITT Tech will be hosting a High School Open House on Saturday, October 16, 2010. Visit http://www.itt-tech.edu/ for more information.
Keep posted!!! More information to follow!
2. K-State will have a representative here on Friday, September 17th during the lunch period. Please be there. Even if you don't plan on going to the university, you'll learn lots of information about choosing a college. (Remember, you're shopping!)
3. Don't forget to register for the October 23, 2010 ACT. It costs $32.00 (no writing) or $47.00 (plus writing). Registration date is cut-off on September 17, 2010, this next Friday. If you do a late registration, you'll need to pay an extra $21.00. You can do this on-line but make sure that you have your credit card ready.
4. If you want / need to take the next ACT, it's on December 11th, 2010. Registration has to be in by November 5, 2010. Most colleges won't accept a SAT or an ACT after December of your senior year; this is the cut-off date that colleges use to award scholarship $$$ and grants.
5. ITT Technical Institute may be your education for the future. It offers six schools of study: Drafting & Design, Information Technology, Electronics Technology, Business, Criminal Justice, and Health Sciences. ITT Tech will be hosting a High School Open House on Saturday, October 16, 2010. Visit http://www.itt-tech.edu/ for more information.
Keep posted!!! More information to follow!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Essay on Forgiveness
by C. S. Lewis
We say a great many things in church (and out of church too) without thinking of what we are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." I had been saying it for several years before I asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth putting in. "If one is a Christian," I thought, "of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying." But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins is not so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is the sort of thing that easily slips away if we don't keep on polishing it up.
We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord's Prayer, it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don't forgive you will not be forgiven. No exceptions to it. He doesn't say that we are to forgive other people's sins, provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don't we shall be forgiven none of our own.
Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God's forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people's sins. Take it first about God's forgiveness, I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, "Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before." If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what at first seemed to be the sins turns out to be really nobody's fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness, then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call "asking God's forgiveness" very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some "extenuating circumstances." We are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don't cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves.
There are two remedies for this danger. One is to remember that God knows all the real excuses very much better than we do. If there are real "extenuating circumstances" there is no fear that He will overlook them. Often He must know many excuses that we have never even thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surprise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they thought. All the real excusing He will do. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. We are only wasting our time talking about all the parts which can (we think) be excused. When you go to a Dr. you show him the bit of you that is wrong - say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and throat and eyes are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really right, the doctor will know that.
The second remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favor. But that is not forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.
When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God's forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily, in other people's we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men's sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one per cent of guilt that is left over. To excuse, what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night "Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.
I post this essay for all of us to be reminded to keep an eternal perspective on each soul that we meet. Praise God! He is Good and Merciful! He is Almighty and Worthy of all praise! - CAG
We say a great many things in church (and out of church too) without thinking of what we are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." I had been saying it for several years before I asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth putting in. "If one is a Christian," I thought, "of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying." But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins is not so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is the sort of thing that easily slips away if we don't keep on polishing it up.
We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord's Prayer, it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don't forgive you will not be forgiven. No exceptions to it. He doesn't say that we are to forgive other people's sins, provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don't we shall be forgiven none of our own.
Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God's forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people's sins. Take it first about God's forgiveness, I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, "Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before." If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what at first seemed to be the sins turns out to be really nobody's fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness, then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call "asking God's forgiveness" very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some "extenuating circumstances." We are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don't cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves.
There are two remedies for this danger. One is to remember that God knows all the real excuses very much better than we do. If there are real "extenuating circumstances" there is no fear that He will overlook them. Often He must know many excuses that we have never even thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surprise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they thought. All the real excusing He will do. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. We are only wasting our time talking about all the parts which can (we think) be excused. When you go to a Dr. you show him the bit of you that is wrong - say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and throat and eyes are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really right, the doctor will know that.
The second remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favor. But that is not forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.
When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God's forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily, in other people's we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men's sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one per cent of guilt that is left over. To excuse, what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night "Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.
I post this essay for all of us to be reminded to keep an eternal perspective on each soul that we meet. Praise God! He is Good and Merciful! He is Almighty and Worthy of all praise! - CAG
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