It’s been over 20 years since the SMU Mustangs have gone to a bowl game and the pride keeps on showing from the team and fellow students.

From the mid-1970s to 1986, Southern Methodist University was punished for its “under the table” payments to players. SMU was accused of paying their athletes to come to the school. They were sentenced to the “death penalty,” the most severe punishment placed on a Division 1 team. The NCAA canceled the team’s 1987 schedule and SMU decided not to field a team in 1988. Before the “SMU Football Scandal,” the team was one of the best in the country. Winning the 1935 National Championship, 10 Southwest Conference titles, 11 bowl appearances and one Heisman Trophy winner, they had gained the claim to being one of the best. But beginning in the 1970s, the NCAA scrutinized SMU by placing it on probation five times and then finally banned from the 1985, 1986 and 1987 bowl games, also being cut out completely in 1987. Since then the Mustangs football team has not returned to their glory…until now.

In the past two years SMU has had 1-11 seasons, but this year that all changed. Starting my freshman year at SMU, I knew that the football team was not great; I thought I was going to see another disappointing season. That all changed when SMU won its third game. I decided it could actually turn into a good season. Now here I stand, proudly backing my mustangs, to the first bowl game and the most wins in a season since 1984. Currently SMU is ranked first in the West Division of Conference USA and has a 7-5 record for the season. Kate Hairopoulos says in her article for the Dallas Morning News, “SMU, coming off its second straight 1-11 season, has improved by six wins from 2008, the best single-season improvement ever at SMU.”

I am a huge fan of Christmas. I absolutely love the holiday. I cannot wait for the end of Thanksgiving, so I can start listening to the music and watching the movies. But I personally do not believe people should jump the gun on the holiday. I can’t stand walking through shops or sitting at restaurants where they play Christmas music before Thanksgiving. I think we should at least get through one holiday before we start the next.

A few weeks into my freshman year at Southern Methodist University, I couldn’t believe that they had already opened a Halloween USA costume shop right next to the campus. Halloween was more than a month away and we hadn’t even gotten through Labor Day yet. Though Labor Day and Memorial Day aren’t as big holidays in some people’s minds; they still exist and are treated as most national holidays. It was completely insane. I couldn’t see why anyone, college students or not, would need a costume this early. It is incomprehensible to me.

Walking through Michael’s – The Arts & Crafts Store on Homecoming Weekend, only a week after Halloween, they already had Christmas trees, lights and decorations hanging all over the store. I couldn’t even begin to describe the frustration I felt. It is obnoxious that we can’t even get through one holiday before we begin thinking about the next. As one of the biggest fans of Christmas, I can’t wait for “the most wonderful time of the year,” as some call it, but I want to finish my Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing before I prepare my next holiday meal.

For my persuasive essay I am considering writing about how parents should tell the adoptive child that he or she was adopted. Not telling can lead to bad relationships between the child and the adoptive parents or worse behavioral problems with the child. My father was adopted as a baby and though technically I wasn’t, I feel like I am missing part of my family. I feel like part of my true history is missing. So I felt like writing about something that I had a close relation with and that I could connect with through personal experience. The audience for my essay would be adoptive parents who are debating whether or not to tell their child. I found an article about a boy who burned down the house of his adoptive parents when he discovered on his own that he was adopted so that he could go search for his biological parents.