Hello everyone,

First let me introduce myself and my background. My name is Paul Olson and I am writing for Carl Sandburg College about my experiences as a mortuary science student. Hopefully this blog will give students or future students of Carl Sandburg and its mortuary science program an idea of what it is like to return to school after being gone for several years and what to expect from the mortuary science program.

Since this is my first entry I would like to talk about who I am and why I am entering the mortuary science program. I am a graduate from Northern Illinois University with a Bachelor’s degree with an emphasis in Corporate/Organizational Communications and a minor in Journalism. I have several years experience in both Public Relations and Sales, plus I am active in various other activities outside of work.

The reason I decided to go into the Mortuary Science program happened purely by accident. Originally I planned to go to University of Illinois in Springfield for the graduate program in Public Administration. My original goal after graduating from NIU was to develop some work experience for a couple of years and then go get my master’s degree. I was already making arrangements with the school and my internship program at the state capitol when I stumbled into the funeral business. I was helping out at a funeral home in Taylorville, IL for some time, and the longer I was working there the more my interest grew in the business. I immediately dropped from Public Administration and started researching the four Mortuary Science schools in Illinois. Yeah, I know…there’s not that many in this state. What convinced me to come to Carl Sandburg was the campus visit I arranged with their Mortuary Science department. Their faculty members and their program impressed me more than the other Mortuary Science schools.

Of course there are many other different reasons why people enter this field. There are some who go into this program because it is a family business. They might have a father or mother who works as a funeral director. There are others who are looking for a career change or maybe job stability. Some other people might be curious about the mortuary science program and just want to check it out.

No matter what you reason might be, mortuary science is an excellent program to enter. I will try to do blogs (hopefully) every week about my experiences in hopes that some people might be able to relate to some of the situations. Just a warning—with blogs I write from a first person perspective with free style writing. This means for blogs I don’t check for grammar/spelling/punctuation errors. I just write whatever is going through my mind. If I manage to do all of those corrections, then this blog will never be posted due to all the rewrites.