Every year, WTAMU hosts a contest called Readership WT where the entire freshman class is given a book, which they can choose to write an optional 1,000 word essay about. A select number of students are then chosen to go on an all-expenses paid trip to a location relevant to the book. This year, the Readership WT book was The Heart and the Fist by Eric Greitens. Thirteen students have been chosen to travel to Bolivia, which is one place Greitens encountered during a mission trip in his book.

“Right now we’re doing our passport process. Now we have to send in all our passport stuff then we’re taking a course next semester about the language and culture,” freshman finalist and Advertising-Public Relations major Tessa Davis said.

The finalists went through an interview process with a committee consisting of Dr. Wade Schaeffer, First Year Experience director Kendra Campbell, and peer leaders.

“We went through a first round of group interviews, after about a week or a week and a half we had second interviews,” Davis said. “We met in Old Main and Kendra Campbell said the President couldn’t make it, but that he wanted her to tell us that we had all made it.”

People attending the trip will consist of 13 WT freshmen, Kendra Campbell, and peer leader Daniel Zewde.

“As a peer leader, we were required to read the book and submit an essay after we had read the book, and I told Kendra [Campbell] that I was interested in going on the trip as a peer leader,” Zewde said.

Finalists will spend the next semester preparing for the trip.

“We are taking a course next semester that will probably be about the language, culture, and what to do and what not to do,” Davis said.

Readership Ambassador and peer leader Jarrett Jackson believes he was “blessed” by his own Readership experience in 2010. He went to Turkey with 16 other students.

“It was overwhelming, culturally awe-inspiring, physically exhausting, but the greatest ten days of my entire life,” Jackson said.