Hello fellow classmates (and anyone else who may be reading this), my name is Sophie! I am currently a senior marketing major at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois with plans to graduate in December 2024. Although I was not raised in Peoria, I was born here and came back amid middle school so this has almost always been home to me. 

I have three siblings, growing up all four of us were very involved in school and out of school with various activities. Anywhere from choir, band, and orchestra to volleyball, soccer, tennis, track, basketball, and cheerleading. You name it, one if not all of the Spirrison kids were involved. My dad has traveled for work (almost) my entire life so I was used to always being on the go because it was up to my mom to get all of my siblings where they needed to be. Because of this, I am the type of person who likes to constantly be on the go. From my dad's work ethic to my mom's organizational skills, I look up to both of my parents and take after them greatly.

In high school, I hated mornings, every day I would go to school and then go straight to work afterward. I would find myself constantly working late nights, which led to my hate for mornings. In the fall of 2020 when I came to Bradley I started working early morning shifts at Markin as a lifeguard before class. In the beginning, I would wake up, go to work, and then go back to bed. This was all until I started drinking coffee every morning. I now find myself loving mornings! I find mornings to be very peaceful and I find myself to be the most productive in the morning than in the afternoon after classes. 

As an avid coffee drinker and someone who doesn't post much on any social media but Instagram, I found this assignment to be fitting to carry out my behind-the-scene coffee reviews. I started making coffee review videos for fun but never found the courage to post any of them. When Heidi said we had 14 blog posts to make for this course the first thing I thought of was how we have way too many locally-owned coffee shops here in Peoria and the surrounding towns, making it easy for me to make 14 blogs of the same topic. With that being said, welcome to blog... my coffee shop reviews!