Fall Goal

If you have not read my previous post titled "Summer Goal" please do so because I will be referencing it in this post. 

I have concluded that my summer has pretty much come to an end. Though, the weather is kindly sticking around, I am in full school mode! So it no longer feels like summer to me! 

With the end of summer comes time for reflection on how I did trying to achieve my summer goal! I am happy to report I succeeded with flying colors! I did something I have never done before every day! It was a challenge on those kind of days where I had no specific plans, or no intention of leaving the house. I had to get creative with those days. But then there were days when I was on vacation in a place I had never been to before and I was doing something new all day! I made countless memories with friends and family this summer, and I hope to do it again next year. It is a great way to grow and learn about yourself! 

As the fall season really really picks up here in college. I am still doing a lot of new things I have never done before, but a lot of it is awkward and uncomfortable. Meeting new people and forgetting their names, having to speak in front of a lecture class of 200 people or more, I could go on about the impossibly awkward and embarrassing situations I've already encountered. Yet, each situation I look back on as a learning opportunity. Even if it was an inwardly painful one! So this fall I'm making it my goal to intentionally put myself in an awkward or uncomfortable situation (that doesn't purposefully make another person feel awkward and uncomfortable) at least ONCE a week! In hopes that these experiences will push me to be more comfortable in new or unfamiliar situations! I'll even start today, as I am going to a church youth picnic with a ton of people I barely know off campus! Yay for awkward conversation! 

My Internet Friends

This post is sort of a not to my previous post called "my internet distractions" except this one focuses on the people (mostly on YouTube) I watch religoiously. It may sound weird, and I know they have no idea I exist, but, I feel like I know the people on these channels, and I am invested in their lives. It's kinda freaky. But let me introduce you to my internet friends!

Jenna Marbles- I first started watching her my sophomore year of high school, and have never stopped. She is an empowered female YouTube comedian who makes a living off of her channel. She inspires me to be more outgoing and embrace myself for who I am, cause I watch her do it every week. She tells it how it is, and in a comedic relief sotra way. She also has two dogs named Marbles and Kermit, who complete her life and her videos. Though, you can tell when she is going through life problems, cause she usually dies her hair some strange way and says the F-word a lot more in her videos.

Girl Code- An increasingly popular tv show on MTV where a group of female comedians talk about the "rules" of being a girl, why we do what we do, say what we say, and help decipher guys for us. I seriously have learned so much about dating, guys, and life in general from these girls. I follow almost all of them on Twitter! If you are a young girl, I highly recommend this one!

CTFXC (Charles and Allie Trippy) - I came across these two because of their epic marriage proposal on YouTube. But after watching it I wanted to know more about them and their life. They are incredibly interesting people, and they vlog their daily lives. I have watched them travel the world, get married, move into a house, join a band, tour with the band, get sick, go shopping, get coffee, you name it, I've watched them do it. (ok, that sounded way creepier than I wanted it to...)
But they have been keeping track since day one of blogging and are up to day 1578!

SXEPhill (Phillip DeFranco)- "Newsy type stuff and things that matter to me today"
That is how he opens up every video. Now, Phil is one of the most successful YouTubers out there. I remember starting out watching him in his house making videos by himself about news stories that captured his attention and wanted to share with his viewers. Now he has an office and a studio and a production team to help him out. I'm pretty sure he has interns who find him stories. He does talk shows now, and public speaking events. All because he started telling the news in a fun and informative way. I learn the coolest most random stuff on there. He also talks a lot about hot women, which I don't really care about, but I guess some do.
I thouroghly enjoy checking up on Phil.

VlogBrothers (John and Hank Green)- These are two brothers who are fully grown, and live separate lives in separate states who started making videos every week to each other about random thoughts they had. They cover any sort of topic they want, and throughout the years I've watched them starts charities on behalf of Nerfighters who died and start world saving projects to make the world suck less. (BTW, NerdFighters are what they affectionately call their viewers) I have learned a lot from their videos as well as been entertained by their awkwardly funny and nerdy brotherly relationship!

ASAPscience- This is a Youtube channel that explains things using simple yet understandable drawings on a white board, that is then time lapsed into a video. They explain scientific things such as "Brain Tricks" and explain things like "why we hit the snooze button" or "the power of procrastination." I learn more in their 2 minute science videos than I did all year in my biology class. I also have a crush on the narrators voice.... #IsThatWeird (Girl Code reference)

Go Check them all out and fall in love with them as much as I have! Hope to go to Vidcon someday and meet them all!

Being a Girl

From my perspective, being a girl is single handedly the best and worst thing possible.
As I'm sure you've gathered I love to people watch, and observe the inately natural yet impulsively annoying nature of my peers. There is something differnet about every social group and social setting I am in, something unique. So I would like to share with you, my readers, my ammature yet somewhat insightful oppinion on girls, what the pro and cons seem to be to me, and my experience with the girls in my age group (late high school - college)

Let's begin with the pros. We generally care about how we look, smell, and carry ourselves. We give complements, even if we do not know one another, and it's not weird. Hugging is completely appropriate for every occasion! Just saw your friend at Target?.... HUG! New movie came out with your favorite actor in it and you are pumped?.... HUG! Won't see your BFF untl tomorrow?..... HUG! Havn't seen your BFF for more than 12 hours?.... HUG!
I think you get the point.
As females we also have an unspoken "girl code" that we use to communicate with other females around us. Certain glances and facial expressions give off messages I swear we are born inately knowing. We are great communicators, and can find common ground with people easily! Girls also get doors held open for them! I personally love this about being a girl! It's not only polite on the gentleman's part, but scores him some inner brownie points!
We are nice, innately friendly, smell good, care about others, and have this cool code we all understand.

Simultaniously, we are an accumulation of some of the worste things on the planet. Though we freely give complements and nobody bats a meticulously manucured eyelash, many times these complements can be back-handed or empty. Unless you really know the girl, you might never know if the complement was genuine. We are tricky that way. As a gender we generally care TO MUCH about the way we carry ourselves, act, or dress. As girls, we are guilty of using our gender to get us things we want from guys. Even if it's something as simple as getting the remote from accross the room cause we are lazy. We can be devious like that. We also gossip about other people to much. We've made our morning routine ten times harder on ourselves by adding hot irons, hair and eye lash curlers, hair dyes, tweezers, and make-up to it.... Periods are a thing.... Enough said.
We are flirtatiously deceiving, overly complicated, and irrational and hellaciously judgmental.

This creates a wonderful and terrifying combination that all the guys have to watch out for! Yet, even with all the things I hate about being a girl (believe me there is more than I typed out here) I wouldn't trade it for the alternative ever! Cause the guys are a completely different set of pros and cons in themselves! But that's a list for another time.

Freshman College Observations (Part 1)

These are just things I have learned, observed, dealt with, and experienced during my first week here at college, or as the rest of the world would call it, university.

~Going to a major university with something like 25,000 other students, I had many people tell me I would never see people from my old high school. That is so false it is ridiculous! It's about at true a statement as the "I agree I have read the terms and conditions" statement at the bottom of the page that nobody actually reads! I have seen everyone I know coming here from my old high school, and the surrounding schools from my area! YOU WILL SEE PEOPLE YOU KNOW! Whether you want to or not!

~Homesickness hits in random unexpected waves. One second I am sitting there listening to my professor explain her grading scale, and the next I am getting choked up and want nothing more than to hug my mom.... I hate being emotional in general, so to be hit at random times makes me feel almost blind sided by my own body.

~If you are left handed, get to class early and get one of the rare left handed desks! They do exists but you have to search for them!

~Sororities and Fraternities really are all the stereotypes the movies portray them to be.

~The sorority girls all look the same, dress the same, and party the same. Apparently tuesday night is the preferred party night, kinda random if you ask me!

~There is always that one dorm you are extremely jealous of, because its better, prettier, and cooler than yours in every way!

~Scheduling is all up to you, when you study, how you study, who you study with, it's all up to you. I find this very freeing! The teacher is no longer enforcing certain types of notes that they may find helpful but you frankly find annoying and impractical. (or was that just me?) You are the master!

~With power comes responsibility. You really do have to use you free time to study and be responsible...

~Falling off your lofted bed is completely possible when waking up in the morning...

~It's not a matter of "If you lock yourself out of your room" it is a matter of "when you lock yourself out of your room."

~Your room mate really does not have to be your best friend, it might be better that way. Just set boundaries early.

Diversity and Me

Having now spent a week here on my new college campus, I am settling in quite nicely to my surroundings. Don't get me wrong, I have had to make major life adjustments and find new ways to do simple tasks I took for granite back home. But that is not what this post is about, this is about me and my experience settling into my life surrounded by all different types of people!

I never realized how little I knew about the world until my university brought the world to my fingertips, and I simply knew not what to do with it...

Being a major state university really opens up a diversity door I think a lot of small colleges and private institutions don't have. Over the past week I have encountered at least one person from 14 other states, 2 countries, and someone from every sexual orientation there is to be accounted for. I have met varsity athletes, inner-city kids who beat all odds and statistics thrown at them about furthering their education, I have met muslims, catholics, mormons, christian, and Buddhists. Every race humanly possible is accounted for and surrounded by this fruit salad of people, is little old "plain-jain" suburban as can be, me. I enjoy the change of pace very much.

Before I came here I considered myself to be worldly. As it turns out I was worldly compared to my narrow perception given to me by my very un-diverse community back home. Being here and talking to all these new people made me realize how little I know about music, other people's religion, and how rural communities differ from major cities. I feel like a horse that has just had it's blinders lifted from its eyes!

I'm not saying I'm about to engage in activities with all these different groups, because classes are about to start and one would simply not have time to become a varsity athlete who does greek row volunteer work while practicing buddhism and christianity with inner city kids on the way to an LGBTQ rally on the quad! HaHaHa, that would be something wouldn't it!? I am saying though, that I am in awe of the opportunity to be around all these different people, and hopefully I will become a better, smarter, and more enriched human being by understanding where each diverse person that is different from me. I struggle to understand how all these different and diverse people can co-exsist under one university and then manage to (sometimes on an extreme level) hate one another in the "real world." I try to grow from the fact that all these religions and stereotypes and races can co-exsist under one university.

Going into the first day of class I will walk in confident in my ability to learn and humbled by the vast amount of cultural knowledge I know my fellow peers and professors have to offer that I have yet to grasp.

Enjoying Organized Chaos

Having spent six days in my new "home away from home" (a.k.a. my dorm room) I have come to realize this is like my inner OCD organized personality's ultimate dream! An entire room, with all entirely my stuff, and all the time in the world to sit and figure out how I want to organize it! It is super fun!

I find myself loving organizing my desk drawers! Deciding the most functional was to use the small space, deciding where I want certain shelves and what I want in them.

Honestly, I spent multiple hours putting pictures up cause I had to get the perfect sequence of pictures and balance between sizes and colors and who is in the pictures!

Laying in bed thinking about my schedule for the next day, knowing I have nobodies agenda in mind but my own, and that I am capable of anything I need/want to accomplish here on campus.

It really has been exciting knowing nobody is going to come along and change my set up, it's purely the way I want it and the way I set it... Functional for me and me alone!

The strangest part of it all and possibly the coolest part of it all, is that from this point forward, I am the decider. I get to decide the functionality and the organization of not only my dorm, but my life! My education, my friends, my schedule, my job, everything! The freedom and responsibility actually excites my in a "control freak" sorta way. Yet, the realist inside of me is trying to point out the daunting aspect of it all, but for now, I choose to yield the power to the overly excited OCD half of myself who is enjoying this immense control I have over my living situation!

College Freshman Probs after 48 hours...

While a lot of things have been great about my first two days on my college campus, I have experience afar share of mishaps since I arrived as well. I could make a list of all the awesome things I've done or seen and the cool people I've met, but my misfortunes seem to be more entertaining! So here are all the interesting misfortunes I've experienced so far.

When I walked into my room for the first time, I was met  by my room mate staring at a spider on the wall... and I DON'T do spiders. So my dad had to go kill it before I came back into my room. Great start right!?

I broke the shelving system I brought to put under my bed. Which my dad had to fix....

I went to take my first shower in the hall bathroom. But halfway through the shower I realized I forgot my towel! So I had to use the hand towel and wash cloth I had brought... That was really not fun!

I brought a lamp I had bought for my desk, but managed to forget a light bulb for it...

When I arrived to my dorm, and began unpacking my stuff, I realized I did not have the same number of dresser drawers as my room mate, who had moved in the day before. Turns out my room was just missing one, then had never had that happen before. So I had to put in a work order for one. Only me right!? This would only happen to me!

Thankfully I have not tripped going up the stairs, or dropped my tray of food in the dining hall! I'm knocking on wood as I say that though, I may have just jinxed myself! HaHa!

As time goes by I hope things get a little smoother!

'Twas the night before College

Tomorrow I am moving into my college dorm and embarking on the crazy adventure that is college! 

As I lay here tonight, I am reflecting on a lot of things. I am continually thankful for my parents, and all they have done to get me to this point. I am thankful to God, for you know, existing in my life. I miss my beautiful friends already! Also, I have so many unanswered questions... I don't know how move-in day works, I still have financial aid questions, I don't know my room mate, and I am terribly afraid I forgot something at home (which is 6 hours away!) 

I could spend this entire night imagining every scenario I will encounter over the next few weeks. Or I could spend it reminiscing through childhood memories, and getting all sentimental. But really I should get some sleep. Tomorrow will be emotionally draining. Being taken to a new place to live with almost nobody I know. Saying goodbye to my parents, and essentially start being independent for the first time for a long period of time! 

I'm going to try to get some sleep. But getting to sleep tonight feels as hard as trying to get to sleep would be if you were on a life raft about to take a blind curve.... You don't know what's around the corner, why would you fall asleep then!? That's what I feel like...

25 minutes in a park

Yesterday, I spent 25 minutes alone in a public park. I was waiting for my friends to arrive, and I was quite content laying on a blanket under a tree, the birds chirping, not a cloud in the sky, enjoying the moderately warm temperature, and just the overall peace of it all.
Well, that lasted all of 2.8 seconds before a bee came to investigate me! Which naturally freaked me out. I hate bees. Then a squirrel tried to creep up on the food I had sitting next to me, which I had to scare off. I thought to myself, "ok, that was a momentary disruption, go back to relaxing..." So I slipped back into my peaceful state, when suddenly startled by ants crawling all over my blanket!
After shaking out the invaded blanket, and settling back down, I noticed I was not alone at this quiet little park anymore. A rather large homeless man had set up camp in the back corner of the park. He could see me and I could see him. I suddenly felt more alert of what was going on, and was slightly afraid. I am not afraid of homeless people, rather afraid of strange men. The fact that I am a small-ish woman alone in a park, and he is rather large man, made me uneasy. He made no move toward me, he simply laid on a park bench not even facing me. Still, I had lost all ability to lay down and close my eyes and relax. After a while he got on his bike and biked away.... safe once again?
NOPE! In came another man, who was just walking the path that loops the park. He was dressed in a button up shirt and jeans. Yet, I felt just as afraid. I pretended to be busy on my phone as he walked by my area, nothing came of that incident either.
I was visited by another squirrel and a Blue Jay that wanted the cookies I had sitting next to me.
The blanket I laid out began to get whet spot from the grass, and the ants were incredibly drawn to those spots....

I spent 25 minutes alone in a park, and it only took 25 minutes for me to realize exactly how paranoid I am about strangers and bothered by nature I can be, and how hard it is for me to sincerely relax! It's astounding what 25 minutes alone will do!

Go spend 25 minutes in a park alone, and see what you discover about yourself!

Week of Goodbyes

This is my final week at home before I leave for college! It's getting very strange, if I'm being completely honest. Time is becoming a luxury I cannot afford! I have begun to budget my time with people in order to make sure I see everyone I want to before I leave. People are treating me differently and talking to me as if I'm leaving them forever. I swear my parents look at me for prolonged periods of time if we are in the same room! (I am the first one off to college, so they are new to this as well) I can't quite explain it. Though, I know it is not the last time I will ever see many of these people. I will be back on breaks, and they will too. But, as far as I'm concerned, once we all embark out on our separate journeys, nothing is really guaranteed. We can say we will keep in touch all we want, still I know some of these people won't. The only people I can guarantee I will see again are a few close friends and my immediate family! Not only am I saying goodbye to a mass amount of peers that I have known all my childhood, but a mass amount of stuff. I am completely gutting my bedroom! Sorting everything into piles of what I want to take with me and what I don't.
I find myself sorting my belongings into piles, and parting with the majority of it. I find myself sorting out all of my friends and putting them in order so I can spend the optimal amount of time with them. Puts into perspective how much of my life I currently know is ending!
Really, if you think about it, I am saying goodbye to an era of my life.
It's not like I am saying goodbye to everything I've ever known, because I will be back. But I am saying goodbye to a lifestyle, and when I return, inevitably I will see things differently. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Excited yet sad at the same time.

Not sure if saying goodbye makes me more nervous or sad....