Final Projects

It has been a while since I've posted anything because my firsts semester here at college is coming to a close, and final projects and assignments are popping up everywhere! Leaving little time for any outside of school brain activity.
But I wanted to quickly share one thing about final projects that I have encountered before, and am in the middle of right now. I have a terrible tendency to scheme up these grand, creative, and unique project concepts whenever I am assigned a final project sort of thing. I constantly want to do something that the teacher doesn't suggest, that my classmates wouldn't think of. My whole K-12 school career I have constantly dreamed up these grand project or poster ideas, and they generally only work out half the time. Some of them are easy to execute, and meet the standards of my OCD brain. They take a fair amount of effort, and anytime a problem comes up I easily come up with a compromise and quickly adjust the project. The outcome is just how I imagined it and results in an outstanding effort grade. Then the other half of the time I try to make my idea come to life and it is as if all the supplies are working against me. The concept doesn't come together and the product looks like a kindergardener did it. Usually resulting in me in tears at 1 am trying to salvage whatever I was trying to do.
I have been assigned a final project to show how the corse communication concepts are applied in my life. The rubric is rather open ended, frankly giving me more freedom than I know what to do with, all I need are pictures and words in some form that communicate the concepts in my life. So leaving me with this vastly open ended rubric, I scheme up this grand showcase idea to make a pop-up shadow box with 3-D pics of my life and put it in a shoe box people can open and shut. It will be pretty cool! Except it is turning out to be one of those projects where I bit off more than I can chew. I am dedicating way more hours to this project than my peers. There is a small voice in my head that keeps saying "why didn't you just do an iMovie like everyone else!?" Some of my pictures won't stay up, I can't close the box all the way, and the tape isn't holding anywhere on the project. But I am in to deep now, I can't change it! The project must go on even at the expense of my sanity!

When will I ever learn!?….

Backspace

I found myself rescently reading through my past blog posts, and have come across a couple that I wanted to delete. Particularly one from over the summer. Not because the facts in it were wrong, not because I hate the person or anything. I just realized my view of the situation has changed, I can see looking back on the experience now that I was naive in my thoughts and selfish to the situation, as if I had blinders on my eyes and couldn't see beyond the here and now I was experiencing. I was admittedly also a little overly dramatic in said post. 

I still want to delete the post from my blog. I feel as though it is not relevant anymore, that person is no longer in my life and not for better or worse, no hard feelings, they just aren't and I have changed so much since then.

So why haven't I deleted it yet? 

That action kinda goes against my own philosophy... If I deleted that post it would be as if it were never part of my blog, as if it never happened. When in actuality it did happen. Deleting it from my blog will not delete it from my life. I can't just delete parts of my past or rewrite them with the perspective I have on the situation now. And since I can't do that in real life I won't do that on my blog. It will sit there and serve as a reminder to that moment in time during my life. I learned something from that experience, as I do every experience I write about. It can't be changed, so I will not change it from my blog. 

I want this blog to be as constantly changing, growing, and evolving as I am, and that entails leaving the unchangable experiences of the past right where they are, reflecting on them like I am doing now, and moving on from them like I will do as soon as I hit the little orange "publish" button on this post. 

Unnatural Human Tendency

I think humans are the only creatures on the planet who are stupid enough to willingly place a burning hot flat iron just centimeters from one of the most vital and vulnerable body parts (their neck) multiple times in order to apply outward beauty…. By that I mean we straighten our hair, at least us girls do. And when you really think about it that is all straightening your hair is! Frying your dead skin cells that make up your hair and repeatedly placing a boiling hot slab of metal next to your neck…
Just a random thought I had as I was shamelessly straightening my hair this morning! :)

One Thing Hollywood Got Right

I've gotta say, one stereotype California's Hollywood got right was that of the typical greek row on Halloween. We've all probably seen a number of movies that have the crazy parties in greek row, with the skimpily (to put it nicely) dressed girls running from fraternity to fraternity, groups of guys ascending upon the fraternity doors as if it was their lives mission to get to those previously mentioned girls, and the neighborhood streets littered with red solo cups and broken remains of girl's various costumes.
After experiencing my first Halloween here at a major college I am here to tell you that stereotype is completely true! I had the luxury of walking around and observing greek row with a very good friend and while we were both completely sober, I might add. We passed multiple groups of girls dressed in every costume imaginable, as long as it barely covered their butts and showed enough cleavage to leave nothing to the imagination. I believe those were the only standards. I counted over 20 "playboy bunny" costumes throughout the night. The worst I saw was a girl walking in stiletto heels, a black spandex-underwear-like thing on her bottom half, and a santa top JUST like the one in the movie Elf that Buddy picks out for his dad (If you don't understand that reference you need a reality check) Behind every swarm of girls closely followed a drunk group of guys wearing half hearted costumes. Cause lets be honest, what guys wear on Halloween doesn't matter as much as what girls wear… At least not on greek row. The streets were loud, people drunkenly shouting to their friends down the street, people walking down the street and cars honking. There was a lot of various trash on the ground, a LOT of red solo cups. The occasional siren would go off, but because of the sheer volume of people out, I kind of assumed the polices efforts were all for not that night.
I was more mesmarised by the scene of greek row on Halloween then anything on television that night. People watching at its finest.
This occurred all week long I might add, since Halloween was on a thursday, people went out on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It is commonly referred to here as HalloWeek.
That is definitely not my scene, it is all to much for me, but it was fun to walk around and gain some serious perspective. And they were all so wrapped up in where they were going, or maybe just to drunk to notice my friend and I just walking around fully clothed up and down the streets.
Interesting Halloween to say the least.

"The One"

Do you think that everyone finds "the one"? That one special person who fits you like a puzzle piece and immediately makes your life complete? Does everyone get that undeniable tug on their heart when they see "the one" that draws them towards that person as if a magnet had just found its way to the refrigerator? Does everybody find that one person? Or are there just the lucky few that do, and the rest just settle? Is there really "the one" or are there many you could be equally compatible with and it is just chance as to which one you meet? What are the chances of finding "the one" if there is such a thing?
I don't really have the answers to all those questions… I have a few thoughts…
I have a hard time believing there is just one person meant for one other person, because there is no way all the right people would meet their person in this world! It's to big! But I kind of believe there are few people in this world that would work for everybody, and the chances of finding one out of that handful of possibilities is still slim, but better. Kinda takes the romance of "the one" out of it all, but what can I say. It's what my logical brain thinks. I also believe over half the population settles. They, for whatever reason, have found someone who will do simply because they feel the need to settle down quickly, desperately crave love and connection and don't want to wait any longer, and have found a person who meets half of their check list who is somewhat in the same boat. These relationships make it just fine for the most part, but seem to be missing something, and I've never been able to place just what. That leave the rest of the population as what I refer to as the lucky ones, who find someone and experience this undeniable and unexplainable attraction to a person, when they have found their magnet… They are those couples everyone aspires to be like, the source of the settling couples' aspiration and/or desperation, and have a radiance about them that is unexplainable. I undoubtably believe there is human capability for an above-average connection with another person. And I think everyone finds it at a different time in their life. Some find it in middle school, some are the stereotypical and statistically improbable high school sweet-hearts, many are college lovers, and some are fully fledged working class adults. No time in life is to early or late to find that magically strong connection, I just think that a lot of people never reach that connection or are to impatient or untrusting to find it. It is a special thing when two people experience it though. I have to believe that both parties feel it as well, it's never really a one sided thing. Both partners experience the same eventual feelings and it makes the relationship this awesome, open, and easy experience. As if all the guess work and "games" are thrown out the window… The two just connect.
I hesitate to use the word supernatural, but there is something bigger than us putting all of these connections together, that is for sure.
I personally will never settle until my heart feels that tug and my soul softly whispers "oh, there you are! I've been looking for you my whole life." I would urge anyone reading this not to settle, just cause one person found "the one" sooner than you, doesn't make you any lesser, it just means God is still orchestrating his grand plan. Listen to your heart, and you might find "the one" that God has placed in front of you.

Time and Perspective

Time is the ultimate giver of perspective. It makes it so you can look back on experiences and see them in a way you were never aware of while you were living in that moment. Time is ever illusive, and something that astounds me when I really sit down and think about it. Time is a deceptive thing... I can be sitting in class for two hours and it can feel like two days, I can spend two months hanging out with one person and it can feel like just two hours went by. As a college student time is precious, it seems as if the hours of the day are permanently stuck on fast forward, you get done with the week and it strikes you that you can't even remember monday, it feels like weeks ago, and you are able to have a whole new perspective on the problems you were facing monday, possibly even look back and see why things were the way they were, why a situation occurred and what you can learn from it. Perspective can show you how wrong you could have been about a person, or a situation, and how good something else can be. Shed light on why what you thought was right, was all wrong. Perspective can show you what life methods worked for you and what didn't. Perspective is an ongoing learning tool, one that can easily be overlooked but when paired with time, can lead to unequivocal benefits. Like letting go of regret, of hatred, of grudges, or of sadness.
We as humans spend a lot of time reminiscing about the time we spent doing things in the past, as well as planning the way we will use our future time. I think we do this more than focusing on the present time and place because we are able to gain perspective on those situations. Where as when we focus on the time here and now, we lack perspective, we more than likely lack the insight into our actions, others' actions, or why a situation is occurring. And to us, that's not as fun... But I try to do it on the daily, because I think it is important to acknowledge the here and now, acknowledge the people around me, my feelings, and even though I may not understand why all the things around me are happening, I know I will get through them, and as time passes, I will gain perspective on it all.

Time is something to be thankful for and perspective is something to look forward to and acknowledge once achieved.

Should've named me Grace

Everyone has those less than elegant moments of their life, let me just get right to the fact that I had a pretty big one last night.
I was walking up a simple staircase with another human of the opposite gender. We were joking around and having fun when I said "how many steps can you reach in one step?" As if to challenge him.... He extends his leg up the staircase and plants it firmly four steps up from where we were. As impressed as I was, the competitor inside me wanted to out do him... So I grasp the hand rail to my right and extend my leg five steps up from where we were. Stuck in this position for a second I had to gather up the strength and focus to hoist myself to the step using the guard rail. As soon as my back foot lifted off the ground, I went swinging off balance into the guard rail, slamming my head into the top, and my knee into the side. I guess I overestimated my balance and strength and underestimated that stupid fifth step. Before I could even really grasp what happened I got myself up, and he was frantically making sure I was ok! For a second I was numb from embarrassment and confusion. Nothing was truly hurt except my pride. I tried my hardest to play it cool as we slowly made our way up the rest of the staircase. As the evening went on my knee pain grew and grew, my head stayed relatively pain free. But I couldn't release the memory of the incident out of my head. How awkward and stupid the motion looked, what it must have looked like to him, what it sounded like, or how I tried to play it off.
When I was a child, and I did something ungraceful, my grandma would laugh and say "should've named you grace" cause obviously I was lacking some of that in whatever that particular incident was.
As I retired to my dorm room that night, I had two thoughts.
The first, "Its a good sign he continued to hang out with me after that moment... right!? Means I haven't totally fended him off yet! :)" The second was simply replaying the fall in my head with my grandmas voice over it all going "should've name you Grace!"