Saturday, December 22, 2012

Friendship

Last Friday, I flew in Minneapolis, MN, my home state. I do have to say, the never-ending flatness brought a smile to my lips. After living in Salt Lake City, surrounded by mountains, being home felt right, not to mention hearing just about everyone on my flight mention their "begs" or "beggage." But I most of all, I am so happy to be surrounded by friends and family.

Every college student has a goal for their couple weeks off school; get together with as many high school friends as they can, oh, and maybe work for a bit too. I am guilty of both. While working an insanely packed work schedule, I have been trying to coordinate dinners and get-together's with my closest friends. I do have to say, the longer we are in school, the harder it is to get together. We begin to favor our friendships with our college friends, we decide to stay at our place in the city, instead of coming home, and we realize our loans are becoming exponentially larger and need more jobs to pay them off.

I have begin to wonder, are we meant to keep our high school friendships? You always hear when heading off to college, that we are "making relationships that will affect the rest of our lives." They don't say the same for high school though.
Looking at some college graduates I know, they seem to only keep those few special relationships. I seem to be already there. When I am home for these short amounts of time, I make sure to get together with my two best friends a couple times, and maybe "the crew" once or twice. Honestly, these are the people I love the most. I have known them the longest, and we all have fun times together. It's painful to imagine my future, and see myself struggling to keep these friendships. Distance can do a lot of damage on relationships, as I have experienced a lot. We will all try to maintain our friendships, until we get married and have kids, I guess at this point, it becomes too much work. We drift apart, until a class reunion and we realize what a great friendship we had back then. But this is just the rise and fall of relationships.

And you know? I am okay with this. Maybe we let go of our high school relationships because it reminds us of our immaturity. College is the biggest time of maturity in our lives, and letting go of those who make us immature is part of that process. And treasuring those close relationships increases our maturity.

Here's to Friendship

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Last Words

Last night, I turned on an episode of How I Met Your Mother. If you haven't heard of this show, you may be living under a rock, because it is amazing! But despite that, I landed on the episode titled "Last Words." In my opinion, as this entire blog is, it is one of the saddest HIMYM episodes. I'm going to assume ya'll have seen this episode if you are a HIMYM fan, since it is in season 6. So here go the spoilers...

Long story short, Marshall's dad dies in the previous episode. This episode takes place in St. Cloud, MN during Marshall's dad's funeral. His family members were asked what their last words with the deceased were. Throughout the episode, the characters realize what their last words with their fathers were. Now, you should probably watch the episode to understand how I was feeling by the end of the episode. I was sobbing. The sobbing may of been contributed to by the stress of finals week, but it was an emotional moment.

Yes, I am going somewhere with this emotional moment. It got me to thinking. What if your last words with someone were your  LAST WORDS with them. I know we all have thought about it before, but I would like to remind you of this thought again.

As I watched this HIMYM episode last night, I was primarily thinking about the last time I spoke with my father. They weren't the lovey-duvy, inspirational words most people have with their father, as Marshall's brothers had with their father. My "last words" with my father was just normal conversation with him via Skype, more like Marshall's last words with his father. Despite that I love my father, and want him to know that, no matter what, our last conversation was a perfect resemblance of our relationship. We don't need to verbalize our love for each other, it is known. I can see it in his eyes every time I hug him to say goodbye as I head back to school. (Gosh darnit! I'm in tears again)

As the holiday season approaches, and we start to gather with friends and family to celebrate, evaluate your relationships. Be sure that your loved ones know they are loved by you. It may be through small gestures, or it could be a phone call to tell them that they matter to you.

That being said, I would like to shout out to my family, as I know my mother is reading this :) I love you guys and can't wait to hug you on Friday!

Here's to Loved Ones.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Finals!

For the next couple weeks, across the country, students will be living in a week of stress. Finals week. It comes around twice a year, and it seems that fall semester finals seem to be the worst. At least for me they do. Perhaps it is because I am a winter person. It seems to always snow during finals week! Since yesterday night, we have accumulated a couple inches of snow, and I haven't even had the chance to touch it!
I told myself I would lock myself into my room starting Saturday afternoon after I got off work and keep studying until my first final until Tuesday. Who was I kidding?! I didn't get home until 8:00, after getting off work at 3:00 on Saturday. After arriving home so much later than anticipated, I thought I would start studying Sunday, today, morning. After completely turning off my alarm and sleeping into the afternoon of the day, I decided that cleaning was more needed than studying. So I woke up and cleaned my room. I vacuumed the stairs leading to my room three times! (yes, they were in need of three rounds of vacuuming), and after all the cleaning, I decided a shower was in order before the studying commenced. But finally, after eating brunch and showering, I started my studying! In which I finished one homework assignment, due on the day of the final, for my Calculus 2 class. And that is all that I got done...
It seems that time goes extremely fast when you are trying to cram-study! Still to be done is study for my literature exam, calculus, and chemistry. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better study day than today?

Many students have a study routine. They have rituals that they do in order to help themselves study. For me, I listen to music, and when I become bored, I start a solo dance party. Yes, don't judge, I start raging in my room. After I step on a couple sharp objects on the floor, I decide that a little organizing might be required for this dance party to continue. So, while still dancing, I start organizing things, grab a vacuum, a Windex bottle, and get to work. It's amazing how clean things become during finals week!
Sometimes, I wonder how I would benefit if I had different study techniques. What if I baked or cooked? My friends and roommates may enjoy that.  If I worked out, I would look great for the holidays! Although, I sometimes work out when I study. When I become stressed, all I want to do is run, hence why I start dancing, it just keeps me near my books and computer, reminding me what needs to be done. 
One thing I wish I did to help studying, and I bet many other students can agree, is eating right. If  I ate right, I would retain information better, and wouldn't be as stressed. I also may not of gained the freshman 15 my freshman year, since I chowed down on Christmas cookies that year!
Well, I should probably start some more dancing/studying before I start craving cookies.
Here's to Finals!

Posts, Tweets, and Pics

My first blog! Who would of thought that I would of thought of writing a blog? I have no idea what to write about, or whom I am writing to, but it's about time I put my thoughts into words. And since it is a technological and public world, why not make it public for everyone to see?!
That is one thing I am a bit confused about in this world. Why does everyone make everything public? We post everything to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Always updating our followers and friends about what we are eating for lunch, who we are shopping with, or worse, our feelings. I admit, I am guilty of updating my tweets and statuses to inform people of where I am or how I am feeling, or even how artistic my lunch looked, but why do we do this? I suppose everyone has their reasons.
Lately, I have been dealing with heartbreak. I never thought it would take me four months to get over a guy, but then again, I never thought I would fall in love that fast either. After the break-up, I felt that the only way I could vent was to post some heartfelt status to Facebook, one that "he" may or may not know is about him, or state how horrible I am feeling on Twitter. I took advantage of him not being on Twitter to post things obviously about him to Twitter, but act perfectly fine on Facebook.
This strategy bit me in the butt the other night. I went on a date with a guy I really like. Yet, this triple date with all of our friends, went way south before we even got to the restaurant. I will spare the details, but I realized how much of an idiot he was, and how stupid I was for allowing him to make a fool of me. I left the date early, and needed a way to vent because he really disrespected me. I couldn't tweet about it, since he follows me, nor could I post about it on Facebook. I was stuck venting to my best friend about it, and spent the rest of my night scheming of how "karma" could get him back. I admit, that may of been better than posting about my bad night! I found myself the next day with a little smirk on my face, knowing that karma will bite back, and I will move on, finding some other hot guy to go on dates with. No one needed to know.
So why am I here if I had a better night not posting my feelings? Who knows! I guess I had an urge to write a blog, so I came here. Hope you enjoy!
Here's to the future.