Finding Some Success

Amidst all the craziness surrounding this week I am happy to announce I only missed one class and only cut three hours from my internship. Why am I happy about that? Well, the two weeks prior to this week have seen 7 classes being skipped, 1 missed test, around 10 missing hours from my internship as well as 3 canceled physical therapy appointments. I'm extremely happy with this weeks accomplishments. This week also consisted of three assignments for my practicum plus a test in one of my class. Two and half out of three of those assignments are finished and I'm fairly certain I aced my test this morning. OH!! I actually ended up CATCHING UP on my hours for my internship. 

I was also able to talk to an old professor of mine who gave me some advice about grad school, the GRE, and helped me with one of the three assignments. I'm pleased with the end of this week and even though the talent show will not be happening tomorrow, Brandi and I have decided that we WILL finish the dance and once it is finished we will post it so that the work can see hour efforts. 

On a broader note, this is the end of month two for the blog!!! I'm so excited that I have been able to keep up with it for this long and I am so proud of my self for actually sticking to it. I only technically missed one day and it was only by a few minutes and it was due to that stupid dance. One thing I am not so pleased about though is how I kind of slacked of on the quality of this blog. Tomorrow I will start trying to incorporate more than just my life rants and what not. I need to do another check in with my goals and then maybe I can get this thing back on track. 

Well This Sucks

"Rest assured cause dreams don't turn to dust" -Owl City Dreams Don't Turn to Dust 

I got news today that the talent show has been canceled. This is the show that Brandi and I have been relentlessly practicing for; sacrificing our time, our bodies, and efforts for. This really sucks. I read the message five hours after it had been sent out to find out that Brandi and I were the only people who had signed up for the show out of TWO acts that had expressed interest. 

On one hand I felt really sad about all the lost time and effort but on the other I felt really dumb for even trying to do the talent show, obviously no one knew or no one cared about it. Why had Brandi and I taken everything so seriously? I feel so foolish for putting so much effort in to it.

That aside, now I have to cram four chapters of stress and resilience into my brain by 9am, come up with interview questions for a video I have to make by Sunday, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. And the talent show may be able to be revived by my own sorority but that might not actually happen. Ugh. I can't win.

We found outfits

***EDITED: THIS WAS POSTED ON FEBRUARY 26th HOWEVER IT WAS NEVER FULL PUBLISHED SO I HAD TO GO BACK AND RE DO IT***

After many more hours of choreo and outfit making, we finalize our outfits and we are now working on floor work!!!!

Things are coming together and hopefully we can have everything done by Friday so we can spend all day Saturday practicing and finessing all of our moves. 

I was supposed to study today but work was ridiculous and then I took a much needed nap. This week is almost done. 

Makes Us Sad

Brandi and I decided to have a late night choreography session/ sleep over/ sob fest last night over the part of the song that was giving us so much trouble. After an extra two hours of inventing and practicing moves we FINALLY came up with something that fits and is fairly easy to do. With that progress under our belt, we figured we would start working on our outfits and the rest would be easy. 

WE. WERE. WRONG. 

How hard could it be to find pants that fit this description? Baggy, sweatpants. IT SHOULDN'T BE THAT HARD

WELL IT IS

We went to the mall for three hours and only found two pairs that could possibly even remotely begin to work. They were REALLY expensive. 

Searching for these made us so depressed. There was no hope in sight. So we moped on the bus and then went back to Brandi's house where Olivia Newton John pants (ie the kind Sandy is wearing at the end of Grease) saved our lives and our motivation.

Now we are back in the game of making moves and applying them. We almost have 3/5 of the song done!!!

In other news, I am so very tired and I have no idea how I'm going to make it to Saturday but hey, I'll figure it out.

Death by Dance

"All my people on the floor, let me see you dance" Me Against the Music- GLEE version

I've been dancing for nearly three hours and now I've found my self on the floor because I'm exhausted and annoyed with a section of the song.

We have until Saturday to get this right and we are now a day behind because of this. Not good.

In addition to this I have a ton of make up work and a test on Friday. AND I almost missed yesterday's post. 

This week and this dance are going to kill me 

Choreography is hard

I GOT CAUGHT UP IN CHOREOGRAPHY AND MISSED A DAY I KNEW IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN I AM SUCH A FAILURE OH MY GOODNESS NOOOOOOOOO

In other news the dance is coming along nicely except we're hot and everything hurts and life is hard. 

Climbing All Around

Today was full of sisterhood bonding activities and exploring canyons in Georgia! Even though my team didn't win  the sorority Olympics today was still tons and tons of fun! There was plenty of physical exertion and laughter as well as singing. Have I mentioned the copious amounts of pictures? No? 

Well, pictures are a fairly common thing in my sorority. Every retreat we take group pictures and class pictures and individual pictures. Of course there are the pictures that are snapped during events and the candids as well as all of the pictures every individual sister or Nu took of each other/ the canyon. 

Overall it was a successful, final sisterhood retreat and I am glad to have had the opportunity to visit Alabama and Georgia. Now to get back to school and choreography and preparing for real life.

Ready for Retreat

After a really rough week of being super sick and then working on our dance choreography for our talent act, I am really excited to be in Alabama for sisterhood retreat with my sorority :)

Tonight is more about getting settled in and then doing sister bonding activities. So, seven other girls and myself are currently sitting around, playing games, singing and watching Disney movies. This is how we roll.

Losing a Student

Today I learned a valuable lesson for both my present self and my future self. Half of  the students at my internship are new and the other half have been in the program for at least a month. There are now a total of 8 middle schoolers which are the group of kids that I work with most often. I'm pretty good buddies with what used to be 4 of the 8. Until today. 

My favorite hate to love/love to hate student ran away from his home for five days, lost his placement at my internship and now he has to go to Pensacola to be apart of a real juvenile detention center. Mikael (not his real name) is not the first student to be labeled on the run nor will he be the last. He was however, a really good kid. I don't know what he did to end up involved with the law but he's  not that troubled of a kid. Mikael hadn't missed a single day of school and he was rocking a 4.0 GPA before he ran. He had completed all of his sanctions and was about to be taken off of probation. He was almost done! 

"Losing" Mikael really upsets me and I've only known him for a month. He was one of the main reasons I was so excite to go every Tuesday and Thursday. I felt that I could possibly make a difference in his life. I still want to. I'm legitimately worried about this 15 year old kid.

The lesson I learned was that I can't let myself get attached so easily. I'm not in control of anyone else's actions so I cannot count on anyone else to keep doing a behavior or to not to a behavior. The same thing applies later on.  I won't be able to count on a client to listen to my opinion or not to relapse or to keep up with a program. As much as I want to, it's not an option.

This Is Happening

 "Gonna wish I had a storm warning! I'm gonna wish I had a sign" -Storm Warning Hunter Hayes

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHKSRJFDIEHDIJRNLFI !!!!! I JUST GOT MY COFFEE HOUSE EXPERIENCE PACKAGE EARLY WHICH MEANS THAT I AM ALL SET TO MEET HUNTER HAYES ON MAY 31ST OH MY GOOSSSHHHHHH!!!!!

On another note, Brandi and I decide today to start choreographing our dance for a talent show we are participating in on campus!!! If you recognize the picture above then you can assume that the song is a Britney Spears song that Glee covers. We are really excited to present "Me Against the Music" next Saturday and hopefully raise a ton of money for charity!

In even further news, I was diagnosed with acute bronchitis and "allergies" so they gave me some nasal spray and told me to rest. Instead I danced and screamed. Go me. 

Harder to Breathe

"Is there anyone out there cause its getting harder and harder to breathe" -Maroon 5

Unfortunately, I don't mean harder to breathe in a good way. I mean it in the most literal "I cannot breathe through my mouth or my nose because my lungs are coated in mucus and my sinuses are sealed shut" sense imaginable. I was hoping that by taking it somewhat easy yesterday I would be able to wake up this morning and go to my internship feeling only slightly under the weather. I was very VERY wrong. 

I opened my eyes this morning and immediately wanted to just give up on real life, move to either Narnia or Arendelle, and just kind of exist there for the rest of eternity. I ended up sleeping until 3 pm not going anywhere all day. Normally I would be completely okay with this. Today was not one of those days. I missed my internship and because I slept until 3 pm one of my ocular migraines kicked in and I wasn't able to read without seeing double until about an hour ago. In essence, today was the most unproductive day I have had all year. 

Already Over It

Just to throw this out there, I have been quoting this since way before Miley started to back in 2012. Today was supposed to be a good day full of work and cleaning and being ready for physical therapy tomorrow. After such an exciting and easy going weekend I did NOT expect to wake up today being so sick. But I did. I woke up feeling awful. Typical head cold symptoms plus some chills and hurting everywhere. Because of this the only thing that I made it to today was my job and I thought about not even going to that. 

I really don't like missing class and tests and chapter and my day to day life. Unfortunately for me, whenever I get sick it isn't just "oh I'm sick better take some medicine and move on with my day." Absolutely not. My version of sick has always been worse than my friends'. For example, even if I wanted to go to class the morning I wouldn't have been able to due to the pressure in my head being so severe it took two doses of day quill for it to stop for an hour. One hour.  My tolerance for medication is much higher than your average person's. it takes 3 ibuprofen just to make my head stop hurting on a normal day. That's 1500mg. 

But sickness is temporary. It is also a motivator to actually enjoy my days as a healthy human and not waste them so often.

Growing the Family

Now before any one thinks that I'm getting married or having a child let me tell you that's not the case. When I say family I am referring to the family that I've made here in my home away from home. The family that my big and grand big helped to grow has really expanded this semester with two of my littles taking littles!! It's so exciting!! I'm so incredibly thrilled to welcome them to the family and to get to know them :)

Besides all of the sorority excitement that happened today I was also able to play with a chinchilla and mess around with fake eyelashes. What was I supposed to do? Clean my room, study for my personality test, read, watch a movie for another one of my classes and work on my final project for my internship. 

I've made questionable life choices. I'm okay with this.

Going Out Tonight

"Sisters are your friends" 

And friends don't let friends celebrate their birthdays alone! So a bunch of my sisters and I are having a waltz for one of the girls and its actually about to get started! 

We started it off by doing the wobble and now we're headed to the Strip to do god knows what. Considering this is the end of a day another sister and I spent doing absolutely nothing. And it was wonderful!!!

Arts and Crafts

Even though its Valentine's Day and most girls are out with friends or significant others doing valentine-y things...  I'm doing arts and crafts with my sisters!

And that's about all I've got. I went to physical therapy and worked on my ankle stability and strength. Then I came home and did absolutely nothing. Winning.

Buses and Sisters

"Regret isn't forever"- Anonymous 

Have you ever done something completely and utterly regrettable? This happened to me today. I tried to be smart and logical and decided to just get on the bus at the stop going the opposite direction so I could just sit in the bus instead of standing outside. This was the worst thing imaginable. I was 2 hours late  to my internship because of this. And I haven't felt this bad about anything in my life. I felt so stupid and embarrassed by this even though I was the only one who knew about my mistake as I sat on the bus. 

On the upside, I get to go see Catching Fire (FOR FRREEEEE) with my sisters :) 

Success Versus Failure

So i think that this quote is pretty relevant to this post. In essence, the quote means that neither success nor failure is final. They both can change and it all depends on what we do next. The choices and decisions we make we make will result in either continued success of continued failure. 

After yesterday being full of disappointments I decided that I wanted today to be successful. I wanted to got to class, eat better, and start my physical therapy outside session exercises today. And I s successful until around 530.

I went to my 9 am class and continued to be productive through out my five hour work day. I started to set up some community service projects and looked into internships for the summer which is detrimental to my educational future. I ate a better lunch too!  After work I went and spent an hour doing all of my mandatory exercises for my ankle. These exercises are not fun, at all. They are actually really difficult due to my background as a drummer and a horseback rider but I'll make a post about the exercises in particular after my next physical therapy session. 

All of that was the successful part of my day. Then I came home and gave in to temptation to buy food that was bad for me. Lots of it. My saving grace of the day was *finally* cleaning off and remaking my bed. 

Full of Dissappontments

"I didn't fail 2000 times, I just learned 2000 ways how not to make a lightbulb" -Thomas Edison 

I'm not 10,000 percent sure that Edison actually said this but I feel like it might be applicable to today's events. 

I'm really bad at holding myself accountable to myself. I hate disappointing other people but if it comes to disappointing myself I don't have a care in the world. I will probably always be okay with disappointing myself. This disappoints me. Do you see my problem? 

I'm full of disappointments. I'm mildly disappointed in how I've spent my three years of college. I'm highly disappointed in my inability to wake up in the mornings, my lack of an ability to actually implement self control, or how bad I am staying calm when I lose things. 

What brought about these thoughts of disappointments was the thought of how disappointed I would be if I missed a day on the blog and how disappointed I was when we didn't do an intake interview at my internship. 

I'm not really sure what the grand point of this post is or where I wanted to go with it. I do know that this is one of m more 'whiny' posts but it isn't intended to be. I'm sure there are many things that everyone is disappointed by or in or about. 

Super Long Day

So this is going to be really short because if it isn't then I'm ping I have missed a day and I won't let that happen.

In summary, today was very log and very stressful. I took out a loan, bought lots of food, almost got food poisoning from Starbucks and then had to deal with a bunch of drama. On the upside, I was able to secure my first letter of recommendation today and I get to participate in an intake interview at my internship tomorrow!!

Could've. Should've. Would've

This weekend was supposed to be about productivity. I was going to clean my house, go to the store, study for my tests, read ahead, and then reward myself by leveling up in my Kingdom Hearts game. Well... None of that happened.

     SIDENOTE: LOOK AT THIS MARVELOUS PICTURE OF ALL THE KEY BLADES THEY ARE SO PERFECT I CAN'T STAND IT. 

Instead I bonded with my sisters, kind of studied for my test, ate a bunch of junk food, watched movies, TV- comaed over The Walking Dead/TeenWolf/American Horror Story/The Tribe and bought 26 dollars worth of Disney soundtracks. I'm such a success. 

The sisterhood bonding that happened today was lots of fun though. We met up with our beta chapter at this really pretty state park and just got to know each other a little better. My little, a few others, and I went for a really long hike where we reenacted the "you shall not pass" scene from Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings with gigantic walking sticks. Laughter ensued and it was generally tons of fun. The day ended with the discussion of Disney drag queens and a Disney jam session on the way home.

Now to return to my studying dungeon... I'll just leave this here.

Sorority Girl Life

I Know a Girl...
"If know a girl...
Who is amazing.
She runs a few miles a day, aces her classes,
organizes social events, and participates in all sorts of campus organizations.
At night she may go out and have fun, but she always manages to get everything done.

I know a girl...
Who will let you cry on her shoulder and will be there for you in times of need.
She has lots of friends and makes sure she leaves enough time to hang with them all.
She will give good advice and listen to your every word and thought with an unbiased ear.
She will love you for who you are and accept you no matter what.

I know a girl...
Who will smile even though she didn't have the greatest day.
She always brings her positive attitude and it's contagious.
Those who are around her want to smile too!

I know a girl...
Who will bring out the best in everyone she meets.
She has friends in many different houses on this campus as well as friends who are not Greek, because she does not care what house you're in.
Who parties it up at fraternity parties, but goes many other places at night.

You might know this girl too...
Whether you're in her house or not, everyone knows one of these girls.
She is my sister.
She might be your sister, or she might be someone else's.
Those that know this girl know what sororities are all about because she represents them in almost everything she does."

I know that I have mentioned my sorority multiple times in my posts but I don't think I've ever posted about my sorority. Obviously I'm in one and we are fairly small. Our smallness however is probably one of our best assists. Not having five bajillion girls to get to know is a real benefit when it comes to my sorority. We are tight knit and have really close friendships throughout our group.
Especially in my family which I am so ridiculously proud of! I love my big and all of my (many) littles and my wonderful cousin Catherine (who has foreveryoneshappiness.blogspot.com) and of course the rest of them as well! Well last night and this morning were kind of a big day for both the established sisters and the new girls. Big/Little lists were sent in and pairs were established. Soon all of the new girls will know who her big is and  what family she's in! 
It's so exciting!!! So for today's post I want to share the poem above and the picture I made as well as some advice about bigs, littles, and sisters in general. Your big is supposed to be your guiding force in the sorority. Someone who you can trust with your problems and just be yourself around without worries. Your little is someone you must be prepared to mentor and have fun with! She is your friend and someone you should always be there for. You sisters are you backbone, you support system. These are the girls that are going to be in many of you college memories and who a few of will be involved with the rest of your life. 
While this comes early in the semester , I feel that now is as good of a time as every o acknowledge that this was y last rush, my last hayride, and will be my last semester as a sister. So to my sisters, thank you for two wonderful years of laughter, support, and many fun times. I thank my big for being absolutely perfect and understanding and the salt to my pepper. I love you and I can't wait to see you again soon!! To ALL of my extraordinarily PERFECT littles, it's been my pleasure and an absolute honor to have been able to help each of you find your place in our little home away from home as well as having been a part of your college experience in anyway. And to all of the Nu's, I hope you have just as awesome of an experience as I have with these girls. I can't wait to visit you all later on! 


SIDENOTE: yesterday's post was actually day 38... Today is day 39!

In the Clear

After six weeks of being a not so active human being I was able to go to physical therapy today and start being active! I was given a bunch of stretches and specific exercises to strengthen my knee, ankle, and foot. Now that I can be more active, I can start going back to exercising and being more on top of my weight. 

On another note tonight is hay ride with my sorority!!!

A Bus Stop

"Hello. My name's Forrest, Forrest Gump. You want a chocolate?" - Forrest Gump 1994

This morning I missed my bus. Again. The temperature also dropped and I woke up late. However, missing my bus is what made me late to my internship. In order to get to my internship I have to take a campus bus and then a city bus followed by walking about a quarter mile. If the city bus was dependable then I would be able to do is no problem. This obviously isn't the case. 

Upon missing my bus and being faced with sitting at the bus stop for 40 minutes, I went in to the convenience store and bought these delicious little (read massive) cinnamon toast crunch treat bars for me and the kids. They are fantastic and you all must try them. Anyway, after I walked out of the store and back to the bus stop, the young man who was already sitting there offered to move his stuff so I could sit down. This is very rare in today's world so I was really grateful that he was willing to do so. Once I sat down I asked him if he was waiting on the E bus. He removed his head phones and that is how Ernest and I began our 40 minute conversation about life. Ernest is going to community college and his is an aspiring music producer. Now this is not meant to sound mean or judgemental but from the 40 minutes I got to sit with him and discuss everything I was able to tell that he has something off about him. He had some trouble speaking and keep eye contact. I would say that he is on the Autism spectrum however that is just what it comes off as. ***I am not yet a licensed professional so I have no merit in saying any of this*** I am however the aunt of a spectacular ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) nephew who is quite frankly the most precious child in the world. The point is I have an idea of the signs.

My other point is he was just so positive, nice, determined and passionate about everything we talked about. It was so refreshing to come across that type of person in a low income neighborhood on the cusp of the "bad" part of town. People surprise me all the time but today Ernest really made my day even if he did weird me out at first. He was genuinely curious about my major and what I wanted to do after college. He was so excited to tell me about his music and all of his aspirations even though I could tell it was an effort for him to talk to me about it. I feel like got off (of the bus we eventually got on) a better person for having talked to him and that makes me happy.

Ernest was nice enough to let me listen to some of the music he has already produced and recorded and while I don't too much about the industry I will say if he keeps at this I will definitely be able to look back at this post and say "I met him at a bus stop once."

Short and Sweet

This is totally irrelevant to anything but can we just take a minute and discuss how large Belle's neck looks in this picture? I know that it is just an illusion but when I saw that I had to screen shot it and examine. At first I was a little angry with the animators of the game this is from for making her look so ridiculous. Once I screen shotted it however and I was able to to really look at the picture I noticed it was an illusion.

Also totally irrelevant to anything, I am apparently Nan from American Horror Story: Coven.

Seen Some Things

I was absolutely blown away by the most random things today. One of the kids at my internship asked a fellow mentor for her phone number, all of the kids behaved liked animals during group session, a crazy homeless man on the bus told all of the African American transportees that they needed to find religion and that he was not "raised a fool" because his daddy raised him right, finally one of my students conned said homeless man out of a dollar. All of those events don't even come close to my surprise regarding a new student asked me to buy her a tobacco product when we got to the bus station. Not only is she a minor but she is under my supervision two days a week. To top that off she's probably on probation! I was so blown away by this singular event and the anger she directed towards me for telling her no that I got on the wrong bus. 

The last half of the day was just so surprising that I almost forgot I was three hours late to my internship. I have learned this week that if I go to sleep after 1:30 am I do NOT wake up the next morning when I am supposed to which makes me really unhappy.  I used to be able to do this all the time but once I moved out on my own I lost that ability. 

Learning Life Lessons

A friend of mine shared this picture a few weeks ago and I saved the picture in hopes of getting back to it at a later date. Well here I am getting back to this picture and I'm not really sure how I feel or what I think about it. I certain agree with numbers 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, and 10 but the others I'm not so sure about. 

Numbers 3, 4, 6, and 7 just seem as though they can be questioned and or negated pretty easily. For instance, I completely disagree that "there" isn't better than "here." Here is subjective to a person's experience and personality type. You can't tell me that a child who is adopted out of a dilapidated orphanage is going to eventually feel the same way about his or he adopted home as he or she did about the orphanage and then start searching for something better. Personally, when i accomplish getting to the proverbial "there" and making it a "here" I'm very satisfied with my hard work and I don't tend to try to go for anything better simply because to me there isn't a better here. 

Another number that I am vey dissatisfied with is number 4. I don't agree that you are repeatedly taught the same lesson until you complete it or that once you've completed it you move on. Life is about multiple lessons happening all at once, all the time. If life is school then rule number 4 contradicts rule number 2. School doesn't ever stop teaching you OR testing you. You will be taught the same lesson many times throughout life, it isn't a one and done kind of deal. Life will then test you and try you to make sure you still remember the lessons it's previously taught you. 

Stairs to Success

I have no idea who to credit for that quote but I first saw it on the back of one of the students' t-shirts. I saw it and thought "That is kind of fantastic, I need to blog about that." So here we are. No elevator to success. And that's probably a good thing. Working towards success and trying over and over and over again to get what you want can be a very rewarding (and tiring) experience. If we didn't have to put our efforts towards what we wanted everything would be meaningless. That sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a task successfully can't be matched by someone just handing it you. Yes, having a direct path or line to success makes everything much easier but is it really success at that point? Is having something or being able to do something that easy a success or is that just an ability or luck? I'm sure I would get tons of differing opinions on that if I were to ask it in a public place but it's a interesting question to pose. What is success?

My answer to that question is accomplishing something that you want to accomplish to the fullest extent and by the means you wish to accomplish it. If finding the so called elevator to success is what you want to accomplish then by all means go find it. But aren't you taking the stairs to that anyway?

Not All Bad

"When there's a smile in your heart!There's no better time to start! Think of all the joy you'll find when you leave the world behind! And bid your cares goodbye!" You Can Fly - Peter Pan

I had originally planned for today's post to be about believing in yourself as time goes on and sharing the lists of things I believe about my self. However, February apparently didn't appreciate me telling it to behave as a month so it threw me a curve ball today and made me fight with my assignments for 14 hours. And only get three hours of sleep. Thank Tinker Bell that February is only 28 days.

Today started at 330 am when I decided to be productive and work on my video presentation for my internship. I finished around 430 or 5 am and tried to upload it. At noon it still hadn't budged past 49% and I shut down my computer. In the time that I had wasted waiting on that file to load I finished three loads of laundry and managed to take 6 thirty minute naps. The down side to this is that I had to miss the first event with my sorority's pledges/ my university's championship celebration.

I did however get to go out with a friend of mine who bought me lunch and a cupcake and taught me a little bit about making contraptions with parts from Home Depot. You go Glen Coco. After that lovely little reprieve from my evil assignments I was sentenced to 5 more hours of fighting and converting and praying and hoping that this infernal thing would just upload to the correct place. It decided to work about 15 minutes ago.

Now I am rewarding my self by going out with some of my sisters and my beautiful Biggles to dance the night away before I do a whole different assignment and study for the GRE tomorrow. Happy thoughts. Faith, Trust, Pixie Dust. I can fly?