Oh, the Life of a College Student

Well I'll start this one off with an amazing experience I had a couple weeks ago. It's been a great learning experience this semester period. I love it.

Two weeks ago my hall had a specific theme we were doing through this week:

And it was called

IN SEARCH:

-No Makeup

-No Mirrors

For the whole week we fasted from makeup and mirrors in search of other things like wisdom, knowledge, restoration, and hope.

This has been such an interesting challenge for me. Well, makeup is no problem because I don’t wear makeup very often anyway so it doesn’t make me self conscious. However, I never realized how much I think I need mirrors. It’s such a habitual thing. Yet it almost makes me sad to realize HOW MUCH I depend on the reflection of myself throughout the day or even just to begin the day. I never realized how much I did because it is so much a part of our culture to make sure we look good on the outside. Yet the inside beauty is not looked at quite as much as it should be. This is sad because ultimate beauty should come from the inside because as the outer beauty leave as the years go by the inner beauty is capable of staying for our whole lives.

For the last night of the week. Saturday. Our hall dressed up super nice and went out some went to see The Vow…I was not able to attend but it was interesting to hear the reactions from the other girls. I met up with them afterwards however and we went to get Pazooki from BJ's. However, Linsday (our RA) took us on a small detour where we ended up parking and looking across the street and in the park our brother hall was standing in a group dressed up super nice and they gave us flowers and sang for us to congratulate us on our accomplishment of that week and the courage for taking that step. It was such a lovely experience. 

Best Buddies! -- Oh my goodness. Today was the first day for me to attend best buddies. Well, basically I go to a classroom at a school and there is classrooms for intellectually challenged kids and I have a buddy in the classroom and I spend time with him there every week. It was such a blessing to be there today. It was my first day and i enjoyed it very much. I can't wait to get to know the kids better. They are the sweetest thing. I hope that I am challenged by them in a positive way and can learn as much as i can from them and i also hope that I can give them as much as i can. :)

Miscellaneous:

Moving along, I had a very special letter this week that excited me very much. I received a letter from my lovely dear friend Sarah Ritchie, who is a close friend from YWAM. She and my friend Joachim are getting married this September. It is the most exciting news and I am so happy for them. Congratulations to you, Sarah & Joachim. I love you both very much! :)

Debate: 

The economist has become a regular daily source of knowledge in my journey of debate. The necessity of knowledge has actually become a personal enjoyment. Knowing what is going on in the world is actually as I have now finally figured out, not such a bad thing. :D

I had a tournament on Saturday with my partner Arlene. It was our first tournament in Open division. I was scared. I am not even going to lie. I was more than a little bit worried about the teams we would be coming up against. And the day started on the road at 6:45am. That in itself was a terrible experience. But I was excited for the challenge. I already knew I was going to learn so much. I do every time. However, it was still a pretty dismal tournament for us. I don't think we won any rounds. It was very sad. But it is okay. I learned more so that counts for something. :) 

I was going to write last weekend but it was the most insane weekend ever. Every weekend feels like a crazy weekend. Life never stops enough to give me time to even think about writing a blog. However, debate will be over with Nationals the week before spring break which is nice. So I will only be giving one weekend a month to Best Buddies for events so thats nice. I am excited to finally have a weekend to just sit back, do homework, and go to the beach. That would be amazing. I miss my tan! :D

Also, I just have to make just a small note about Health. It has been such an amazing experience. Our teacher is amazing. He is all about helping us succeed not only in our health but in life. He is challenging us to think ahead and to plan for life. It is something I TOTALLY need.

Oh my goodness. And Chapel yesterday! EPIC! I felt like the speaker was simply talking just to me. Her name was Rachel...I don't remember her last name but she was my age (20) and she was talking about finances. She was talking about how we should have a written budget even though its old fashioned or whatever. It was funny she said "You tell YOUR money where to go instead of letting it tell you". And she was talking about how we don't say no enough in our society and we need to learn to simply say...NO. She was saying how in the bible it says God loves a cheerful giver. She was so amusing too...totally connected with her audience. And she was saying that people who do not give are like scum on the top of a stagnant pond. So she continued with the encouragement to be a giver, be selfless. The thing she said that hit me the hardest was when she said "If you are selfless and give, you can change the world". But in order to do that you need to save. Be wise with your money. And DO NOT be in debt. And she said the love of money is the root of all evil according to the bible. The heart you have when you have money will determine what happens. Be on a plan. -- I loved it! It was such an incredible chapel.

I realized also, even though I am getting better, I still need to work on TIME MANAGEMENT. It is still very difficult but I have found a new homework habit that i'm hoping will work.

Also, BIG NEWS! I am auditioning for Final Cut - It is an APU american idol type thing. The audition is tonight. My specific audition time is at 10:10pm. I am SO nervous but I am excited and ready to have some fun. :) I am auditioning with "I'm Through" by Ingrid Michaelson, and "Forget You" By Glee with Gwyneth Paltrow. It is going to be fun. I am pretty stoked since I have never really auditioned for music other than in Musicals. And I have not done that since high school. :)

Well, that is all for now. Hope everyone has a great week! :)

Life is Chaotic

Well, yes this blog is definitely late. But that is because I have had my life on a never ending wheel of continuum. I thought I would have more time to do a blog every weekend but it is definitely harder than i thought so I will probably for the rest of my time do a biweekly blog.

I had my very first debate tournament of the semester a couple weekends ago. I had my first debate class and decided to throw myself into the mix by signing up for the debate tournament that coming weekend. Yes, I knew if I attended the tournament I would be drowning. That first Tuesday was the first day I learned how to even simply organize a speech for the Government team. Plus how to run advantages and disadvantages. If you have done debate or speech, you know what I am talking about, if not....it would take too long to explain. ;) Anyway, even without the knowledge and experience I decided...I have to start somewhere. So I asked the Forensics director what it would be like if i attended this tournament.
She said: You'll probably look like a fool, learn a little bit, and maybe win a round.
My response: Awesome, let's do it.

The Experience: Chaotic, terrifying, exciting, different. These are a simple explanation of how it was. ;)

However, I am glad I joined the team because it has been quite an enjoyable experience. I have had two tournaments so far and there are more coming up. My partner and I will also both be attending Nationals. I have no idea what that looks like yet but am excited to find out.

My classes are interesting and WAY harder this semester but I like most of them.

Weight Training is SO difficult. I never realized how pathetic and out of shape I have become. Plus the fact I NEVER every workout in a gym. I am glad I took it though because I think 20 years old is probably a good time to learn what everything is in a gym. Literally I walk into a gym and it's like a whole other planet with aliens on it and I am supposed to connect with them yet have NO idea how. However, this semester I am going to learn. I am slowly. I can do 10 pushups again. That's something I guess. haha. It's nice because the class is not very long so I can do a little bit of yoga afterwards to warm myself down and just have a peaceful ending to a nice workout.

Philosophy is insane and SUPER hard to stay on top of and comprehend everything that is happening while going at a quick pace. Lots of reading but loving the challenge of trying to understand and work through the philosophies. It's surprising when interacting with the other students in the class. To notice and learn all the different thought processes and point of views. I like it alot. It's such an interesting subject.

Sociology is different. I cannot decide if i like the teacher yet. And tests have been super difficult so far because all we do in class is sit in a circle and talk about the readings. So it's hard to take notes and also know what to study for the tests. But the class is really interesting. I feel like there is some tension because there is a very diverse class. But I LOVE learning all the different views from different culture about society, and social systems and structures. It's an interesting class. I like it. I took my first test on Monday so we'll see how I'm doing so far.

Intro to Lit is by far my least favorite class. The teacher is ridiculously boring and we do the same thing every class and he is monotonous in his teaching and his verbal interactions and its driving me insane. I am trying so hard to just enjoy the reading of the stories and poems we have and learn that way because I am learning absolutely nothing from this teacher. Just been trying to tell myself to keep an open heart and mind to learn something new each class. I'm quite sad I haven't had a good english teacher yet at this school. Not this semester or last.


Health probably is my favorite class and not only because it's easy but our teacher is awesome. He is the head football coach here and he is so interesting. Always has our attention and always is encouraging us in life and choices and succeeding in life. I remember the thing that stuck out the most to me is that the first day he said "You all are going to get an A in my class." And i thought wow he must be very easy but then he continued on to say that he WANTS us to succeed in this class and that is why we will do well. He is not going set us up for failure. He is going to lead us in the direction of success. That mentality in a teacher is SO encouraging. It gives me more of a desire to want to do well in his class.


Debate is quite an interesting class. We are reading a great book called Escape from Reason by Francis A. Schaeffer. It is quite a difficult read but quite an invigorating mental challenge. The class is awesome also. We have had two practice rounds in class which was difficult but fun. :) I enjoy Annie's teaching very much and reading the book with Mrs Amy Jung is also very enjoyable. Debate at this school is quite interesting. If you join the team you are joining a family. Our two debate coaches are Annie and Joey and they are such a blessing and so much fun to work with. So if you haven't guessed, they are mama and papa of this little debate family. :)


So far in life on campus my goal is trying to hold myself together and REALLY focus on TIME MANAGEMENT. I'll talk more about that in my next blog though.


This is all for this post. However, I will most likely be posting another one today about this week specifically. :)


Enjoy this rad day!