This semester is a big deal for me.
Not only is it in my first official semester in college where I actually went in knowing what I was doing, but it is extremely important academically. As some of you may know, I am studying Media Arts and Design here at JMU (commonly known as SMAD; the S standing for 'School'). For the first semester, I was required to take SMAD 101, which was the entry level course for the major. The class was designed to be a difficult lecture class that required a lot of studying, preparation, and endurance. It was extremely fast-paced and challenging. A lot of people here call it a "weeding-out" class because the professors make the material and tests harder than normal so that students will have to try harder to exceed. However, if you ask the professors if that's what the class is, they will tell you know. It's more of a student-lingo ;). Those who care enough about getting in the major will endure through the hard tests and spend endless hours studying a week or two beforehand Those who feel like the class isn't worth it will eventually drop it; in turn, leaving the major. I can speak personally and say that the 101 class was very difficult. It was heavily based on the history of media and was very broad-- it didn't have much to do with the nitty-gritty of the major. I bombed the first test, but studied EXTREMELY hard for the next three and improved my score every time. I ended the class with a great grade which is already a good start. However, that's not the end of it. I have been working on the written application since winter break. It is due in about two weeks and is an important part of my admission. Aside from my application, I had another important academic occurrence. For a while, I have been thinking about double-majoring or minoring in communication studies. With SMAD, being able to communicate with an audience is important- in fact, it is unavoidable. Employers would be extremely impressed to see that I have studied communication techniques because being able to project those skills in my career will lead to me being more successful. I went to my academic advisor yesterday and talked about it with him. I expressed to him my want of graduating in 3 years. I came into JMU with 24 credits so graduating early is definitely possible; especially considering my major requires a low amount of credits in the first place. He told me that double-majoring would be more time consuming and would keep me here all four years. I would love to be at JMU for all four years, but financially, three years is a lot more attractive to me. After him telling me that minoring in communication studies would give me a great amount of experience in the field and employers would know that, I decided to go with the minor route. I signed the official major-minor paper thing that colleges do, and it was official. All I have to do is wait for an email, and I will officially have a minor in communication! What I want to ask from you lovely people is prayer that I am accepted into the major if it is what God wants. I know I am a great candidate for the major, and I am sure admissions will see that as well. However, you can never be too sure. I am just asking that you all pray for me in this nerve-wracking time. I know that if God wants me to do this, He will let it happen. Please pray for peace and understanding. Those two things are what will get me through the treacherous 2 month period I have to go before I find out if I got into SMAD or not! Overall, these have been the two big things that have happened to this semester. So far, everything has been going great. It's only the second week back, so classes aren't too challenging yet. I'm just trying to get ahead in everything so when they do get hard, I won't be behind! Oh, and my roommate Darcie and I have been working out. So that's pretty ground-breaking. Hope you all are having a great week! I will leave you with this beautiful verse you can use as a prayer in times of trouble: Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. -Psalm 143:8
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Wow.
Today was so.... what's the word... weird. At the same time, everything that happened was so typical of a normal day for me. This is how it went- I was at Lauren's house when I got a call at 11am (I was still asleep when my phone went off) from my mom. She asked me to run a few errands for her since she had a meeting in the middle of the day. She asked me to drop some clothes off at the dry cleaners and pick my brother up from school at 2pm. Me being a lovely daughter (and me really having no say in it), I told my mom of course I would do those things. I went to the dry cleaners and walked in with a yellow basket filled with fancy, dirty clothes. My mom instructed me to just dump all of the clothes on the counter and they would do the rest. A little nervous from my lack of experience with the dry cleaners, I did exactly what she said. I dumped the clothes out into a huge mound on the counter in front of the old man in charge of the joint. He started separating the clothes into shirts and pants. I took a breath and just stepped back until he said something to me about when the clothes would be ready or what my name was or whatever dry cleaner men do. Suddenly, something caught my eye. I looked over at the mound of clothes being separated and saw a pair of underwear. Not just any underwear, but my dad's used underwear. I quickly darted to the counter and stuck my hand in the mound. The man looked slightly confused and I realized that maybe I should tell him what I was doing. "Uh, these aren't supposed to be in there.. I think... I mean it's my dad's dirty underwear." The man looked up at me with a confused glare and licked his lips nervously. He kind of brushed it off, but me being nervous and awkward, I kept talking. "I don't think my dad wants these dry cleaned. In fact I have no clue why they're in here," I said throwing the underwear back in the basket. "It's not like they're fancy underwear.. or anything..." Then I look up to see him holding one of my dad's work-shirts. The shirt is worn and has at least one hundred individual splatters of paint on it. He hands it over to me and says, "I suppose this isn't supposed to be in here either." "Yeah, there's no going back for that shirt..." Eventually I just kinda run out of the store and slump into the car seat with intentions to never show my face in that place again. (Sorry mom). Just about 20 minutes later, I find myself in the school parking lot. Riley wasn't supposed to come out of the school for another 20 minutes, so I decided to listen to my music in the car while I waited. I knew I was using up the car battery, but I didn't realize how much. Right as Riley walks out of the school, the car shuts off. I figured it did that because it wanted to conserve the car battery. Little did I know, that was the last breath of the car. As Riley sat in the passenger seat, telling me how happy he was to get out of school early, I turn the ignition of the car. The car makes a wheezing noise, almost like a raspy cough from someone who has been smoking for 40 years. I turn the key over and over again to only discover that the car is dead. I drained all of the battery listening to One Direction's new album. Was it worth it? Maybe not, but it happened. Not surprisingly, that wasn't the first time that had happened to me. I knew that I had to find a car with jumper cables so we could get the show on the road. That was a lot harder than I thought. Every car I saw was being driven by a student who was eager to get the heck off of the school's campus. The first thing I thought of was to call my knight in shining armor- Darren. Being the lovely boyfriend he is, he dropped what he was doing and met me at the school. We got some really sketchy looking jumper cables that were apparently used by my grandfather his whole life from the back of the car. Darren set everything up and started his car. The knobs on his end started smoking and we panicked. He shut his car off and tried again. After the second time, we realized that the cables were no good and probably extremely dangerous, so we took them off and tossed them aside. It was time to get help from the schools administration. I grabbed my brother and we went scouting for a new savior. Just someone with some reliable jumper cables would do. One of the school officers drove up to the school and I caught him just in time. When I asked him if he had any, he said he didn't, but let me into the school and helped me find someone who did. After a good 15 minutes of everyone in the front office contacting other staff, no one had any cables. That really surprised me because I live in GREENE COUNTY. I mean, any good ol' greene citizen should have a pair of those things in the back of their toyota. It just seemed like thing. Obviously not. I went back outside to meet up with Darren and tell him the bad news, but I saw darren's car was gone. I panicked a little, wondering why he would leave me here stranded at the place I finally left for good. Then i realized that Darren would never do that to me; he probably was on a mission to help me out for good. I got my phone, called him, and that's exactly what the sucker was doing. Darren went to go get some new jumper cables. He was able to buy some at a gas station across the street. He came back in a matter of seconds with a brand new pair that looked way more reliable than the vintage ones we used previously. We pulled them out of the package and Darren hooked those suckers up to the car. Once again, something started smoking, and the plastic around the cable started melting away right before our eyes. Darren unplugged everything and looked frustrated. We didn't know WHAT the problem was. He went out and got new ones and everything, and my car still wasn't starting. But then, my genius of a brother noticed something- Darren accidentally switched the positive and negative ends. After praising my brother for realizing the mistake, Darren fixed it and started his car up. But get this guys. Darren's car ran out of battery too. We all just stood there dumbfounded. Darren looked angry, Riley looked irritated, and I just didn't know what the heck was going on. After calming the boys down, I decided that it was time to ask the guy parked behind me for help. I noticed him earlier, but figured it wasn't worth talking to him since we had 'everything figured out'. I started walking towards his truck, and he shook his head and laughed. I didn't even have to say anything and he knew what he needed to do. The poor guy was probably getting a kick out of us trying to do this on our own for the last 45 minutes. Long story short, the friendly man helped both me and Darren's dead cars out. He brought them to life with his very own, non-melted jumper chords. We thanked him and went about our day. Ladies and gentlemen, you may be thinking I have the worst luck in the world. However, this is just my life. It's a series of slip-ups and mistakes and awkward moments. I love it though. I wouldn't change a thing. Wanna know why? Because I can tell people all about my bad luck and to see them laugh about it makes me happy. These things make for good stories. Oh, and also, I had a GREAT rest of the day after that. So great, that I completely forgot about the bad luck I had earlier. I don't know why I am saying "bad luck" because I don't even believe in that. But whatever, you get the point. Regardless of what happens to you, it's always possible to make your day a great day. And thats what I did. Oh, and always tell people about the dumb parts of your day. It makes it easier to recover from the anger and awkward feelings and usually ends up being way funnier when you play it in your head. As much as I hate to say this, my winter break is coming to an end.
For me, break started on December 12th, 2014. I don't have class until January 12th, 2015. That meant I had one full month to do whatever I wanted. No homework, no projects, and no college reading had to be done. Just pure freedom. The beginning was pretty exciting. I had all of these things planned, with Christmas approaching and all. I made plans to see friends I haven't seen in awhile, like my two best friends Issi and Lauren. We would go into town and shop, make gingerbread houses, and paint canvases for friends and family. With my mom and Darren, we went to Newport News to pick Kelsey up from CNU. We headed to Colonial Williamsburg and gawked at the beautiful houses and walked around the historic town. Tons of cute pictures were taken. For Christmas Eve, I was able to spend time with my mom's family in Richmond. We spent that rainy evening eating in a quiet back room at Olive Garden just catching up and enjoying our time together. Christmas was awesome as always. I mean who doesn't like sitting in their jammies on the ground surrounded by things they have wanted all year? There is one plan that fell through for me. At JMU the last few weeks of the semester, my friends all agreed upon us spending New Years together. Surprisingly, a lot of my friends live in VA Beach. They said that would be the ideal spot to meet and spend the new year and all of us agreed. A few people would travel from Williamsburg, NOVA, Roanoke, and my part of town. I was super pumped for it; Darren and I would drive there together and have an awesome time with everyone in a place that isn't college. When I told my parents about it, they were fine with it. However, after some thought, they figured it wouldn't be safe to drive two hours on one of the most alcohol-based days of the year. The risks of running into unsafe drivers were high, and the odds were not in our favor. I was super bummed at first. I was excited for both Darren and I to be with everyone and actually have plans for New years that weren't just watch the ball drop at home with my family. As New year approached and I saw more and more pictures of my friends together being posted on social media, I got slightly jealous. I wished I could be there with them and Darren, and I felt like I was missing out on something that they would talk about when we got back. However, I was reminded shortly after that I was fortunate. I have a great family to spend the New year with, and an amazing and loving guy who wants me to be safe with him. I started to realize that wishing I was somewhere else was silly. I am thankful for the people in my life, no matter where they are or where I am. That meant my family and Darren too. Looking back, I wouldn't have spent New Years any other way. I was safe at home surrounded by TONS of yummy food and my hilarious, weird, and awesome family. Oh, and I got to kiss Darren for the third time on New Years. So for that, I am extremely thankful. My days after New Years have been action-packed. Darren's family invited me to go to Massanutten with them during the weekend after Christmas. We had an awesome cabin rented and spent our time there at the waterpark going down the lazy river and on the slopes tubing and snowboarding. It was a great way to spend time with them, and I always enjoy every minute with his family. Darren and I have spend the last few days together in our PJ's watching 5+ episodes of the Office in one sitting. We finally finished the show and cried out eyes out wishing it never had to end. (By the way, if you have never watched the Office before, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! Best show ever.) Right now, I am sitting on the couch looking at my mom who is wearing a scarf I knitted her. I haven't knitted since I was in 6th grade, but I saw a tutorial about this thing called "arm-knitting" so i decided to try it out. I was successful after the SECOND attempt. This break has been just what I needed. College is high-paced and stressful. At the same time, it is an amazing opportunity filled with great people and great food. However, spending the last month with my family and friends from home has been just what I needed to wind down. Now that I got my time of relaxation in, I am finally ready to hit the road running to finish my last semester of my first year. |
Faith.Wanna know about what is going on in my life right now? Well you're in the right place. Archives
November 2015
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