Finishing My Freshman Year

"The difference between school and life? School teaches you a lesson then gives you a test. Life gives you a test that teaches you a lesson." -Tom Bodett

As my freshman year of college comes to an end, I can't help but think about all the great friends I've made and all the amazing (and not so amazing) experiences I've had. There are many people I'm going to miss seeing every day this summer, and some, well not so much. But there are a few people that I am excited to see this summer that I didn't get to see every day, some of them I haven't even seen since graduation. I can't wait to see what this summer had in store for me, hopefully more fun times with good friends than I had last summer.

So far, I have many plans for this summer. I am taking a summer calculus class (boring, I know), working at American Eagle, going to Summerfest in Milwaulkee with one of my good friends, going on vacation with my parents to see my family down in Kentucky, and I plan on having and going to as many bonfires as I can. Busy, right? Well that's not even all of it.

This summer I plan on starting my transfer applications to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus. I have decided that transferring might be the best move for me, but that doesn't mean that I won't be giving UMD another chance. I will be living in Duluth next year with 5 other girls in a house, taking 19 credits next fall semester (I plan on having no life), and still managing to go to the U of M some weekends to visit my friends.

Duluth is a great city, and UMD is a great school, but I'm just not sure that it is the school for me anymore. At first when I came to UMD I figured I would be here for a semester, or a year tops, before I transferred to the U of M (I was wait listed and very pissed about it). Later on in the semester, I eventually found good friends and settled into a groove that was comfortable, so transferring kind of fell to the back of my mind. This semester I moved into a new room that I have all to myself, and I stopped going to parties and that's when the thought of transferring popped back into my head and since then I haven't been able to get rid of it.

Finishing up my freshman year of college has got me worried about a lot of things, but mainly just wanting to transfer to the U of M. I am not sure how that will go for me, but I feel like it is the best thing for me. Duluth just doesn't feel right anymore

20 Experiences in College

"College is hard, challenging, and extremely stressful. But it is also fun, exciting, and wonderful."

I came across this article that has 20 experiences that you should have during your college years. And I liked them so much that I thought I should share them with you.

1. I hope you stay in touch with your high school friends, but you’re not afraid to make new ones the moment you arrive on campus. Everyone’s in the same boat as you; be the most outgoing one in the boat.

2. I hope you stay up way too late talking to people you just met as if you’ve known them since kindergarten.

3. I hope you appreciate how amazing it is to live RIGHT NEXT TO every single one of your new friends.

4. I hope you choose classes that make you feel like you’re not wasting your time and that challenge you to think, speak, and act like you’ve never imagined you could.

5. I hope, by sophomore year, you start to understand the in-jokes about your college and you finally feel confident enough to actually crack some of your own.

6. I hope you meet professors and advisors who will help you realize why you are in college, take that purpose, and foster it until you are the best whatever-it-is-you’re-trying-to-become you can be.

7. I hope you kiss boys and girls you don’t know because you really wanted to and, in those moments, I hope it was so much fun, it made your head hurt.

8. I hope you kiss boys and girls you do know because you really needed to and, in those moments, I hope it was so much fun, it made your heart burst.

9. I hope you miss your parents enough to honestly appreciate everything they’ve done to get you this far, but not enough that you go home every weekend. (You’ll miss out on stuff. I promise.)

10. I hope your beliefs are challenged so that you can come to understand who you are and, sometimes more importantly, who you are not.

11. I hope you have to stay up til 4AM to finish a midterm you forgot about and have the courage to wear pajamas to class the next day because, dammit, you were up all night!

12. I hope, some nights, you feel so creative that you might explode and the only way to combat that is to call your best friends over and talk about the movie/song/dance/painting/novel you can’t wait to start. I hope they listen and encourage you, even if they know you’re all talk.

13. I hope you watch 8 hours of Netflix in your bed, alone, at least once a semester and I hope you learn to love that you can be alone for 8 hours without it meaning you’re weird.

14. I hope you catch yourself referring to school as “home,” and I hope that you don’t correct yourself.

15. I hope you bring a friend home at least once, so that your pre-college life and your during-college life combine, and you see that that’s totally okay; you’re no less “you.”

16. I hope you have at least one good story you can tell your kids, one you can tell your parents, and one you can tell at a dinner party.

17. I hope some days you wake up having no idea what you did last night and some nights you go to sleep having no idea what you’ll do the next day, and I hope you’ll have the peace of mind and self-confidence to accept both.

18. I hope, when you’re a senior, you still remember inside jokes from freshman year and, even if you’re not as close as you used to be, you appreciate those first friends you bonded with when you moved in.

19. I hope you never, ever, ever forget how lucky you are to be in a place specifically designed to teach you how to become a more fully-formed social, intellectual, and emotional person.

20. I hope when you do graduate, it’s as hard for you as it is for me, because that means you did it right. You lived, loved, hurt, laughed, cried, karaoked, failed, aced, wined, dined, danced, napped, wrote, Instagrammed, and made it through the best four years of your life (so far).

I love this list, because so far I have already experienced many of them. It's truly a list that  needs to be gone through and thought about carefully, because college is the only time that you can act stupidly and get away with it so don't waste that time. (My favorite is #16).

Thinking about the future...

"Graduation is only a concept. In real life every day you graduate. Graduation is a process that goes on until the last day of your life. If you can grasp that, you'll make a difference" -Arie Pencovici

I am a freshman in college, surrounded by people who are going to school in order to secure themselves a future career. Well I'm sorry to say this (mainly to my mom and dad), but I have absolutely no idea what I want my future career to be. I mean, I know I want to do something in business and economics because those are subjects that truly interest me, but I can hardly figure out what I want my major (or majors) to be.

Here was my idea of my future during my first semester at college:
1)
2)
3)

Now do you understand what I'm saying? I have absolutely no idea what I want my future to be or where I want to be. Earlier this year I was having a crisis, small and insignificant, but a crisis nonetheless. I'm in the business school and I was having a rough time with the math class I was in and because of those struggles I thought that I wasn't cut out for business. So I thought "Maybe I should go into Exercise Science". Well as soon as I told my mom that she quickly reminded me how much I disliked science classes. I decided to give my business classes another chance second semester. I am currently taking a macroeconomics class and I can happily say I know one very possibly direction I would like my education to go towards. It is a very interesting class for me and I enjoy it. So as I started looking up the requirements for majoring in economics, I came across the requirements for minoring in marketing (its only 12 credits- totally doable).

Here is my current idea of my future:
1) Economics major (possibly with finance since I'm interested in stocks and bonds) with a possibly minor in marketing.
2)
3)

I have time to figure this stuff out but it's nice knowing that I have a little more direction now than I did five months ago. College really is a place where you find who you are, and I couldn't be more thankful for that.

Every good thing takes time, so figuring out what I'm going to be doing with the rest of my life will take about 3 more years (5 if I want to go to grad school). But I'm okay with that, because I'm supposed to take these classes in order to know what's right for me. So don't give up too easily, because you never know what's around the corner. It could be something truly life changing.

Last Night's Blood Moon

So as you all know, hopefully, last night there was a lunar eclipse accompanied by a blood moon. Apparently this was a very rare occurrence because a lunar eclipse like last night's hasn't happened in about 500 years. I stayed up late to watch it, as did many of my friends. I can truly say that it was remarkable and indescribable. Seeing the lunar eclipse with the blood moon was an amazing sight!

How amazing is this?!

According to cnn.com, North America will be able to see this blood moon a total of 4 times and each time will occur within about 6 month intervals. The first of the four was last night, April 15th and the next three will be October 8th 2014, April 4th 2015, and September 28th 2015.

Fun fact: Each blood moon will be happening during a Jewish holiday. The ones in April being during Passover and the other two during the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles.

It's quite an amazing thing and as I sat there staring out my window for about an hour, I couldn't help but think how astounding our universe is.

The McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas tracked the eclipse last night. The video is about 45 seconds and it shows the lunar eclipse from the beginning to the end.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152242152214123

Take some time to look up events like these because it is worth it, trust me. I love phenomena like this, I mean I even took an astronomy class back in middle school and made my own (cheap) telescope because I love it that much.

xoxo, Alex

Traveling Abroad

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - St. Augustine

Traveling is a great thing to do (if you can afford it) and it is something that I believe everyone should get to experience. Whether it just be a road trip with good friends, or backpacking across Europe, traveling is a right of passage. To discover who you are, you must first have experiences that help you grow.

I was lucky enough to get to go to London my senior year of high school for a school trip. Although it was only for a few, rainy days, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Because of my brief trip across the pond, I have discovered something about myself that I would not have otherwise: I love visiting somewhere so new to me that I can hardly wrap my head around it.

London Bridge (only weeks after they took down the Olympic Rings!)

My experiences in this wonderful city had my head spinning with excitement, and had my head full of ideas of travel to come in my future!

I even got to visit Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter!

I had such a great time with my friends I knew that someday I would have to come back. Hopefully if my parents are feeling generous enough, I might get to study abroad for a semester there.

Because of my amazing experience in London, I've already made plans to travel to other countries (not very solid plans, but plans nonetheless). I hope someday to visit France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Australia, Egypt, South Africa and many more places! I wish I could find a career where I could just travel from country to country (it would be a dream come true) however, I would be content having a job where I could take two weeks out of the year to visit a country of my own choosing.

However there are a few things I would advise you about before traveling to different countries:

• Google the type of outlets they have in that country and get an adapter!! I can't stress this enough. When I went to London, I had to share my adapter with the girls I was sharing a room with because they hadn't thought to bring one.
• If you have a safe in your hotel or hostel room, make use of it! Put everything of importance with you in there such as your passport and your credit cards (Only bring as much money as you know you will need/use for the day). If you get pick pocketed, you will not want them taking your credit card.
• And finally, make sure you have your camera fully charged or better yet, have a charged, spare battery for your camera (I did this when I was in London). You will want to capture every moment and why wouldn't you? You are in a new place and you want to remember all of it when you go home.

Be adventurous, plan a trip for yourself, and be sure to have plenty of fun. If traveling to a different country for just a few days can change my life, imagine what a week in a different country could do for you. Be brave and go somewhere. Live your life before it's too late.

xoxo, Alex

That Perfect Song

Have you ever just had one of those days where you search and search through all of your songs to just find that one that explains how you're feeling in that moment? Thats me, everyday. I don't think I have ever had two days where I listen to the exact same song over again, or the same artist for that matter (unless it's Paramore, but that's because they're awesome).

Hayley Williams from Paramore 

Whenever I'm in a funk I tend to listen to Paramore, partly because they've got some kick ass music, but mostly because about 85% of the time, the lyrics just speak to how I am feeling. My go-to song is and always will be "Last Hope" because it just has a vibe about it that makes me feel that although I'm sad and down right now, there's always a little place inside of me that will keep me from giving up.

"It's just a spark, but it's enough to keep me going. And when it's dark out, no one's around, it keeps glowing."

This chorus is what helps me to rediscover my strength, the strength that I thought I had lost because of some irrelevant occurrence in my life whether it be because I was let down by a person (mainly a boy) in my life, or whenever I have doubts about just doing well in life. I know that there will always be that "spark" inside of me that will keep me going for as long as I live.

I hope you can find that perfect song because having a song that lifts you up when you are having a terrible day is truly a lifesaver. It can change your whole mood and your outlook for that day, week, or even month. It's amazing to be able to listen to a song for 3 or 4 minutes and then feel inspired about life. I want nothing more for you than to find that song to lift you up because sometimes, it's the only thing that can get you through your day.

xoxo, Alex

My Daily Fails

Hello there everyone! I hope your day is going a lot better than mine so far, it was a rough morning for me. I thought I would make a list of daily fails to let you know that you probably aren't the only one who suffers from doing it.

My personal daily fails:
1. Hitting my snooze button four too many times, running to class, and then realizing that I put on two different shoes. (This has happened to me 3 times so far this year)
2. Not being able to put my contacts in. On a rough morning (like today) I spend about twenty minutes putting my contacts in, and most of the time I just give up and wear my glasses.
3. Rushing to class and not eating anything. Then when there is that one moment of silence during class, of course my stomach growls.
4. Once again being rushed, I might accidentally put a shirt on inside out and not realize it until about 1 o'clock in the afternoon that day (and usually when someone points it out).
5. Stupidly forgetting my laptop for my IT class (where I need it in every class), then having to submit a quiz on paper because I didn't have my laptop.
6. Forgetting necessary books for classes (this usually only happens on Mondays and Tuesdays).
7. Rushing to get to class and putting my hair in a pony tail, then an hour later noticing that I forgot a big chunk of hair so it looks like I have a rattail.
8. Forgetting to brush my teeth (just plain gross, I know)
9. Forgetting a pony tail to put my hair up when I'm having a REALLY bad hair day.
10. Tripping UP the stairs on my way into the business building in front of some very cute upperclassmen.

I hope reading some of my daily fails will make you feel better about your day and I hope you got a kick out of a few of them (I know some of my friends do).

xoxo, Alex