tick tock, tick tock

Before my mission, I wasn't the type to keep a planner - I had a planner, mind you. I supported Franklin Covey and bought a nice planner with lovely planner pages. Well, I ended up wasting my money and becoming disillusioned with Franklin Covey and the whole idea of planning my life down to the half hour. Then I went on a mission. At the beginning of every transfer, I received a shiny new planner. By the end of the transfer, after 6 weeks of daily abuse, the planner was all sorts of trashed, the severity depending on whether or not it was a rainy transfer. By the end of my mission I was a planner addict. The first few months after I got home, I didn't have a planner, and I almost went crazy. So I went to Target and picked out a cheap green planner that I could trash without Franklin Covey breathing down my neck. And thanks to my planner, my life is a little more organized.

I don't really know what my point was. I started thinking about time in general, which made me think of day planners. Then, day planners made me think of all the deadlines I have in my life right now. 2 days until my next literature test. 1 day until my Book of Mormon paper is due. 2.5 days until this week's grammar exercise is due. THEN I started thinking about countdowns! Which are much more exciting than deadlines. 36 days, 1 hour, 45 minutes until Christmas (I'm a little more obsessive about that one). Christmas is more than a month away, but guess what is just around the bend....

SIX MORE DAYS until I go home for Thanksgiving break. Bring on the tofurky!!!

Okay, gross. I don't eat tofurky. But it's always great to throw in a nice vegetarian joke.

ambivalence

Do you ever have those periods in life when you are so overwhelmed with life that you stop making decisions altogether, and end up buried in a veritable mess of deadlines and irresolution? Well, that was me over the last couple of weeks. It really took a toll on me, so much that I didn't realize it until a friend told me the other day that she thought I was a lot more temperate than I actually was (code for: you are being really moody) :)

I took a little time to think about it, and I realized that I felt really direction-less, despite having my school life for the next year or so all mapped out. I was also feeling stress of what to do with my life after school, stressed about money, etc. etc.

I think it all started when I went to go register for my classes for next semester. Despite the fact that I registered the second I could, and being a senior (technically) gave me priority, almost all of the classes I was planning on registering for were full. I know people will add and drop classes until the beginning of the semester, but I'm the kind of person who likes to see a set in stone schedule as soon as possible. So I stewed about it for awhile, and shopped around for some different classes. As I was reading into some different classes, talking to my professors, and praying for a little guidance, I found classes, different from those I had originally wanted to take, that I feel will actually be more beneficial to my learning experience. I don't have everything completely set in stone quite yet, but I feel a lot more at peace about what I have figured out as of now.

Also, a more recent decision of mine has been to minor in Spanish. I received an email from the department saying that the next grammar class I would have to take after the one I'm in now is no longer required for a Spanish major/minor. That made me realize that to do a Spanish minor I would just have to take 3 more classes, which I definitely can do. So that's another thing I feel good about.

Lastly, and perhaps the most exciting, I finally turned in my application for the London study abroad program for next spring. I have been going back and forth with the idea of going since the beginning of the semester. On one hand, it's an amazing, once in a lifetime experience that would be a dream come true. On the other hand, it's so expensive. I finally thought "screw the money!" and submitted the application. If it's supposed to happen, it will happen.

Basically, I have learned that things have a way of working out, even though it's not what you think it will be in the beginning. So I'm going to continue to take things one step at a time :)