Wednesday, November 18, 2009

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.

Friday, November 6, 2009

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 :)