End Week 1

Well, almost. :) I have survived my first week of the spring term, and I've learned a few things.
1. I can do hard things.
Yes, this prospectus will be harder than I thought... But I can do it! I'm getting an outline to my advisor by next week to make sure I am on track.
2. We get a lot of sun in Utah.
The mountains are on the east, which means the sun rises later but sets later today. I'm really liking these long days. :)
3. Austenland by Shannon Hale is my new favorite book.
It's amazing. Every Jane Austen fan in the world should read it. Seriously. :)
4. Life is Beautiful is a haunting, powerful movie.
It is terrifying to think that only a few decades ago, human beings inflicted the Holocaust on their fellow men. The thought that kept crossing my mind was, how could ANYONE do this? Yet "civilized" people in the modern world allowed this Holocaust to occur. Let's all do our part to make sure this never happens again! Let's never forget those who were lost either.
The scary thing is, I know atrocities like that are going right now in parts of the world. I hope that someday we'll finally get to that amazing dream of world peace.
5. I can be a pretty good blogger if I want to be.
Well, at least I can update more frequently than I was. :) This is progress.
Ha... and ironically, when I started this list, I thought I had a lot more to say, but my roommate and I are watching Community and I totally lost my train of thought. :) Community seems like a funny show, but somehow I have only watched 3 episodes, and they are always kind of weird ones. Like the Holiday special where everyone is in claymation, the time they all go to a bar, and now, some kind of episode where it's giving a review of the entire season. Maybe sometime I'll have to go back and watch the season from the beginning.

Bloom Where You are Planted

Okay, that title doesn't quite fit this post, but I love that quote anyways. :)

Today I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I've been thinking a lot about what I will do after I graduate next year. I've started searching for jobs on all the internet job posting sites, and looking at grad programs I could go to for my PhD. But... as of yet, I haven't found any postings (NONE!) for family life educators (maybe I am just using the wrong search terms). And the grad programs that focus on what I want to study are mostly far away. I can go there if I need to, but at the moment I feel a little bit intimidated about going so far from home.

I've been thinking too a lot about what I am doing now. I am a bit frustrated that despite a lot of hard work, none of my articles are quite ready for publication yet. Even a year into the grad school thing, I am not 100% used to it, and the hardest part is that I have trouble gaging how well I am doing. I've never been a grad student before! Is it normal for paper submissions and such things to take this long? Am I behind or ahead or right on schedule? I can't quite be sure.

Sometimes I look around me at the other amazing people in the grad lab and I feel intimidated. They are working hard, going to school, and raising families. A lot of them are holding down multiple jobs when they do all this. I feel like a little bit of a slacker compared to them sometimes. School and one job seem to be all I can handle right now!

But today my grad lab friends helped me get a better perspective on things. One of them asked me in amazement if I'd been coming into the grad lab every single day. I said yes. She was impressed, which surprised me. "It's because this is all I'm up to right now," I said. I meant it in a negative way, to be honest. Sometimes I get a bit down that grad school and work makes up so much of my life. It would be nice to be settled down and have a little family to go home to every night like my friends.

But my grad lab buddy responded with, "That must be nice!" in a very wistful tone. I was surprised, but after a moment I said, "Yeah, I guess it is."

Someday I will get to do the whole family thing. I'm excited for when that day will come. But my friend's comment made me realize, it's not so bad that it hasn't come yet. My friends who are working multiple jobs and doing all these amazing things are doing so in part out of necessity. Right now, I'm in a position where I am only supporting myself, and if my part-time assistantship is enough to get me through, it's okay that I'm not taking on more work like my friends. One benefit to my situation in life is that I can focus all my time and energy on school and research... and that's okay! I don't need to feel guilty for not doing more right now. I don't need to yet. I don't need to be comparing myself to my friends. Everyone's situation is different, and we are all doing the best that we can. And that's enough. That's all anyone can do!

Enough rope to hang yourself with

I think I finally understand what this particular phrase is referring to.

This spring term I am staying at school for the very first time. I have mixed emotions about it. I went home to visit my family for a week after winter semester ended, and it was really hard at the end of that to say goodbye to my family when usually I would be settling in to stay for the next four months. When I got back to school though, I felt better about things. More of my friends are staying then I realized. And it's finally occurring to me that I will have much fewer responsibilities over spring term as compared to during the school year. I will probably have lots of time to play. :)

But, I need to be careful. I have no set schedule. I am free to work as much as I choose, but I have a set list of tasks that needs to be completed. I can take advantage of the flexibility to have fun-but I need to stay on task!!!! I can't slack off. I figure I will plan on going into the grad lab everyday! If I treat it like a scheduled job, I will stay on track.

I've been given enough rope that I could hang myself with it... but I will make sure that doesn't happen!

Going home?

After a wonderful week with my family, I am headed back to Provo for the spring term. I knew it would be hard to leave, since I usually come home to stay at the end of April, but so far it's much harder than I expected! It seems like no matter how old I get, it never gets any easier to say goodbye to my family when I'm going back to school. Part of it, I think, is that I am the oldest, so everyone else is still living at home. I'm the odd one out living in semi-distant lands. Thank goodness for cell phones and the internet so we can all keep in touch!

I am not quite sure what to expect for this summer. I will only be working part time, 10 hours a week as a research assistant. My program doesn't offer any classes during spring/summer term. However, I will be busy with school stuff. If I want to finish my thesis on time, I need to write my prospectus over spring term-it's the beginning part of my thesis that proposes what I want to study. If I finish it in the next six weeks, I can defend it soon after I get back for fall term-and if it passes my committee's approval, I can move ahead to finish it up so I can graduate on time. 

I've never written a prospectus before. I have no idea how hard it is going to be. You have to discuss ALL of the existing literature on your topic, but my topic is fairly obscure and not often studied, so there isn't that much out there for me to report. 

So... basically, I'm not sure what to expect this summer. I will either be super super busy working on my prospectus and research... or I could end up with a lot of free time on my hands, old school summer style. We'll have to see. I'll admit I'm afraid of having too much free time-silly, right? But I wouldn't really know what to do with it if I had it. Oh well. I guess a girl can learn. :)

When I didn't stay for spring/summer, it seemed like everyone else I knew was staying. But the vast majority of my friends have headed back to their homes for the next few months. Such is the transitory nature of college. People are always coming and going. Sometimes it drives me nuts. I like to have a little bit more stability in my life. But a benefit is that this way I am always meeting new people and making new friends. I am curious to see if we will get any new people in the ward over the summer. Since so many people are gone during summer, I've heard the ward gets really small over spring/summer term. This means that everyone who does stay gets to know each other a lot better. I'm looking forward to that.

It blows my mind that I will be done with school in a year. Right now, I have no clue what's next! Should I go on for a PhD? Should I try to find a job? Can I find a job? Sometimes I wish I could see a little bit farther in the future so I know what to expect. But I guess it's better that I can't. Life is an adventure. I need to enjoy the ride without worrying too much about where I'm headed. As long as I'm doing my best, things are going to work out in the end. I know God has a plan for me. I need to trust Him and move forward.

Anyways, that is the super long update on what's going on with me right now. I am going to stick to my goal of blogging more often (especially now that I know there are people who actually read this! :) so hopefully there will be a lot more entries this summer!

Growing Up

I've always looked very young for my age.

When I was a kid, people used to think my sister Shauna (three years younger) and I were twins, because I was very short for my age and she was very tall. I remember once when we went to a carnival at our elementary (ah, those were the days!) She was a kindergartener and I was a second grader. We got in line for the same booth, and the very nice man running it tried to guess how old Shauna was.

"Are you in the third grade?" he asked. I was a little annoyed that he thought she was older than I was. Shauna shook her head. "Fourth grade?" She shook her head again. "FIFTH grade?" he sounded surprised, I'll grant him that. Shauna told him that she was in kindergarten. She took her turn at the booth, throwing rings around a prize or whatever it was, and then it was my turn.

The man tried to guess how old I was. In his defense (or is this really in my defense?), his guess was probably affected by his failure at guessing Shauna's age. "Are you in kindergarten?" "NO!"

Getting older didn't solve this problem for me. When I was a junior in high school, they got a new secretary at the orthodontist's office--a place I'd been going since I was 8 years old. When I showed up for my appointment, she smiled at me and asked politely if I was going to start high school in the fall, or if I was still in the seventh grade.

And it must be something about junior years, because my junior year at BYU, I went to buy something at the bookstore. Instead of asking me for my student ID, the older woman cashier asked me if I were visiting campus to decide if I wanted to come to school there someday.

Looking young also results in a lot of people calling me things like "honey," "sweetie," and "dear." People I have never met before like cashiers in stores. I don't mind it.... Actually, okay, I kind of like it. But it clearly labels me as young.

Last December, though, when I flew home for Christmas, something changed. All of a sudden, people were calling me "ma'am!" The woman at the check-in desk "How can I help you today, ma'am?" The guards in the security line. "Move along, ma'am." A random older gentleman who kindly picked up my driver's license when I managed to drop it and leave it behind-"Ma'am! Excuse me, ma'am! Is this yours?" It took me a minute to even realize he was talking to me.

I nearly collided with an older woman when I was trying to leave the security area, and she said, "Oh! Sorry, hun!" No big deal. I am used to this. But a second later she took another look and said, "Oh dear! I thought you were my niece, otherwise I wouldn't have called you hun!"

Yep. Not sure what changed, but all of a sudden, people were treating me like an adult. :) It felt good. Technically, I have been an adult for a while now, but all of a sudden this year that's seemed really real to me. Something about graduating from college made me feel really grown up. Now here I am, halfway through my master's program. In another year, I will be out in the real world! I am not quite sure how that is going to go. I always thought I would be a counselor... I don't even know quite what jobs are out there in the field of family life education. But I know that I was guided to this program, and so I'm sticking with it. I know something will open up when the time is right.

Still, this growing up business is a little intimidating. It's scary not knowing where I will be living in a year or what I will be doing. There's only so much I can do to plan ahead-a lot depends on variables out of my control. All I can do is move ahead and trust God to guide my steps. Somehow, everything is going to be okay.

Blogging woes

Oh, blog. You and I just aren't meant to be, are we?

In general, I am a private person. I just don't like posting huge bits about myself over the internet. And so, my poor little blog is constantly neglected.
Still, blog, I am determined to conquer you. I am a journaling addict. I am a writer. I WILL find a way to make myself write more in you, blog, and it will be amazing. Just wait.

Possibly wait for the next three weeks until finals are over.

THEN we will turn this blog into something to talk about!

Heavenly being

I met another girl named Shelece tonight (well, she spells it Shelice) and she told me that after years of searching, she finally found the meaning of our name in a baby book (it's a miracle!). Apparently, Shelece means "heavenly being."

I really like that. :D