The End is Near

Celebration is in order! It is almost finals week and I’m pretty sure I only have two actual finals, during finals weeks so yay! Finished the first semester of college, feels great! Though I never thought I’d make it out alive in my math class. Math has never come easy to me, though science has. I think it has to deal with science is applied and math uses letter and I really don’t know the purpose of me solving for x is. I’m seriously praying that I pass and I can be done with math forever! Pulling myself out of bed every morning at 5:45 proven to be nearly impossible most days. I just had to leave my house by 7:20 to make it on campus in time for class to start. Everyone always warns you to never take an 8 a.m. and now I know why. Between two jobs, trying to get decent grades while maintaining a social life was pretty hard, especially when your school day goes from 7:45-5. Don’t get me wrong, I am used to long days at school, but with math my work load was never ending. I really don’t know how anyone that majors in math can survive. 

Next semester will be nice though, I have a 9:30 Women Gender Studies course two days a week and the other two I don’t have to be on campus until 11. That will be so nice, I’ll be able to sleep in, go to the gym, probably more sleep. It’ll be beyond nice. I’m actually really looking forward to next semester, I will be taking course that interest me and the hardest class I’ll be taking is Chemistry. So if I just put a little time into that and get a good grade I’ll be set. Hopefully I’ll be declaring a major within this up coming semester. I think I just need to look into Public Health and see if there’s a future for me. I have a feeling that I’ll have to forge my own path to a career that fits me. I am definitely looking forward to my future as a rocket! 

"Beauty school dropout, Go back to high school"

I’m going to discuss my experience with Beauty School. I really wish someone would have told me how much work and effort getting my cosmetology license in high school required. Or all of the things I would miss out on, or the feeling of missing a high school experience. I really wish someone would have taken the time to really discuss and explain in detail what was being asked of me. Then again at 16 I probably wouldn’t have listened. 

Two years at my beauty school were hell, and I don’t just say this because I want to be a brat. My entire class was divided, in two ways, physically and well those girls vs. these girls. Everyone eventually paired up and if you didn’t have a bff you basically floated between. I’ll start off discussing the management. I detested the woman in charge and to this day I loath going in to speak with her. I know it’s her job to enforce the rules, but there were day were the rules were unbearable. Every Saturday starting at 8 a.m. we would get yelled at “Up off your feet ladies you need to get moving, don’t want to be sent home!!!” It drove me nuts, that and the fact that she would send you home with or without a good reason. 

Now the location, I can’t explain the clientele we had over in Monroe. Ranged from the homeless, to creepy men that high schoolers weren’t aloud to take. Not only were the clients gross they never tipped, I barely made five dollars a month. Which is sad because I was there weekdays 12:45-4:30 and Saturdays 8-4. Looking back I value the skills that I learned but I really wish I knew what I was in for. Then again without beauty school I wouldn’t have met some of the best friends a girl could ask for. 

Someone Special

At this point I’m really using this blog to write down my personal thoughts, I don’t really have a theme or a focus, I just want to express myself. So tonight I find myself thinking about my grandma or as I call her, Grammy. Growing up I spent most of my summers with my grammy and papa, they were my second parents. Looking back they have provided so many special memories that I cherish. I was their little Tay-Tay, or my Papa’s Girl, and I loved every second I spent with them. As I got older it has been pretty difficult to get out to visit and ever since my Papa passed it’s hard to stay there too long. I really miss him, there isn’t a day that I don’t think of him…

So there was an I Love Lucy special on this evening and I recorded it, hopefully Grammy got to watch it. That’s one of the shows my grammy got me hooked on as a little girl. The Golden Girls, I Love Lucy, Roseanne, and The Nanny, are what we spent our summer nights watching. But I Love Lucy has a special place in our hearts. It may be that we both relate strongly to Lucy, we’re both strong, determined women, and we’re both goofy and couldn't care less what people think. My grammy often describes us to be free spirits, I say we’re eccentric. Grammy suffered from breast cancer when I was in the third grade. When she was finished with chemo my mom took us on a trip to Jamestown, New York (Lucille Ball’s hometown) for the I Love Lucy festival. It was an absolute blast! We stopped by there about two years ago for only a day. Since then my grammy has fallen into a pit of bad luck. She’s such a kind and strong person that she just rolls with the punches. She isn’t very financially stable. So next summer I plan to save some money and take a trip back to Jamestown, just her and I. I’ve got a lot of saving to do, because I want to get a nice hotel and be able to take my grammy out for a nice dinner. She’s so special to me and I just want to repay her for everything that she has done for me.

Holiday Shopping

With the shopping season is full swing I think we all need a few reminders to make shopping as success for all parties involved. I work in the mall at Crazy 8 (a children's clothing store) and having the right customers can either make or break your day. I've had all kinds of people come, from extremely kind to downright rude. When you're on your feet for countless hours with barely any breaks you are just trying to do your job and get home at a reasonable hour. I think people often forget about the employees working and often claim "it's what they are getting paid for". This is not entirely true, they are not getting paid to clean up your messes. It is not hard to walk through a store without knocking down a pile of neatly folded clothes, or finding the nearest trash can to drop your Starbucks cup in.

People should try to just be kind to workers, trust me, if you are nice to them it only makes them want to go out of their way to help you. This goes for most establishments, a little bit of kindness goes a long way. There are countless of rude people and to set you apart a friendly smile along with a please and thank you will surely get what you need in a timely manner. This will not only make the employee happy, it will make your entire experience better and create a better environment around you. I can’t tell you how many times I had a mom come in with a screaming child but, because they were so sweet I tried to help them as quick as possible. So while you are out this holiday season remember to treat everyone around you with kindness, because what you put back into the world you get out.

New Space, New Opportunities

    Recently, my loving brother decided to fly out of the nest and move to live with his girlfriend. So in light of the situation I decided to take this burden of having an unoccupied room from my parents and make the room my office/closet. His room is, well unpleasing, it’s very small, the paint is hideous and the forest green carpet is going to be a struggle to work with.
    After announcing that I will be taking on this redesign project images flooded my head; “what color paint?”, “what furniture do I need?”, “How will I finance all of this?”, are just a few questions I had to ask myself. So where do I turn? Pinterest! I’m not exactly handy so I will need to recruit my step-dad for…almost everything…I’m the type of person who gets these enormous ideas and then they end up only turning out half of what I expected. So I decided to start acquiring items for my room, cyber Monday had some good deals, let me tell you!
    As of now I had a TV, and a nice cream leather futon and together it was only $320…yeah only…Now that my bank account is completely empty, I still have a few items left on my list. Definitely will need paint, a desk, a chair, a few things for the walls, a lamp, a few throw pillows, and to cover the awful carpet a nice area rug. I intend to have the room finished by fall, because I can’t dump all of my money into it. My reasoning for spending so much time, money, and effort is so that I can have a comfortable setting to study and hangout with my friends. Our house is pretty small; and I detest having to fight my parents for the living room, or having all of my friends pile up onto my bed to watch a movie. Fingers crossed that I don’t get in over my head on this one!

The Life of an Undecided College Student

Taking on the task of writing five blog posts sounds pretty easy but then I tried coming up with topics...So I'm just going to take it one post at a time.

    Being undecided is one of the most frustrating things. Not only do you feel completely lost in life, you constantly get asked to make a decision. In passing conversation when you say you attend UT the first question asked is, "Oh what are you studying?" then you solemnly reply that you're undecided. Everyone says take your time, you can change your mind, or that you don't have to rush. Then the pressure to pick something sets in and you do feel rushed and you just want to pick something as soon as possible. I am in a career class right now, it is meant to help you decide on what direction to go in, but right now I am left feeling even more confused. While others are scheduling classes for future careers I am left to take general classes in hopes that they will meet whatever requirements that my major holds.
    After countless career tests with various results I still feel so much pressure to pick something. I don’t want to end up regretting it and having to pick something completely different. My biggest fear is that I end up changing my mind and everything I have been working on doesn’t count towards what I want to do. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, fingers crossed. It’s hard to just wait and not declare something, I constantly feel like my life is in disarray (when it’s really not) all because I don’t have a major. I am the type of person who likes to plan out their future and without a career picked it’s really hard to plan around nothing. I wish that things were easier and I could wave a magical wand and my life would just be perfect! Unfortunately I have to rely on myself to just make the right decisions for my future.