The Best Four Years

Adults love to say that college is the best four years of your life. During that transitional period between high school and college, some look down on those who thought high school was the best four years for a variety of reasons. However, I don't understand why college is supposed to be the best four. If it is, that means the rest of your adult life (the longest part of your life, might I add) is your decline. You peak in college and then spend the rest of your life knowing you'll never be as happy as you were then. I hope college isn't the best four years of my life. I want to make a life and a name for myself. I want to work my dream job and have a family and spend the majority of my life happy, not just 4 years. So for everyone not going abroad because they love college too much, or trying not to graduate early, just remember there's so much more to life than four years of tailgates and dartying. 

Hate Lists

This is probably the best thing I ever learned from my high school best friend, Monica. It's not as malicious as it sounds, I promise. A hate list is simply a way to get out all of your angry thoughts and they work surprisingly well. You take out a piece of paper and a pen and start writing. 

Example: 

I hate the color pink. I hate flamingos. They're stupid animals why are they popular now. I also hate pineapples. They are a food you eat, not an accessory. I hate girls and pettiness and college and this state and how boring my German class is and being talked at. (Note: this is not all necessarily true) 

Basically just a chain of things that are currently getting under your skin. It works great 

A) because then you don't have to find a physical person who will listen to you rant 

B) you're not talking to yourself or a stuffed animal or other inanimate object

C) it's a great stress reliever that doesn't require breaking a sweat. 

D) you don't have to worry about offending anyone or giving off the impression that you're a mean, spiteful person. 

Next time you're stressed I would highly recommend trying it. And if you're worried about harming the environment with the paper you'll be waiting, it works just as well in a word document. 

Education Reform

Like many Americans, I spent my Wednesday night watching the Republican Presidential Candidate Debate. One of the topics addressed, as it usually is, was education reform. Former Florida Governor Bush spoke about higher standards for schools and how he improved the Florida school system. Here’s my problem with education reform: how schools test what students are learning is by tests. The main problem with schools is tests. In some of my high school classes we had so many tests we didn’t have time to learn the material before we were supposed to be tested on it. The more tests teachers are required to give, the less they care. Teachers, the good ones, want to learn from their students. Not only that, but some of the best teachers I had were the ones who let us, or rather, encouraged us, to discuss current events. The teachers who taught to a curriculum and didn’t stray were boring, less invested, and didn’t give us, as students, a reason to want to learn the material. Students want to learn about things relevant to their lives. No one really enjoys high school calculus because everyone has the same problem with it – we’re unable to see how it’ll be useful in life. No one is going to go home and say "Hey mom, let me show you how to take the derivative of a number with a lot of variables," but they might go home and say "Mom, what's your opinion on [insert current event here]," and when she asks why, you'll respond, "my history teacher brought it up in class today and I think [insert opinion here]," and you could have a great discussion about what's going on in the world with your parents. With history, economics, and like subjects that can be related to the current world, the teachers who embrace the media are going to be the ones who are remembered and who teach the most. I can’t tell you what I learned in eighth grade, but I can tell you that my history teacher started every class with current events, and that when I got home from school and my mom asked what I learned at school that day, I would talk to her about that class. When Nelson Mandela passed away, we not only talked about it in my European history class, but were incentivized to learn more about his legacy by being offered extra points if we watched Invictus and wrote about what we took away from the movie. The summer before 11^th grade I went on a summer program that took me to the concentration camps in Poland. I came back to school educated and wanting to share what I had learned. Luckily I was taking American History II, which covered America from the Industrial Revolution through present day. I got to know my teacher by bringing up my travels and I ended up making a presentation to share with him and my class with pictures of things I had seen and stories I was told. He kept the presentation and is able to still use it today to show his classes what the camps look like now and give them different perspectives. This was possible because he liked to talk about current history in the making, not just what came out of our text books. School is not just about what’s in the book; it’s about challenging your mind, learning how to form opinions and informing yourself on the past and the future. The most life-changing, important class I ever took was broadcast journalism. Not because I learned how to write news or because I directed a music video, but because the teacher genuinely cared about all of his students. He taught us not to play the blame game and to be proactive with our work. He showed us what we were capable of, and always required we were well informed of what was going on in the community, as well as around the world. That’s not to say calculus and biology aren’t important, but for many teenagers high school is when you grow, form study habits,  and decide what kind of student will be. It’s the opportunity for teachers to get you interested in learning, to show you that the world is bigger than just high school, and to make you a more globally aware citizen, and that can’t be measured by standards. 

Diamond Rings and Old Barstools

In my short life I have gone through a number of best friends and boyfriends and with every new boyfriend comes the test – how will they interact with the best friend. In middle school, although relationships weren’t serious, they were a big deal. The most serious of my middle school boyfriends was at the peak of my elementary school best friendship. Since I knew him from religious school and her from public school the two had never met. On Halloween, he came with us trick or treating. Let’s just say things did not end well. The two hated each other. That was more or less a microcosm of my grade school relationships. This weekend, my current boyfriend got to meet 3 of my closest friends. In the shower, I had the line of “Diamond Rings and Old Barstools” (Tim McGraw) stuck in my head that goes “some things just don’t mix like they should” and I was thinking how happy I was that my boyfriend and best friends got along. It struck me for the first time that the test was a test of both parties. I had always thought it was just the boyfriend trying to impress the best friends and prove his worthiness, but I realized today it’s really a test of friendship too. Real best friends want you to be happy and therefore want to like your significant other as much as you do. It makes a difference if they’re trying the same way he is to show him that you have really good friends. You know you’ve picked the right boyfriend and best friends if they get along because A) they’re all great and fun and B) they want to get along because they care about you and your happiness.

So here's to you Max, Lily and Leah  

(Keep up the winning streak Mets!)

(The Jesse to my Woody)

(Polaroids aren't actually meant to be shaken)

A Rant A Day...

I've gotten accustomed to having to wait 10 minutes for hot water in my house. Granted, the water does eventually get really hot, just not right away, and I'm an impatient person. I was never big on washing my hands at home because of this - cold water is not a good friend of mine. At school, however, there was always hot water on command - it was great (it's the little things in life). Because of this, I began to really enjoy washing my hands because of the nice warm water and the clean feeling afterwards. However, with this, I became mildly more germaphobic. Once my hands are nice and clean I become reluctant to touch door knobs or other things I would classify as dirty, especially in public. I was never a big fan of public toilets or bathrooms in general so having to touch dirty door knobs after making my hands nice and clean is basically a nightmare. What I've noticed, however, is that this problem can be avoided entirely, depending on how manual or automatic the bathroom is. It's really great when everything is automatic, but only works if everything is. Example: automatic sink, automatic soap, automatic hand dryer - doing great so far, automatic door or no door - perfect! Door handle - ruins everything. As soon as I have to touch the door, the entire hand washing process just seems like a waste of water, soap and energy. Now lets go to the flip side: manual sink and soap - turn on with dirty hands, take soap with dirty hands, clean hands, now what? Take nice, clean paper towel, turn off dirty sink handle and open dirty door and make it out fresh as ever. And now that I've taken you through a nice, little rant about public restrooms and dirty door knobs, don't forget to wash your hands.

Saying Goodbye to Suits

The Game of Life, SORRY! (Disney Edition), Monopoly, and Clue were classic in my house when I was growing up. Life was probably the least exciting for me because I always tried to take the same life path - college, marriage, children, some miscellaneous (life) events in between, then retirement. There would always be those few time I didn't get kids or wanted to be bold and would skip college to go straight into a career, but for the most part I played the game in the fashion I thought my actual life would turn out.
Lately my life hasn't been going that way. In high school I assumed I would go to a Big 10 school or other top school, stay there for 4 years, study business, graduate with a good job and work in New York City post-grad. However, I've been feeling unsatisfied with my current direction. Sure I'm doing well and my resume looks great and I love how many opportunities there are within the school, but I don't actually enjoy my classes. I don't get excited about choosing classes, I find them difficult to focus on and study for, and I overall haven't found anything that really interests me.
Last night I came to the brilliant conclusion that being a magazine editor would be my dream job. I think it would combine all the things I like and be something I could enjoy doing every day. Obviously you don't become a magazine editor straight out of college but it got me thinking that maybe business really isn't the path I want to go down.
We're raised to follow our dreams, the American dream, and make a life for ourselves doing what we love, yet I went into business because it seemed like the logical thing to do, not because it was something I was especially interested in or passionate about. Now that I'm reconsidering and trying to find what really interests me, it's exciting, but also scary - it feels like there's a lot more risk in studying communications or going into a field that's more unknown and undefined, which leaves me hesitant to jump into a new field at a new school in a new place. For now, the excitement building is overpowering the fear though and if that continues you'll be hearing a lot more from me in the future. If not, you can be assured I'll be wearing a suit doing something business-y somewhere.

Seven Things for the Seventh Month

1. Duolingo - Max showed me this app because he was using it to learn French and work on his Spanish. It teaches you a new language little by little with daily lessons that include writing, reading and speaking. It's cute and fun and makes my brain work a little bit harder every day.

2. Photoshop - One of my favorite blogs to follow is The College Prepster. Carly posted about how to use Photoshop to make collages for her blog so instead of working on some other important stuff I took some time out of my day to learn how to make collages. They're actually fairly easy and I'm a huge fan because I'm a very visual person. I'm currently working on one to help me decide what colorful throw pillows to get to go with the white bedding I just got for my new bedroom.

3. Frozen Yogurt - I have to say this is one of the fads I was quickly over, opting for true ice cream, but I've recently been in the mood for something light and refreshing and fro-yo is it. Today I got a mango vanilla twist with Oreo pieces and gummy worms. Strange but tasty.

4. New Lilly Agendas - I've always been a very organized person but dates and times slip so easily from my mind that having an agenda is essential for me. The Lilly Pulitzer large agenda is my favorite so far because it's a great size and I love how colorful and cheery it is. I can't wait for August so I can break in the new one!

5. Short hair - For the first time since I was about 8 years old, I got a real hair cut - I'm talking a solid 8-10 inches. So far I'm loving how easy it is and not having to pull it out from under bags, jackets and scarves all the time. Tip: if you decide to get yours cut, bring pictures for your stylist, it will really help give them an idea of what you're looking for.

6. Crisp, clean everything - As I mentioned before my family is moving to a much smaller apartment from our nice sized house. That means lots of cleaning and getting rid of clothing among other things to prepare to downsize. Also since we're showing the house frequently my shelves and desk have to be spotless. The cleanliness is definitely growing on me, which is why I picked a bright white comforter set. I'm hoping the crisp linens will motivate me to keep the rest of my life as neat.

7. Movies - I can't remember the last time there were so many films I wanted to see in theaters in one month. So far I've only seen Pitch Perfect 2 and Inside Out - both of which were great (as if anyone ever expected anything less). I'm hoping to catch Max, Magic Mike XXL (guilty pleasure), and Minions before I head back to school in August.