Today I got the distinct honor of being able to speak to a group of girls in high school and middle school who are interested in possibly pursuing a career in the STEM field. When I was contacted about doing this, I was referred to as a "mentor" and immediately thought "WOAH, I am not experienced enough for that word or this event". I decided to take it on because going out of your comfort zone is really important in my opinion and who wouldn't want to be called a mentor, am I right? I went in expecting a group of girls who were all mini-me's, future engineers who had a passion for math and had a million questions about what it's really like to be a woman in engineering school. What I got was not that.
I walked into a group of girls who had no idea what they wanted to do. Some wanted to pursue accounting, athletics, education. Some thought they maybe sorta kinda wanted to go into something sciencey but they weren't sold on anything yet. At first I thought, why are you here? And then I realized that they are mini-me's. I was reminded that though I'm halfway through college and it feels like I've been fully committed to engineering for so long, there was a point in my life where I had no idea what I wanted to do. There was a point in my life where I wanted to be a teacher. There was even a point in my life where I wanted to be a mermaid-bus driver-lunch lady, but that combo was too complicated.
So I asked myself, do any of us really know what we are doing? I'm halfway through engineering school which implies that I should at least halfway know what the heck is going on. But the catch is, I honestly don't. I take my life day by day, never knowing what to expect or if I'm going to make it (I understand that is ridiculously irrational, I get it). I am trying to get an internship and soon a job and I honestly do not even know how to go about that. I don't know what my life will look like in 3 months. I don't know what my life will look like in 2 years. Or 5 years or 10 years or 20 years. And I don't think you do either.
But as I was driving home tonight my favorite Christian song circulating on the radio these days came on, and it was like water washing over me. It reminded me that no matter what I want, it doesn't matter. Its what God wants. His plan is best. If I fail a class, I will trust him. If I don't get an internship right away, I will trust him. If you have no idea what your day tomorrow looks like like me, let alone your next few years, trust Him. He's the only predictable, stable thing. The rock won't move. I think its super important to take a time out and reflect on this so I encourage you to listen to the video below because it truly is amazing. Im also a major believer in reading what inspires you, so I wrote out the best lyrics from the song below. If you listen to this song and read those words and your whole body isn't covered in goosebumps and you don't feel like you could do literally anything because God's got you, I don't know how to help you. God Bless, y'all.
"You are my strength and comfort,
You are my steady hand,
You are my firm foundation; the rock on which I stand,
Your ways are always higher,
Your plans are always good,
There's not a place where I'll go, You've not already stood
When you don't move the mountains I needed you to move,
When you don't part the waters I wish I could walk through,
When you don't give the answers as I cry out to you,
Every night I read a chapter in my bible and try to learn from it as much as possible. Tonight, in one of the most short and unlikely of passages, God taught me an important lesson that I think we as Christians kind of adopted without necessarily backing it up with scripture. Tucked away in a segment of Mark 8 God taught me that he's actually an onion.
I know what you're thinking: what lesson have we as Christians adopted that teaches us God is an onion? Well I'll obviously explain, but first thumb through your bible to Mark 8:22 and read to verse 26 (You all can do this, it's 5 verses). Basically Jesus spits in a blind dude's eyeballs (ew, Jesus) and asks him to describe what he sees. The blind man tells Jesus that he thinks he sees people, except they kinda look like giant trees to him. Now obviously the goal of Jesus' whole little miracle he's working on here is to get the blind man to not be blind. So Jesus rubs his hands around on this guy's eyes some more and all of the sudden the man can see "distinctly", as my bible reads.
The first thing that came to my mind when I got through this section was times of season. In my own life this looks like my first semester of college last year. In others lives this could look like a loss of a job or financial trouble or any of the other thousands of seasons we can walk through in this life. God starts us on a journey and we get to a point where we think He should be done working his magic in our lives so we open up our eyes to look around and everything around us is all wrong. How many people have given up on faith and God all together because of this premature peek at life and a hurried evaluation of God himself. We need only to have the faith of the blind man. To close our eyes yet again and allow the hand of God to touch us in our most vulnerable of places so that when God is ready for us to open our eyes we can see distinctly.
So God is an onion. He's a process. There is no one-step acne treatment in God's eyes. You start at "Go" and you peel back layer after layer until God is done with his handiwork, not when we decide that we're done. Let's pray for the strength to be vulnerable to God and the faith to keep closing our eyes.
Everybody sing it with me: It's the most horrible time of the year! That's correct, it's nearing the end of the semester which would seem like a blessing to anyone not in college, but to us seasoned scholars we know that the only thing worse than the end of a semester is actual death (Okay, I'm a LITTLE dramatic). Right now, I see a lot of posts from Odyssey going around about this very subject and I thought that a perfect way to procrastinate and put off all of my responsibilities would be to write one myself, so without further ado:
11 Habits You Have by the End of the Semester:
1) Your procrastination is at an all time high.
Yeah, you should probably be using all of your free time to study for your last tests or the upcoming finals you have, but suddenly everything around you seems more interesting. The floor MUST be vacuumed before you can even think about cracking a book. You've spent 30 minutes writing that 10 page paper, I think it's time to reward yourself with 2 hours of Netflix before bed, right? (This reason is also why this post was even written...oops!)
2) Thinking about end-of-term grades actually causes physical pain.
What do you MEAN I only have one test to redeem myself from the mistakes I made at the beginning of the semester? Ever heard of forgive and forget?
3) You're POSITIVE your professors assigned due dates while they were at lunch...together.
You have 2 tests, a paper, a quiz, 3 homework assignments, and a group project all due on the same day. Where. is. the. coffee.
4) You're having to learn a semester's worth of material all over again.
At some point in academics, professors decided that the multiple tests given throughout the semester just weren't enough and we need a master test that covers all material we "learned" in the class. This means late nights in the library trying to learn everything you dumped out of your brain somewhere back in September.
5) Your family thinks you're ignoring them.
We don't remember the last time we bathed ourselves. Calling home right now is low on our list. That is, until we have one of our famous nervous breakdowns, because then mommy is getting a call.
6) What is sleep?
8 hours of sleep? Are you joking? Not only do you not have time for sleep right now, but your nights are filled with math equations or thesis statements. You can't even escape from responsibilities in your dreams.
7) But when morning comes...
It's 7'oclock already? But you were just getting your best sleep all night!
8) You start breaking beginning of semester pacts.
You PROMISED yourself you would make an asserted effort to look decent every day. This is a pact you laugh at as you pull on the same sweat pants you've worn for 3 days now.
9) You remind yourself why you're here.
Every 20 minutes.
10) The only thing getting you through finals week is the thoughts of home.
11) And when you get home...
You try to show off your newly acquired smarts to your family without revealing that you thought about dropping out at least 20 times in the past 15 weeks.
Now that you've procrastinated by spending 5 minutes reading this post, I think you deserve some Netflix. Where are your sweat pants?
In 2 days I begin my second year of college which means that I am back in my not so quiet little college town trying to enjoy my last 2 days of summer before the rush of school begins. Last year, my roomie and I were tossed back and forth between dorms and, though we had a relatively good year, we decided that dorm life was NOT for us. So after searching for apartments in-between classes last semester we finally found "the one". This summer between my summer classes and working my old high school part-time job I drove down here to move in boxes, painted furniture after a late shift, and searched in goodwill aisles for hidden treasures, and now here we are! So, without further ado, welcome to my apartment tour! (Keep in mind that some more wall art will be added, but it's mostly done)
Our door with the most adorable little wreath!
The panorama view of our living room
The chair- a goodwill find of my roomies. They recovered it and I think it looks so cute. The tables were another project of hers and the lamps were found in my attic.
Our couch and coffee table. The couch is from Ashley's Home Furniture Store and I'm so thankful to my grandparents for purchasing this for me. It will follow me through college and beyond. The pillows were more DIY projects from my roomie. The table is an old window from Aquinas College that my dad and I revamped into a table. This will definitely follow me beyond college and I think its ADORABLE.
Some wall art that I made. The letters were Lilly Pulitzer inspired and I made them last year for our dorm but luckily they fit right in.
Our key/mail holder
The view from our couch
The panorama of my kitchen (I tried, panoramas aren't really my thing)
Our kitchen table and chairs- a $20 Craigslist find by my room mate. Still looking for some wall art above it.
The little wall art that we DO have in the kitchen thus far.
The overview of my stove because I think its pretty cute. My nana made the dishcloth hanging on the handle for my first home years ago and I kept it just for this.
My little coffee station.
Our menu board and some canisters.
The cutest little spice rack
Look! We're adults with real groceries!
Our little utility room. Thank you so much to my Papa for the washer which was free and also for the replacing the dryer with a brand new one. Definitely made my life a lot less stressful!
Our little patio which is definitely still a work in progress
Our guest bathroom/Roomie's morning bathroom for when we both need to get ready. It was a hard angle to take pictures!
Heading upstairs to our bedrooms
The overview of my bedroom which I LOVE
My desk which was my brothers in college. The pictures above are black and white pictures of my hometown.
My bed, which also was my brothers and almost every other member of my family's. The canvases and bedding are from my dorm last year. I just couldn't give them up, I loved them so much!
My nightstand which is made out of a table found in my attic. Notice the coasters that I made out of Lowes tiles and my old Lilly Pulitzer agenda.
My adorable Goodwill dresser! Im IN LOVE with this. Could definitely make this into an entertainment center or buffet in the future.
High lighting my Goodwill tray spread. Super cute.
The entryway to my bathroom
The panorama of my bathroom which is one of my favorite rooms for sure.
My tray spread that I also got from Goodwill. SO cute.
Some bathroom canvases I painted.
Just highlighting my extremely girly and frilly shower curtain matching with these towels. Again, I LOVE how this room turned out.
So thats it! Again, it's a work in progress. Thank you to ALL my grandparents for their purchases in helping me furnish the place. Also very big thank you to my uncle for hauling all of the furniture down here and putting it in my apartment for me. And a thank you to my parents for their purchases and also for buying my start-up grocery items. I am very blessed!
