You can have whatever you like

Thursday, September 18, 2008

I know I say this all the time, but I seriously love my job! This is the most amazing feel-good job and I’m having the time of my life! I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to want to do it again next year, but I’m really happy that I still have several months of it left. I have the day off today (complete accident that I'm very excited about) so I'm going to take the time to write some blogs, send some emails to my dear friends that I miss and scout out some grad school options. Oh, and pay some bills and manage my loans. Not all that exciting for a day off, but it'll be ok. 

I'm at Beta Theta at Central Michigan University for the next 9 days. A girl from the chapter came and picked me up from Delta Nu-A yesterday. It's about a 2 hour drive and we all know how great I am at small talk with people I don't know... I attempted to make conversation with her, but she sucks at it worse than I do. So our drive was done mostly in silence without even the radio to save us. I was exhausted and had to try really hard not to fall asleep on her (I thought that might be rude). This was a real struggle for me for a while, but then she almost killed us and I was quite alert after that. When we got to the house we walked into the living room and everyone just stared at me. I said hello and introduced myself and they yall just muttered hello and continued to stare. Made me feel great! Then, I got to my room to discover I had no sheets or a blanket. They gave me some sheets to put on the bed, but no blanket. At this point I was quite worried about my stay here. We went to dinner though and it was good fun. I think they realized that I'm a real person just like them and I'm not that older than them. After dinner we went back and hung out at the house for a while and that was rather enjoyable. And when I went up to my room later I discovered that someone was nice enough to bring me a blanket! A girl also volunteered to come by the house today and take me to lunch around 12. It's now 1:30 and I haven't heard from her so I think she forgot. I'm rather hungry so I may take a little stroll and see what I can find in the neighborhood. I'm excited about my stay here. I always start out feeling negative but it works out because from their I have no place to go but up. Their formal recruitment is this weekend and it's going to be INTENSE! There's over 300 woman going through recruitment (the school has 20,000 students and 11 sororities and 11 fraternities) and it starts Saturday and goes through Friday with Tuesday being an off day. Saturday we have back to back parties starting from noon and going through 8 pm! I'm so happy to have today off to do my own thing since I'm clearly not going to have a weekend of any kind! I'm nervous for the girls though. They seem pretty confident and not that interested in having recruitment practices and that worries me. They're the smallest sorority on their campus (total is 61 and they have 17 or so). I did talk them into letting me facilitate a practice before the first party, so I hope that goes well! I hope these ladies end up rocking recruitment just like my ladies from Psi Psi. That'd make me feel pretty awesome. I don't think I'm really going to make a connection with any of the ladies here. Most of them kind of get on my nerves. They all seem very immature and just... I don't know. Not my kind of girls. They're nice though. After I leave here I go to Alabama, Arkansas and then Louisiana again before I'm home for my vacation. I'm especially excited about LA and TX. ALabama and Arkansas... eh. 

I decided that today would be a good day for me to start looking into grad schools. Krystal and I talked yesterday and joked about me going to NSULA and living with her and Cassie and that got me thinking that I really should make a decision about where I want to go. I don't think I want to go to school in Texas. None of the schools there really interest me much. I started looking at schools this morning. I got as far as NSULA, LSU and Texas State. NSULA was actually the best of the three in my opinion. I guess I'd really have no problem going there. I'm going to keep looking though, just in case I find something super exciting. A past LC that I've been in contact with said that she lived in Oregon for a while and it was gorgeous there and the people there are all really healthy and active. That sounds great, but do I want to move to Oregon? At the beginning of the summer I was all for going to grad school in another state where I knew no one, but now that I've been away from friends and family for a while I'm thinking that I might want to go somewhere where I know someone. Although grad school would be different from this. I would be in one place and be able to meet people and make friends, so I guess I really could go anywhere. I just don't know how I'm supposed to choose! I think I'd like a school with an ASA chapter, so that kind of cuts out the west coast, which is helpful I guess. The past LC (her name's Jenn) also tried to talk me into going to Southern Miss with her. They have a great student affairs program (I guess that's what I'm going to do...) and she got excited about us going to school together (she's getting her doctorate there). I know nothing about that school though. I know nothing about any school. I wish Hannah was going to be done with school this year so I could just make her come with me some place. Another past LC (Emily) is doing grad school in Ireland. How fucking awesome is that?? Maybe I want to go to Ireland or some other crazy country for school. I guess the first step that I should take is getting a GRE study guide and studying for the test. I hear it's kinda hard. If I want to go to NSULA I only need a 750, but if I go to Texas State then I need a 900. I have no idea what those scores mean so I should look into that as well. That's part of the reason I was glad to take this job was so that I could look at schools and help figure out where I want to go to grad school. I still can't believe I want to go to grad school at all. I though for sure I was going to want to be done after 4 years of college. 

I think I'm tired of having straight hair. Which I guess is good since I don't have straight hair. In the last 2 weeks I've only straightened it twice and then I usually end up just putting it up anyway. I think it's this lousy hair cut I have. Turns out I really did love having long hair and I never should have cut it. Maybe once it's longer I'll be interested in wearing it straight more often. 

This summer I definitely had the travel bug and it's starting to wear off now. That makes me kind of sad. I was so excited about all of the possibilities for my life (and I still am) but now traveling doesn't have quite the appeal that it did. I don't know why. I still like the idea of going to school some place besides Texas, and I still like the idea of going back to Europe for a bit, but I'm not sure about living there anymore. I think Hannah and I should take ourselves a fun little trip and just travel over there. Although, I was talking to my roommate from this past week and she was an exchange student in Germany for a semester and she got a EuroRail pass or something so she went some place different every weekend. I think that would be pretty awesome. I really like the idea of traveling and seeing and experiencing different things, but I'm starting to feel attached to people again and want to be connected to people. What a little dilemma. 

I've been thinking about myself a lot lately and the person that I am. I've also been thinking about the person that I used to be and how the changes I made in myself came about. Really, almost all of the changes that I've made in myself are changes that I made to please other people. How pathetic is that? I know that it's completely normal and expected for people to change throughout their lives, especially be between the ages of 15 and 30. But I think about all the changes that I've made in myself since high school and it's really crazy. I'm working on making some new changes at the moment and I'm pretty pleased with them. They're changes that are really going to be good for me but I can't really put my finger on why I decided to make these changes. Was it just for me, or is it for other people again? There are about a million different things that I'd like to change about myself but at the same time I really like the way that I am. Every time new people come into my life I can feel myself evaluating who I am and if there's something that I should/can do to make myself better in their eyes. Why do I care what these people think of me? Why can't I just hope that they'll accept me the way that I am, and if they don't then shouldn't that mean that they don't really need a spot in my life? I'm really good at telling my friends that they're great the way that they are and that they shouldn't care what others think or want to change to please people, but for some reason my advice to them doesn't apply to me. I feel happy with myself the way that I am a lot of the time, I just wish I was really happy with ALL aspects of myself ALL the time. Wouldn't that be nice?