December 29th

The date above has little significance really, unless you're a BYU student. In that case, that is the date that represents the culmination of all your sleepless nights, tears and death glares at professors. It is the day that students and parents alike scream and cry in joy or agony as final grades appear on a student's transcript.
If the student is a nerd like me, they're afraid to look because they're not sure if their final took them from an A to A-, or if they barely boosted their grade up in their hardest class. For others they're fearfully hiding their transcript from their parents because, well, they were lucky to pass at all.
In either case sometimes there are joyful surprises that are enough to make an atheist believe there is a God above. In my case it was a class that 40% of the grade rode on the final exam. 75% of the final depended on three essays. Normally essay questions don't frighten me, but in a law class the right answer is what the professor thinks makes the most sense, and she and I didn't always agree. Problem #1. Plus, the papers were ranked by which was best down to the worst, so my grade was completely dependent on how well other communication students could write about law. Giant problem #2.
In any case I turned everything in and the night of the 29th I screamed my lungs out because there next to Media Law on my transcript was an A.

New Years Resolutions

New Years is often a time when people decide they need to fill their already busy lives with things they've felt guilty about not doing. It's not that those things are particularly essential to their lives or their happiness. It's just they see other people doing them and feel they should too. I used to be the exact same way. However, after having a lesson in church on needing to simplify our lives in order to be happy, I have a very different list for myself this year.

1. Yoga in the morning. I realize this is something many people would do because they feel guilty about not doing it, but it is something I enjoy and often give up because I feel there are other things I have to do.

2. Time for myself.

3. Have real conversations with people, one at a time.

4. Focus on what I'm doing at the moment and do it "like crazy" (There's a story behind that one.)

5. Make sure the people I care about know I care.

My PR professors would tell me these goals need to be broken down into specific, measurable objectives for them to be accomplished. To a point I agree, but the main point of these goals or of any resolution, really, is to make sure my life is going the way I want it to, and sometimes the best way to be happy and to get done the things you really need to, is to just say "no" every once in a while, or maybe a lot, because saying "no" doesn't belittle anything. It only increases the worth of the things you decide to say "yes" to.

Summer Projects...mostly.

I went home from college last summer to visit for a month and immediately was assigned my ration of home improvement projects. My biggest project was to attack the upstairs bathroom that had mold growing out of the walls. A word to the wise...don't have the door and the window closed when scrubbing walls with Clorox...it leaves you feeling like you swallowed an entire glass of pool water. In any case by the time I finished with the Clorox and the Kilz paint the bathroom was a sparkling white. That just left me with the challenge of removing part of the toilet, so I could paint behind it. Unfortunately, the screw holding it in place was completely rusted, so though my little little brother tried to come to my rescue and hold the screw in place, his little arms just couldn't do it. Daniel, my older brother, and I then tried to do it. Well, that resulted in me yelling at Andy, my big little brother, to help me the minute I heard him walk in the door with the result of him running up the stairs and finding me with my head and half of my body squished between the toilet and the wall. Yes, it was as unpleasant as it sounds. In the end, Daniel and Andy were able to remove it and dump all the parts in the tub.

Another word to the wise, when you drill hundred of tiny holes in a cupboard for seemingly no reason, you make the poor girl having to fill those holes with putty hate you. Just saying.

Anyways, I finally got to the point where I could start painting. Soon the walls were a beautiful shade of green with a tan trim. Then came the most exciting part...decorating. My mom and I decided to go with a beach theme. Mainly because that's what Fred Meyer had that matched the colors in the bathroom. (Dear Fred Meyer staff: putting perfume on EVERYTHING only gives customers a giant headache.)

Unfortunately, the bathroom didn't get finished that summer because a lot of the hardware still needed to be replaced, but six months later when I came home for Christmas, it was all finally done!

The tale of a beat reporter...

For the past four months my life has been taken over by a newspaper. Some may say that's impossible, but those people have never been set with the task of writing two stories every week for a student newspaper on the health/medical beat. If I was lucky a story was actually sent to me, but most of the time I was digging through websites and other papers to find people I could contact.
Some people were easy to track down. It seemed it was their job to sit waiting for the phone to ring. It was the scientists flying in and out of the country that gave me the most trouble.
If there's anything I've learned from this venture, it's that I can call anyone, even a senator and they will answer my questions and try to sound good simply because I call myself a reporter. The power that comes with that is fun and kind of scary at the same time.
I'm glad this semester is over, and I can move on to focus on other things, but I will admit I'll miss seeing my name in print and being able to walk up to anyone I want and say, "Sit down, buddy. I've got some questions for you."