Life is Sweet/Happy New Year

Hey everyone! I just wanted to wish you all a very happy new year, and share with you the highlights of my 2011 and my goals and wishes for 2012.

2011 was a very eventful year for me, and a year in which I was very blessed. I got to spend more time with my sister than I have in ages, got to be an extra in the movie of my dreams as well as a TV show, became a National Merit Finalist, received an amazing scholarship to a great school, started my first year at college, and made some amazing new friends. I also got to celebrate the coming of the new year with one of my best friends from back in the fourth grade, and it reminded me that celebration of the new doesn't mean a complete abandon of the old. Just because I'm looking forward to and celebrating having a fresh start in 2012, doesn't mean I need to celebrate the ending of 2011. Because all in all, 2011 was a VERY good year. Sure, a lot went wrong. My cancer scare, my mom's various bouts of illness, and my craptastic grades last semester… but the fact is, the good outweighed the bad, big time. What can I say--life is sweet.

Dear God, thank you! Thank you for the year two thousand and eleven. Thank you for the opportunities you've given me. I'm sorry for not taking the chances I've been given and making the most of them--but I hope not to repeat that mistake this year. Thank you for Sarah. Thank you for all of my friends at school. Thank you for the people I love and the people who love me, at home, at school, and even those I only know through my little ol' blog. Just… thank you for everything. All of it. Both the good, and the bad which helps me appreciate the good all the more. Thank you for loving me even though I don't deserve it. I'm sorry for having such difficulty accepting it, accepting YOU. But thank you for it nonetheless.

2012 is the year in which the world will supposedly end. I don't know if that's happening or not, I don't know anything about the future for certain, but I do know that I'm going to make the most of what I can. This past year's blessings won't go to waste. My resolution? To do my best. To do my best to abandon my fear of failure. To do my best to trust. To do my best to love. To do my best to have faith. Because my best is really all I can do.

Happy new year, everyone, and God bless,

A Scavenger Hunt, a Dance, Finals, My Birthday, Old Salem, A Museum, Final Grades, and Upcoming Christmas.... The Readers Digest Version!

Hey everyone! Since my last update, I've attended a winter formal (dance), taken my finals, been sent back home for Christmas break, celebrated my 19th birthday, gone to Old Salem, gone to Reynolda House Museum, and gotten my final grades for the semester.

The formal was a lot of fun, as was the manner in which Jonathon asked me to it! I basically was sent on a cross campus scavenger hunt down memory lane, and it was pretty amazing :). Each clue was attached to a memory that he and I shared, and it was so wonderful reliving all of those good times at once! I also had to climb a tree for the first time in years, which was fun! We had a great time at the dance--even though Jonathon and I were dates, we still went with our group of friends, and we all had dinner together before we attended the formal. I wore my prom dress (some of you may remember it--very colorful), as did some of my friends, and one friend's sister curled my hair. Here's a pic of Jonathon and I from before the dance:


And here's a few candids:





In the weeks following formal, I had to prepare for and take my final exams. I actually did really well on my finals (95 in one, which required two essays to be written by hand in 2.5 hours… the scariest thing in the world for me xD), but even a 95 couldn't make up for the fact that I didn't finish half of my work on time… but more on that later.
Right now, I'm writing from NC, back at my parents house. I got a ride from another NC student at my college, who we met at a Charlotte summer send off party. Coming home from break filled me with apprehension, and I'm still a bit stressed to be here. Generally speaking, I'm looking forward to going HOME home--back to my residence hall. I am, however, enjoying some of my time here quite a bit, thanks to my sister. First off, we celebrated my birthday at Concord Mills (a mall, for those who aren't NC residents), and my brother and sis in law wound up meeting us there after a while. My facebook status from that night sums up what we did pretty well:



So that was my December 18th :). The 19th was a long day at the house (where I seem to be automatically discontented… need to work on that), but on the 20th Sarah and I went to Old Salem, and that night she let me sleep over at my brother's house (where she lives). When we got up on the 21st, Sarah asked if I wanted to hit an art museum, and naturally I said heck yes! :D. We went to the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, which had an exhibit on loan from the Smithsonian called Modern Masters. One of the pieces I liked:



Back to my grades--they suck this semester. I got one F (for an online course I repeatedly forgot about until I just gave up on catching up), one NC (for an ENGLISH course, which are typically my easiest courses… because I didn't turn in drafts for the second to last project, or the project itself, which were huge parts of the final grade. Everything I turned in I got great scores on), two D's (for my biology lab and for my liberal arts course, which I love), and one B (biology). Why are my grades so bad? Because I didn't complete half of the homework… I don't know how to explain, and don't want to make excuses, but I need to seriously reorganize my mind and stop with the perfectionism crap. I know I've posted it before, that I've got perfectionism issues, but they've never had these kinds of consequences before. I've always been able to keep myself under control and force myself to get crap done, and have always had straight As as a result… so this is kind of hard to digest. But next semester I'm determined to do better--largely because I know, if I don't, I could lose my scholarship and be stuck back in this house for much longer :/.


So, what's next? CHRISTMAS!! :D :D :D. I've done the majority of my shopping online, and am worried that gifts won't arrive before I head back to college (when I'm planning on giving my friends their gifts), but a few things have arrived and been wrapped :). I've already received two very thoughtful gifts from friends, and it's making me even more excited to GIVE gifts! I want to make people as happy as those made me :). My sister and brother and his wife will be coming over Christmas eve to celebrate, and I'm really looking forward to it. Well, I think I'm finally caught up… my goal was to be posting about Christmas BY Christmas, and there you have it. I hope that your holidays all go fantastically, and that you're able to spend time with those you love. That's what really matters in the end, anyway… the people you love, the relationships you have with them, and what you really mean to eachother. I've been so blessed to make such wonderful friends at school, and am looking forward to spending time with my 'family' again. I've also been blessed to have the siblings I do, and in a certain way I'm blessed to have my parents as well. They have, after all, helped shape me into who I am, made me stronger… and for that I'm grateful. There's a lot for me to be grateful for this holiday season, and I betcha there's a lot for you to be grateful for too--if you only take the time to think about it. Merry Christmas everyone, and God bless,

A Work-in-Progress (That's Me!)

Are you perfect? I definitely know I'm not. But I have a problem with that. You see, I've always struggled with perfectionism to the extreme, and academically have always excelled, with perfect grades all the time. I think the issue originated with my dad-I felt like no matter what I did, if I didn't do everything perfectly, he'd find fault and yell at me for it. I felt like, unless I was perfect, he didn't love me. It took me a while to catch on that it didn't matter if I DID manage to do it all perfectly… you can't make someone love you. But that isn't the point here today- the point is that one of my favorite authors ever, Wendelin Van Draanen, and her husband Mark Parsons (also an author), recently really helped me gain some perspective. He wrote a brilliant post called Anything is Better Than Nothing(click for the original post), about taking things one step at a time, and about doing as much as you can and then moving on. I commented sharing my frustrations with myself and perfection, and both of them took the time to give me some amazing advice. I know I'm not the only one who has a perfectionism issue, and really want to share their words of wisdom with you guys. From the lovely Wendelin,

"Elizabeth! I just posted this week's entry when your comment chimed in. I so want to HUG YOU and tell you to not be so hard on yourself. Everything is a work-in-progress, especially ourselves. So just work and progress on your essay and on letting yourself be human. It's OKAY!"

And then from Mr. Mark,

"Some things to keep in mind: When in high school, no one ever asks what grade you got in 7th grade history, right? And once you’re accepted into college, no one cares about how well you did in algebra as a high school freshman. And after you finish college, NO ONE will ever ask what your GPA in college was – they just want to know what your degree was in. And finally, in the ‘real world’ after academia, there aren’t specific letter grades at all for most activities, even work-related ones. The metric that really matters is, how happy & healthy are you and the ones you love? And sometimes, the more you can let perfection go in favor of balance, the happier you might be. So… a lower grade can actually lead to a higher grade, if you can let things go. ‘Letting go’ doesn’t mean you don’t care. It just means you realize that there is a finite amount of time and energy to dedicate to any one project, so when you’ve done the best you can do at that particular point in time, you pat your project on the head and put it out there into the universe with good wishes, then you get on to the next thing. Saying you’re ‘imperfect’ is simply saying you’re human. Welcome to the club - we are all imperfect in some way or another. And sometimes those little imperfections are what give us character and uniqueness, so hooray for imperfection! (And speaking as a musician, perfection = boring.) I think Wendelin has it exactly right – we are all a work-in-progress. As long as we care, and we try to improve and explore and grow, we’re on the right path. No matter how imperfect the results at that particular time."

Their words really spoke to me, and I wasn't in a good place emotionally at the time, so I couldn't be more grateful to them for helping me through that really rough night/several days. I really hope that their words can touch your heart as well, and that if you're like me in regards to perfectionism, you'll join me on the mission of accepting imperfections. Love you guys <3 P.S. Her blog is awesome in general, as are her books, so if you want to learn more, check it out here.