My Lenten Resolution

Tomorrow begins one of the most dreaded seasons of the year for Catholics: Lent. Sure it’s a great time to self-reflect, and to challenge ourselves to go without some things that make life a little more enjoyable, but I still dread the somber season.

            During my childhood it was always a true test to give up sweets for 40 days. The task made Easter morning that much sweeter to see a basket full of Peeps and a chocolate bunny since it had been such a long time since I had consumed processed sugar.

            I still like to give up sweets just for that reason, and it is still difficult to go without the occasional mindless dessert.

            Last year I wanted to try something even harder. Try and guess what it was. I’ll give you a few hints first. What do teenagers spend most of their time doing? What is important to a high schooler? What would most teenagers do without this particular thing?

            Before I give you the answer, I’ll answer those questions for you. Teenagers spend their time on the Internet. A social life may be the most important thing when you’re 17. And most teenagers I know would self-destruct without this precious commodity in their life.

            You guessed it…Facebook. I gave up Facebook last year, and am attempting to try it again this year.

            It was hard to resist the temptation of one small click on the computer to see what everyone in my inner and outer social circles were up to. I slipped a couple of times in the first few weeks, but I got a little better as the 40 days went on. I did however spend a lot of time on the site on Sundays (which don’t count towards the 40 days).

            I love this challenge. As a college student I spend a superfluous amount of my time on my computer. As unwilling as I am to admit this, I probably spend at least an hour of my time a day on Facebook, and much more on other various sites.

            I think the next 40 days will be a good cleanse of my horrible habit of Facebook creeping, playing Family Feud and browsing the news feed. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for such a great time waster, social connection, game forum and small visual model of my world. But I need a break from my silly and harmless addiction. Lent is the perfect opportunity.

            So goodbye, Facebook, I’ll see you on Sundays and we will be fully reunited on Easter.

            Maybe God didn’t have these kinds of sacrifices in mind when He sent His Son to die for our sins, but in my mind this is a big sacrifice that will be good for me.

P.S. Since most of you read my blog from the posts I put on Facebook, I might sneak on to put up my newest posts in the next 40 days.

Like pins in a map

In my high school college-counseling office there is a map with pins and flags in it signaling where all the graduates have spread to attend college. There are a lot of pins in Colorado, a few spread throughout the West coast and Midwest, and there are very few on the East Coast.

            I feel like when I came to college, the opposite happened. The pins were not where we are attending college. The pins signify where we come from.

            This past weekend, President’s day, had me thinking about all the people in this country. A lot of people in my dorm had friends from home visit them. The most interesting thing is that they are not just from these hometowns where we put our pins, but they also go to colleges around the country.

            I met someone originally from Georgia, but goes to school at the University of North Carolina. I met someone originally from Chicago, but goes to NYU.

            We are not just college students in one place. We are college students with different experiences to pull from.

            As I prepare to visit my best friend this weekend in Boise, Idaho, I’m thinking about the places I come from.

            One of my first blog posts was about being fully aware about where I am from. It is important to remember where we come from. Even though this is still true, I now have two places of reference.

            I am a Colorado native and a Boston transplant. I know the beauty of the mountains and the ease of public transportation. I know the sporadic nature of Colorado weather and the convenience of having a city at my fingertips.

            I know what it’s like to be a Catholic school survivor, a journalism student at an outstanding university, a best friend, a daughter and just an average college girl.

            Who knows where I’ll be able to reference in years to come. Perhaps someday, I’ll spin a globe and say, “I don’t just know what that place is like, I know what it’s like to live there.”

            Or I’ll look at a map full of pins and think about the girl I met from there or the boy I met who went to college there.

            Just like the experiences we are, we are the pins in a map.

For my thoughts on Justin Bieber visit my new entertainment blog The Popcorn Critic http://popcorncritic.blogspot.com/

Fill your world with love

“All we really want is love’s confusing joy.” This ancient proverb was written by the poet Rumi and was a tying line in last year’s star packed movie Valentine’s Day. This line is my Facebook status and latest tweet today.

            On this holiday, this quote defines a lot. I love Valentine’s Day. Most people, especially single people, hate this day. But the way I see it, this day isn’t just about love shared between couples. It is a day to express to all the people in your life who make you feel loved that you are grateful for them and you love them too.

            When I was a kid, I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of loving a God I didn’t know or couldn’t see more than I loved my parents. I still sometimes can’t. I love my parents “to the moon and back.”

            They brought me into the world, raised me to be a caring, thoughtful, smart individual, and did it with all the love in their hearts. They are most deserving of my love because no matter what I did or who I was, I was always deserving of theirs. So thank you, Mom and Dad, for all the love you put into my life so in turn I can be a loving person too.

            The next people I want to express my love for are my two best friends of nearly 15 years. Because of Katie and Jenna, I know what it means to make your own family out of the people God puts in your life. They have loved me unconditionally for so long, I would be a bitter unloving friend without them.

Jenna’s love is sometimes tough love, but sometimes that is the only kind we need. She pushes me to be a better person because of the way she loves me.

Katie’s love is a fun love. She knows so much about me and loves me anyway.

I also need to acknowledge Taylor and Ellie, my fun loving friends from high school who show love in their everyday actions. They care so much about making the world a more fun place to live by loving and living in a way that only they can.

My newest love is for Chelsea and Kait, my very best friends in Boston. The way they love those in their lives so fiercely inspires me to feel more about everything in my life. They grasp life with every inch of love that fills them. They deserve my love because we took each other in and made college what we wanted.

Love is what you want it to be. It can be passionate, friendly, endearing or heartbreaking. Whatever it is in your life, make sure you cherish that feeling of wonderful, wonderful confusing joy of love. Fill your world with the love that others give you.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Super Bowl Blunders

I hope everyone enjoyed the Super Bowl this past Sunday. For me it was certainly an interesting experience.

            Maybe I should start by saying, that even though I don’t particularly like sports, I do watch the Super Bowl. I think the fact that our country puts so much money, time and energy into a professional sport is sad in a way. But it also says a lot about our culture, but I digress.

First of all, this was my first Super Bowl not in Colorado. I can remember most of my Super Bowls. The very American tradition is more about the social gathering to me rather than the sport itself. Ask me who won the Super Bowl in 2007, and I couldn’t even tell you who played in it. But I could tell you where I was, who I was with, what I ate and possibly even my favorite commercial.

This year was still about the social gathering. My dorm threw a party, and unlike the Halloween disaster I mentioned earlier this year, it was actually successful, until half time when everyone left.

We had pizza, wings, chips and brownies, all the foods necessary to make it feel like the Super Bowl. We sat in our dark basement with the semi-quality TV and watched the game unfold. I’m not talking about the football game; I’m talking about the commercialism game.

The most noticeable difference of my Super Bowl experience this year was that I watched it with about 30 boys.

If you didn’t know this already, my dorm building is 15 percent girls and 85 percent boys. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I was watching the game surrounded by predominantly males.

Now one of my favorite things about the Super Bowl is the commercials. These are supposed to be the best ads of the year, right? Well…

Now I truly understand the sexist psychology behind most of the story lines of the commercials. As I sat there in the middle of a room filled with boys and watched the ads before me, I never expected the reaction that erupted.

Take the first ad for example. The kitchen remodel Bud Light commercial received laughs from all the boys in the room.

Do ad agencies know that the Super Bowl isn’t just for men anymore? Hello! It’s not an American tradition for nothing. I think someone is forgetting that half of America is composed of women. We deserve some ads too.

To be honest, the best part of this year’s Super Bowl was not the once again sexist advertisements; it was the fact that Glee came on afterwards.

Breaking the Bland

Most readers have probably noticed how much I change the design of my blog.

            In the course of six months I have had six different color schemes. I want to apologize. It might be exciting to click on the link to my blog and see a new background, or it might be just frustrating.

            But I will explain my actions.

            I would consider myself a pretty boring person. I might not sound like I have a boring life, but I do things in a routine. I just stick to the same plan, way of doing things and lifestyle.

It’s not that I don’t want some excitement in my life. Trust me, I keep waiting for the excitement to begin. But changing the pictures and colors on my blog, my little piece of the world that is truly all mine, gives me the sense of excitement I sometimes need. So the next time you see the background change, just know, I was probably bored.

I find it interesting that this is the only thing in my life I am willing to change at the click of the mouse. I could dye my hair, but I think you and just about anyone I have ever met would never forgive me. And I might never forgive myself; of all the things God gave me, he gave me great hair.

I could change the backdrop on my laptop, but the black and white photo booth snapshot of my two best friends from home and me is perfect.

I could switch up my wardrobe, but I like being comfortable and simple. I could try a new style but I am not a runway model.

I could change my profile picture, but the one I have works so well. I could try a new sport, but God certainly did not give me athletic ability.

I could change my major, but I’m not that brave. I could try any myriad of new things, but hey, I’m comfortable. What can I say? I’m pretty darn boring.

And would I trade my perfectly boring life for something more exciting? I don’t think so. The grass is always greener, and I’m happy right where I am. I just get bored sometimes.

P.S. Check out my new blog about my thoughts on the entertainment world. The Popcorn Critic click on the words The Popcorn Critic in teal. 

Proof that I was bored and wanted a new blog. 

Now is the time to be selfish

If you don’t already know what makes Northeastern so special, then I wouldn’t call you a true follower of my blog, but that’s ok, I’ll remind everyone.

            We have what is called the Co-op program. This means that after three semesters, students have the option to apply and take a full time job, not an internship, but an actual job at big name companies.

For six months the student works as a full-fledged employee. Then she returns to school for more classes and eventually does it all over, repeating the process three times. So yes it takes five years to graduate, but when you come out, you have a year and a half of actual work experience.

Before anyone gets to go on co-op, we must take a class that teaches us how to write a resume, a cover letter, how to dress for an interview and how to interview successfully. I am currently in this class, although, I won’t co-op until next spring.

This week in class, our instructor gave us an assignment: plan out your college experience. I have to write on a piece of paper when I want to go on co-op, when I want to be in school in Boston and when I want to go abroad.

This task might not seem so hard for the average college student, but I suddenly found myself faced with a daunting task. I wanted to live in the now, not five years from now.

For a person who always desperately clung to a plan for my life, I suddenly became a “Why don’t we just wait and see what happens,” kind of person.

It’s not that I don’t want to plan my future; I just want to have options. What if I want to take a vacation or hop on a plane to Europe on a whim? Northeastern is saying I can do that only if I plan ahead.

So what do I do? Do I study abroad? Do I do three co-ops? Do I go abroad during a summer session? Do I only study?

The future is certainly up in the air.

I had a friend telling me about the pressure to stay in touch and be the person she was in high school and come home as much as she could. But she said something that made me realize she is absolutely right.

“Now is the time to be selfish.”

In ten, twenty, thirty years, who knows what my life situation will be, but I probably won’t have the chance to study abroad for six weeks, a summer or a semester. I won’t have the chance to take a job for just six months to give it a try and come back to the classroom afterwards. I won’t have the chance to be young, make mistakes, find myself and stumble upon my future. That is something I am sure of.

            So now is the time to be absolutely selfish. I need to think about me, what I want to do, what will make me happy and what will lead me to the opportunities of a lifetime. 

Returning Home

In one of my first blog entries I wrote about the importance of remembering where you come from in order to move progressively towards the future. This past week I had the chance to go back to some of my roots and take my own advice.

            Now I didn’t want to be one of those pathetic kids who comes back to high school the first chance they have simply because they can’t let go of high school, but I did go back to Holy Family anyway.

            I told myself it was because I wanted to wish my best friend’s younger sister a happy 16^th birthday at school. But I was using this as an excuse to go back and see all the teachers I really did miss. I wanted an excuse to go back and show everyone, “Hey, look, I made it.”

            Going back reminded me of all the things I did miss about high school, but it also helped me to see that moving on is a good thing.

            It helped me to see that life goes on without you sometimes, so don’t dwell on that and live your own life. Holy Family certainly kept going, even without the Class of 2010. However, it was comforting to know that we are missed.

            The best thing about going back was seeing the pride in my former teachers’ faces when they heard I was succeeding.

I got the chance to talk to a few students about my college experiences. I remember being a junior in high school with college on the horizon like it was yesterday. I blinked and here I am about to head back to school in Boston for my second semester of my first year of college.

But talking to the students made me realize that no matter how many people tell you about college, how many books you read about it, how much you prepare for it, college is a surprise.

You just have to take that leap from high school to college with blind faith that Holy Family gave you everything you need to succeed. I learned for myself that they did.

Mr. Gumerlock gave me a good sense of humor to take with me. Mr. Good taught me some very important advice about beginnings. Mr. Bishop and Mr. Domko gave me self-confidence in my academic habits. Mrs. Prew gave me some important lessons about letting go and being myself no matter what. Mr. Blair taught me to always believe in myself. Mr. Galmish taught me that I wasn’t screwed for college assignments. And Mr. Wilson taught me that I would end up at the college where I was supposed to be.

They all made me into a great college student ready for success. It was good to look back at Holy Family because now I’m focused to begin again.