Homesick and FSU

FSU bound

It's scary to imagine that I won't be at Ncf next semester. Only 1 away from this place, but it's incredible knowing it's almost gone already. I can't handle thinking about it. Time is moving so fast.

I made the decision to participate in the program to get a new experience and to have a change. I'm going to miss so much here, but something is calling me away. I'm nervous about the suits and formal wear, and the world outside of new college. I remember how judgmental it is. I'm scared. I don't want to do badly at whatever internship I get. Im leaving my friends and family. I'm leaving barefoot days and fishing and sunsets. I'm leaving my professors who I love. I'm going to a new world. And then I'm coming back to do more schoolwork. Is this what I really want?

I'm going to question my decision until the end. I want this to work. I want to do well. I'm scared. I'll miss the people here. I'll miss my friends. I have so many memories tied here. Even though it's just one semester, it's so much time. Though it will go by quickly, I don't want to lose it all. I haven't told many people yet until I get the official "you are going and have a place and have registered for classes." I'm scared to look fancy and professional. I'm scared of being restricted. I'm scared of the 9 to 5. I might love it too. I just know I'm going to learn so much. And I want to have this experience. I want to meet new people. I want to see this area of the world. I'm sure I'll be lonely, but... I'm going to try my best to meet new people. I'm scared to see old friends from high school. Not that I've changed that much, but I've been working with people who are open minded for so long that it's hard to remember what it's like to be with the rest of the world. Like going back to high school where no one really listened and everyone had strong opinions and hated people who didn't agree. Those people I'm scared of. The mean girls and guys. Thankfully living off campus will give me a break from that. And living with another NCF person will allow me to vent with someone who understands. 

It's coming so fast and I haven't even gotten halfway through the semester yet.

I sense the level of anxiety building.

I think I need to talk to someone, because my worries and words have been coming out sometimes without any real way to stop them. This is what I get for not going to therapy. 

I'm going home in about 2 weeks, and I'm so happy. I've never been homesick as much as I have this year. Mainly for band and animals and other people. I think living alone is making me lonely, too. I miss real human talks, and hugs. Being around someone is vastly different than being alone or on the phone with someone. (Who I also think is slowly fading. We'll see.)

There is a presence missing in my life that I can't explain. Maybe more vitamin D and ginkgo. 

I also spent a lot of money recently. We'll see how that one goes. Crossing my fingers I don't get killed for it.

I just want cuddles and for someone to listen to me and understand. It's so hard to find. 

I painted a shirt

Cop out dream blog post

My dream from last night

There were a lot of bits and pieces. There was the giant sharks teeth I found, and I struggled to find a bag for all of them. The high slope I had to climb to get to them, the huge waves crashing while I watched the spot where I was minutes ago.

The dining hall where I hid, waiting for gunshots. The lights went out, I was on the floor huddled under the window that looked out on a large area. Somehow I was with people who were looking for the assassins with night vision goggles. I remember my mom standing near me as I crouched and wanting to tell her to get down too, but I couldn't make a sound because the assassins could hear. When the lights came back on everything was ok.

We saw the assassins running, but I was on the beach.

We were driving and after a moment I figured out where we were and where we needed to go. There were hills. I had been there before, I had shopped down there and had driven that way, and jumped over houses down hills. 

I fought off multiple guys with a bamboo pole until the cops showed up.

Photos representing this boy and I

He makes me happy. And it's a feeling unlike any other. Every love is different. This one is defined by staying on the phone and listening to each other sleep. We argue sometimes, but he's one of the most forgiving people I've ever met. And I admire that about him. He's like me in a few regards, and different in others. He makes me laugh and smile. He doesn't plan or worry nearly as much as I do. His heart is incredible, and confusing. I've grown accustomed to falling asleep to his breathing and calling him whenever I get the chance. His voice is soothing and he says my name a lot, each time I can feel him acknowledging me as someone who exists. 

I don't want to mess this up.

And I haven't been writing as much because he keeps me up late. 

Why am I doing this?

If I know I'm not going to come back, why one last time?

Anxiety?

I don't want my professor to think that I gave up and didn't try. I just can't handle this. I'm torn between calling it quits, or persevering knowing I will fail. I think that my life has always been dictated by how I feel and what I understand about myself. 

I know that, in a half a semester, I cannot fully be able to understand or have enough time to study these things and keep my head above water. I have a ton of other things I need to fulfill. I want to focus on getting my writing under control. I don't think I can stay normal and understand all of anatomy and chemistry and the variation between vertebrates in just a month while creating a project and doing RA things and trying to improve my writing.

What I'm being taught is so interesting, but I know I don't have enough prior knowledge or time to understand it all. There is so much information hit at me in this class in so little time, I can't possibly understand everything given to me in a class period. So I am at the point where I am ignoring it. The amount of terms are so vast in just one part of the small intestine, that I can't understand. 

I just can't continue it. And it makes me sad that I know this class is my last, but I'm doing this for me this time. It doesn't hinder me in any way. I need to fully understand the things I have in my other classes because they are important for me to keep going. 

Concert WrapUp

5SOS Concert Experience

There are a lot of points I would like to touch on regarding the concert I went to.

First, somehow everything with the hotel worked itself out. I accidentally booked it for the wrong date, but thankfully didn't have to pay extra. Hannah came with me which was very lucky. I arrived and braved out my social anxiety which made me sick to my stomach and shake like a little leaf. I got all checked in for the VIP thing and was in line with a hundred or so teenage girls, plus a couple parents and guys. The run-down was given. The girl who looked like an actual college kid took questions and she considered one of mine which I was super happy about even being thought of. The band played a song then sat right in front of us. I was 5 rows away from the stage. They answered some questions and played another song then I went and bought a poster and a new keychain. I hung out at a circular bar ish red bull table and rocked out by myself. Then it poured twice. Thankfully the poster was OK and I had brought a little plastic bag for my wallet and ipod.

After the rain was over the same girl who took questions walked past me and I tapped her on the shoulder and told her how pretty she was. We discussed the rain and I said I am just going to enjoy it if it comes and she said she liked my attitude. Which was actually really cool.

The concert was very loud. Like, ridiculously loud. The opening act was actually really good.

After that I sat there and realized a couple things.

1. I felt really really old and salty about a lot of things. There were so many teenage girls who you could tell didn't care about anything beyond their bubble. I hope I wasn't too much like that when I was 15.

2. The audience was clearly not what the band wanted to play for. The majority was not punk at all, they just dressed the part. The kids who actually were "emo scene punk" that are grown up now had been made outcasts at that age. And being "punk" means enjoying music because it saved our lives. Though I don't look at all punk, there are parts of me that are. And I wasn't super stoked for all of the girly shrieks over how the guys looked. I missed the actual punk rock concerts and seeing people who were bullied or cast aside and ignored in school come together and enjoy music and appreciate the humans who created something that helped save us from ourselves.

Finally concert was over, which was actually really good I was just too salty to fully appreciate it. It was a great experience, I just don't think I will ever go back to a concert like that with that fanbase.

I thought about going out to eat at the Hard Rock Hotel. I loved skateboarding around the parking lot. After I realized I didn't want to make the trek to the hotel, I snuck into a barn. Surprisingly I met a woman there who worked the night shift feeding and checking on the horses. And she had 2 little puppies that I hugged. We talked and apparently her daughter is a junior at FSU on full scholarship. She also told me different programs and opportunities there and in Sarasota working with kids and at barns and stuff. This one horse wouldn't stop neighing and I loved it. She also made sure I didn't have far to ride home.

After leaving, because technically I wasn't supposed to be in there, I skateboarded back past the entrance and caused the tour bus to stop because it was turning perpendicular to where I was riding. I hopped off my board and waved at the driver I think as the bus left. Then I resumed skateboarding past cars and enjoying myself. I also ran across the busy street and made it to the hotel all sweaty. After a shower Hannah took me to Steak and Shake and I found out that Kim's roommate actually saw me at the concert and knew it was me.... which was a little weird and super cool at the same time.

So that's the summary. I got some great pictures and had a new experience.

I'm looking forward to going to the Sleeping with Sirens and All Time Low concert in October and getting smashed against a bunch of crazy insane punk teenagers who don't care about how they look. 

Not Homework

Surround yourself with people who you'd truly consider calling at 2 AM when you feel the pressure breaking your chest and collapsing your heart.

This doesn't mean you'd call them. You can lay in bed and imagine what they'd say when they pick up the phone. Somehow they'd make you feel alright again. They'd listen. They'd stay on the line so you knew someone else was alive.

In a crowd you'll always look for their face. You get drunk on how they treat you and the idea that they really see who you were and all you were trying to be.

There is a manilla folder somewhere buried in a box in Atlanta that holds paper creased down the middle with smudged words in pencil and a page number at the top. 6th grade was a weird transition period. Back then, I didn't worry about looking cool. I wore boys clothes, I sat in the front of the class. I daydreamed. I somehow managed to get good grades based on pure luck. My english teacher's name was Ms. Ingram. She was much like a grandmother, with a lot of indifference. It was her last year of teaching before retirement. In her class we read "A Wrinkle in Time." Well, not so much "read" as listened to an old cassette tape of a monotonous voice reading the book. I read the book about 7 pages ahead of the tape because I felt much better reading alone. We worked out of a small red vocabulary book, and I sat in the back of the class due to the alphabetical order of things. I would tear out a piece of notebook paper and write an entire page, then put it behind the others in order and fold it closed with a big teal paperclip that I have to this day somewhere in my dorm room. It was a story about an adventure in a world away from the one I was struggling through, with characters like myself in thought and action dealing with scenarios that were much more interesting than the ones in school. Page after page began to pile up. I stored them beside my bed on a teal nightstand each night. If I had an incredible idea I would turn on my light and write as fast as possible so I didn't lose where I wanted to go. Some of the pages are stained with water from biking home in the rain. The format is terrible, and the dialogue is messy, but it was my world.

At the end of my 6th grade year, people wrote in my yearbook about how they supported my writing and knew I would be published someday, possibly famous. And then, with everything, life got in the way. I became busy with band and tennis and homework. There was little time to spend writing whatever came to mind. I started losing my ability to daydream because of my mental and physical health, and all of the outward pressure. In 8th grade I still had the dream of going to the Iowa writers college and study creative writing. But then, life got in the way. I had to consider getting a job, life beyond high school and college, actually being able to sustain myself. The outside impacts were detrimental to my mind, and I was forced to look at reality for what it was; disappointing. 

Self Efficacy Homework... Yes.

Anxiety is one of those things I have constantly struggled with, especially in testing situations. It has certainly changed how I write, especially at the college level. There are often many different barriers that I have to overcome in order to finish a paper. In a given time, there is so much going on that writing a paper is just another beast and not a part of the learning process anymore. I know that I can ultimately write a decent paper, but over the course of my college career it has become harder to care enough about the process and the product, especially with the constant feedback telling me how I am misguided, with no other option from my professor. 

Bloom and Broder's idea that a problem solver cycles through tension and relaxation and once the problem is solved the solver feels finished despite how well done it is resonated strongly with me. Often when revising papers I struggle with fully looking at the work from a different perspective due to my sickness from wrestling with the initial process. 

Locus of control is not a new concept for me either, I just was unaware that it had a name. I would like to believe that there is some fate deciding which papers are graded well and which aren't. But even so, that would mean fate was working against me anyways. I have understood for a long time that my writing and my grades come from what I put in them. Even though I have a desire for "pleasing eternal authorities" so that I can graduate, I know that my writing has a sense of self because I know where the paper comes from and the grade attached. 

Cognitive processing of information is selective, and it is mostly not used when I write papers. When I am learning about certain topics, I immediately connect it to my life or my view on the world. Specific material is influential on my life because it explains parts of the world or how people operate or why something is. When writing a paper, I have this mental block because I know the research that I am doing may not necessarily make me a better person. 

All three of these variables have impacted my sense of self-efficacy in a negative way. There are a lot of other influences from my life that also have molded my view on my writing, but overall, I know if I work hard enough I can write a great paper. I just need help because alone I cannot do it anymore.