/Classes/

These are the classes I still need to take before I graduate:

Remaining GE's:
-Civilization 1
-Civilization 2
-Third Year Writing
-American Heritage (Retake)

Major: Family Life- Marriage and Family Emphasis:
-Aging in the Family
-Cross-Cultural Family
-Advanced Family Processes
-Moral Foundations in the Family OR Family and Public Policy OR Marriage and Family Therapy

Minor: Gerontology:
-Sociology of Aging
-Internship (I plan on fulfilling this credit through working with local hospice care.)

Minor: Psychology:
-LDS Perspectives in Psychology
-Personality
-Intro to Social Psychology
-Psychological Statistics

I'm kind of crazy and want to take 18 credit hours for one semester so I can finish both my major and my gerontology minor in just one semester. Those 18 hours would include the internship and if I did that then I probably wouldn't work during that semester. I don't think it would be that different from this semester since I'm currently taking 15 hours and working a part-time job. I would finish my psychology minor in another semester and take one of my civilization classes. Then during a spring term I would take 9 hours of my GE's.

I really just want to finish as soon as I possibly can. But a major thing I need to keep in mind is how well I will perform if I'm rushing through these courses. I need good grades to get into grad school. Booooooooooo.

How do I still have so many classes?

I'm considering dropping the psychology minor. That would leave me with just two more semesters of school and no suicidal tendencies. The psychology minor would probably be helpful in getting into grad school though.

I DON'T KNOW. School drives me crazy. I want to finish it as soon as is humanly possible but I am so glad I'm planning on serving a mission. (Not that I consider a mission some kind of vacation.)

Also. I am so dang mad that I am probably not going to get an A in my stupid Family Adaptation and Resiliency class. How can my professor approve my term paper's research question, let me turn in research assignments pertaining to that specific research question and then tell me after I turn in my detailed outline (a month before the term paper is due) that my question is probably not what he is looking for in the paper? Thankfully I won't have to completely change my question but I will have change it around a bit and find more research that deals directly with the changed question. SOOOO lame.

But in other news, my siblings come next week! (As do two exams.)

Sweet Disposition

I have this song I've been listening to recently that feels nostalgic even though it's a recent discovery. I've created memories to play through my mind as I listen to it, memories of things that haven't actually happened. It's weird because the memories are just as real as the music. The music starts playing and I remember the wind blowing through my hair as I sit in the passenger seat with the window rolled down during a road trip I've never taken. I recall running around downtown Houston and just staring up at skyscrapers and feeling like my life had all the potential in the world, feeling like anything at all was possible, though that's never occurred.

The song isn't particularly remarkable. I don't know what it is about it that made me play it on repeat while I fell asleep the night I downloaded it from iTunes or what kept me playing it on repeat the whole next day and why I have it playing on repeat right now. It's made me happy enough to jump out of bed and start dancing. It's made me hopeful enough to think everything is going to be just fine. But it's losing its magic. I told Brenden about the song and how much I love it and then I played it for him and felt embarrassed by just how unremarkable it is and how meaningless it was for him. How can such a song that has no real memories attached to it mean so much to me? I'm really trying to figure it out.

As I continue to listen to it while feeling the way I've been feeling lately has made the song become more sad than happy. I'm associating it with sadness, loneliness, confusion. I'm listening to it when I'm by myself trying not to cry, creating memories that hardly resemble road trips and feelings of opportunity.

But I refuse to stop listening to it. This song that has made its way into my music library a whole three days ago has helped me in a strange way. Even though it's new to me, it makes me think of high school and the feelings I had then when I had college to look forward to, when there was potential and hope for my life to get better. Are these really supposed to be the best years of my life? Am I going to discover later, just as I did with my time in high school which I hated, that I should've been more appreciative, that I should've paid more attention to the small things that are quickly fading and to the big things that I'm disregarding?

Emptying.

I am so used to trying to be the strong one.

I always pretend that I know why things are happening or if I really don't know at all then I pretend that I understand that everything happens for a reason and just pretend to accept it. People think I'm fine because I appear fine, I sound fine, I seem to understand EVERYTHING. Sometimes my act doesn't hold. I slip up and forget my lines or add extra props to help me get through it. Sometimes when I'm trying so hard to be normal or strong, people wonder about me because being so normal during certain events ISN'T normal.

Sometimes I get horrible feelings and impulses that can only be overcome through sleeping. I feel the need to destroy things and myself. I want to throw things off my shelves, snap things in half, break my own bones and hear the satisfying crack and feel a new pain flood my senses. Something that seems to have changed since freshman year about these impulses is that I am able to still remain rational throughout them. Before, I never considered the consequences. Perhaps it's not rationality that prevents me from acting on these impulses but a keener sense of, "oh look! pain for people who love you!" And even when I'm feeling these selfish impulses to destroy everything around me including myself, I still care about the people I love and I don't want to put them through the same things that I've made them experience all through high school and into college. So I remain quiet, silent, strong and fight these impulses by retreating to sleep. I fight by retreating. I'm too weak to actually FIGHT what I feel and so I retreat to sleep and hope that the mere process of not dealing with those impulses is enough to get them away.

It's interesting to me that so many of my friends seemed to think I knew all the answers to their issues throughout high school. Now I realize it's because I pretended to be strong and knowledgeable. The reason I don't have many close relationships now is because I am afraid to show my vulnerabilities. I am scared to show that I am weak and that I don't know the answers because then I don't think people will appreciate me anymore. I think that one of the big reasons Missy and I are such good friends despite our differences is because she saw me at my lowest point. She's the one who called the hospital and rode in the ambulance with me. She's the one who stayed by my side the entire time I was in the hospital even though I was mostly asleep. And then when I got home, she took care of me instead of getting rid of me. I need to stop trying to hide my weaknesses thinking that people won't like me because of them. When I only have one person to whom I confess all my pains, fears and concerns, I weigh them down and it isn't fair for them. But then I feel like I should just be able to deal with these things, like I should be stronger, like I shouldn't share anything with anyone because they're not their issues and if just maybe I was a better person I would be able to handle them and I don't want to admit that I'm not a better person to anyone.

Everyone knows I'm not perfect. No one is perfect but I still feel the need to act as though I am.

Last night I talked to my dad a little bit about what's going on, and it felt so nice to just unload some of my feelings of confusion and frustration while not pretending to be strong at all, not pretending like I was trying to do a noble thing.
I also talked to an old friend, whose relationship with me has been rather strained and somewhat awkward since freshman year, beginning the conversation with, "I don't really have any friends, can I talk to you?" And we spoke and he looked at things objectively and presented them in that way. And something he told me really stuck with me. "It is what it is." What? You mean I can't change what's happened so I have to deal with it now? You mean this is the current situation I'm in and I can't do anything to change it?
Yes.
A simple, straightforward, "It is what it is" was all I needed to hear. He told me I can make the situation however bad or good I want to.

I have to stop asking myself, what if I did this? or what if I do that? or what if we change this or that? I need to accept it.

It is what it is.

Note:

I can enjoy being around people who are not like me but I cannot be anyone other than myself.

This is a time of self-discovery. Why is it so hard?

School

I so desperately want to be back at Brigham Young University.

All the times I had told myself I was never going to end up at BYU, that it was my last choice, that I would rather go almost anywhere else but BYU, I wish I could've seen how very much I was going to love it there. I wish I could've seen that it was actually a place where I was going to fit in and find the friends I had longed for. But how was I to know? When making my college decision I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had settled on a major (that I eventually changed) but besides that, I didn't know who I wanted to become.

Now that I know who I want to be, I am locked out from the place I can be best trained.

I know I can still become that person through other experiences, other universities. But I feel my progress may be slowed. My progress has already been slowed by my sheer idiocy. There are consequences for my actions and I have no one to blame but myself if I cannot go back to BYU.

hello.

sickness.

Nonononono

I had all of my midterms planned out. I understood my D&C midterm to start on Wednesday. That's what I thought I read in the syllabus, now that I look at it more closely I suppose it could mean that the midterm is any time between the two dates not necessarily available on the first date. Crapcrapcrap.

My flight leaves at 10:30 AM on Thursday morning. The Testing Center doesn't open until 10 AM on Thursday. There is no way I could take it on the regularly scheduled times. Mom is checking to see if I can change to a later flight so I can take my exam Thursday morning. This massively sucks.

Friday I was in shock. Saturday I felt hopeless. Sunday I had my faith restored. Today everything seems to be falling apart again.

Why does it have to be like this?

Questions: College

Is it wrong that I find researching colleges incredibly interesting and exciting?

Is it bad that I am enjoying looking up schools to which I may transfer?

Question

Why do the simplest things nowadays make my eyes start to water and create this horrible knot in my chest?