graduation

as i said in my last post, graduation was a surprising ton of fun. if only my dad or colby had been there for some photos, my hulking presence would be less confusing to people who see my mom and wonder which samoan island i was adopted from. just kidding, plenty of people think we look alike so there is never confusion. i just like being little next to dad and colby.

missed lance very much, but president mcnairy gave special recognition to everyone serving overseas who couldn't be with us, and i almost cried. almost, because i held it together in light of the constant camera flashing. and yes, i did find some very humorous pictures of myself on facebook later - i look lost in every single one because i was searching for my fam the whole time. but i have a silly 'i know there are cameras everywhere' smile pasted on my face, so they still work for me - if someone didn't know me they could easily believe i was born in hollywood, not holtwood.

a verse i'm loving - another reminder to me of the power of words.

“Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines, then the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you. Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God. You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows. What you decide on will be done, and light will shine on your ways. When people are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’ then he will save the downcast. He will deliver even one who is not innocent, who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands.” [Job 22:21-30]

college = done

i graduated from college this weekend! it feels amazing and it's still sinking in. sinking in a very good way, not a quicksand way.

college graduation was so much fun, way better than high school. but my whole life is better than high school, so that may not be saying much. to quote mindy kaling's hysterical book: "is everyone hanging out without me?" ...

“Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.” [Mindy Kaling]

sooo wonderfully fair. a shout-out to anyone wondering why high school or even college (or maybe any number of hyped up things?) isn't all that it's cracked up to be: don't sweat it. don't let life be what people tell you it is. life can be whatever you decide to make it each day.

people will tell you something is impossible and you'll achieve it. they'll tell you something is easy and you might fail miserably. that's okay. life isn't about what people tell you, and it's not about what anyone else thinks.

what i'm saying is take everything with a grain of figurative salt. or literal salt if you're a potato chips kind of person, but i'm more of a dark chocolate kind of girl.

be the friend who loves, not the one who judges. that's a big something i'm still learning. someone told me (okay so it was eric johnson in an ibethel podcast and i've never met him but i'll keep pretending it was a message just for me) not to worry about measuring myself day by day, or by the week or the month. THANK YOU.

i can easily get myself into a panic around "church people." i don't know why i put that in quotes and make them sound like creatures of the swamp. i put this pressure on myself to have answers, or some kind of progress report to give, but why? why the constant church anxiety? i have to remind myself to relax, and not get uptight or down on myself.

while week to week i may have doubted myself or been disappointed in the mistakes i made, now that college is over i can see that i have grown A LOT. i have changed and learned A LOT. for instance, i went from someone who thought she had it all decently together and didn't make major mistakes, to someone who made major mistakes and realized she didn't have it all together but that's okay. no one does - and don't let them trick you into thinking they do.

i will miss college. i love learning and being in classrooms listening to people's opinions even if i think what they're saying is completely idiotic. i love listening to professors who are passionate about what they're teaching. or passionate about the rabbit trails they go down, giving you a glimpse of where they'd rather be or what they'd really like to be teaching instead. i loved meeting so many different people, hearing their stories, seeing how they balanced everything to achieve their dreams or get to their next place in life.

i will miss watching the turnover in people's relationships. that sounds terrible and i guess it is, but it's fun to see who people date. and to watch relationships start and progress and sometimes end.

i will miss the gym - especially classes like boot camp. i will miss the pond with the fountain and swans and ducks and squirrels, and the moms with strollers. which sounds creepy, but it's just that seeing cute kids when you're studying something stupid is so wonderful because you remember that this isn't all there is to life. what you're studying is usually nothing more than what you're studying, so breathe easy.

i will miss listening to people complain about school. watching someone ELSE have a meltdown can be quite entertaining. watching my OWN would be mortifying, but definitely fodder for an entertaining movie montage for you.

i will miss the sidewalk chalk notes written all over campus. besides stall talk - the posters hung in bathroom stalls with trivia - i think sidewalk chalk notes are the best way to advertise.

as much as i hated working in the snapper office every tuesday until the wee hours of the morning, i will miss it so much. i will miss interviewing people for fun articles and having a guaranteed byline (or three) every week. i will miss wandering around campus asking people my random weekly question, then taking their picture and listening to the same "oh i look terrible right now" from the girls and laughing at the poses so many of the guys came up with.

working together on something that seems so important, for absolutely zero money or reward other than the satisfaction of a job well done, really pulls people together. i loved the crew of people i got to work with and treasured my college newspaper way more than necessary.

i will probably not soon forget the night i overheard a girl relentlessly bashing the snapper and attacking a typo i had made in a headline. (prrsa instead of prssa ... it was 2am! and my editor missed it too! sigh.) i was devastated to the point of tears (i hate you pms, i really do) and thought maybe journalism is not the route for me. they say you need thick skin. i may have a thick skull and abnormally large head, but thick skin? not so much. it's funny how in the midst of rave reviews of my writing from my professors and nearly everyone i interviewed, what stuck out was one girl's rant. about a typo.

it's even funnier that while we were putting that edition of the paper together i had defended that very girl's face when people were calling it u-g-l-y. but listening to her that night my perception of her went from beautiful blonde to ... something else. beauty is fleeting. words hurt. and i need to be aware of my own words, because besides alligators, does anyone really have thick skin? but even if we don't have thick skin, we're resilient. and we can choose to make life whatever we want it to be each and every day.