Easter Happy Thought

Happy thought for the day:  Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and He lives! 

I know without a doubt that Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind. I am so grateful for his Atonement in my life. Sins, afflictions, infirmities, pains, sorrows. He took all of it upon himself. 

What a joy there is to know that because of his Atonement and Resurrection I will never be alone. I will be forgiven of my sins. I will be comforted in trials. I will be able to return to live with God. 

There is no happier thought. 

P.S. I know you are just anxiously awaiting my pictures and stories from my last few weeks but you are just going to have to wait a little bit longer. I haven't wanted to sit still long enough to put it all together. Sorry!

You're Gonna Miss This

Today something very significant happened and when significant events occur in my life I generally look in two places for meaning. 

The first is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The second is my iPod. 

Between those two I can always find something that fits exactly what I am thinking, feeling, and going through. 

Today my significant event was that I attended my last class as an undergraduate student. 

Crazy, huh?

What's crazier though is the ambivalence I felt as I walked out of that classroom. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. 

Four years of late nights, long hours, painful papers and awful exams. 

Four years of laughing, teasing, loving, playing, hugging and not sleeping. 

Four years of crying, hurting, aching, waiting, wishing. 

Four years of singing, dancing, running, being. 

Four years of new places, new faces. 

Four years of learning and growing and changing in ways that I never imagined. 

I'm so done. Ready to take my finals and pack up. Ready to go home for the summer and breathe the fresh air. Ready to be with my brothers. Ready to work on the farm. And ready to try something new at UNLV in a graduate program. 

But at the same time, I realized today that I really am leaving BYU. I had my last class that was begun with a prayer, my last class that ended with a testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I realized that never again will the Gospel be taught side by side with my curriculum. That never again will I be surrounded by people who like me, signed and agreed to live by an Honor Code. 

My time at BYU is over. It's time for me to leave Provo. I know that. But I could not be more grateful for the experience that I have had as a student at BYU. My four years as an undergrad here were much more I could have asked for. I am not the same girl who started here four years ago. And I am forever grateful to the people who have been my professors, supervisors, classmates, friends. All have been my teachers and I will forever be indebted for what I have learned. 

Trace Adkins says exactly what I'm realizing. 

You're gonna miss this.
You're gonna want this back.
You're gonna wish these days
Hadn't gone by so fast.

These are some good times.
So take a good look around.
You may not know it now.
But you're gonna miss this.

3 finals, 1 commencement ceremony, 1 convocation. 8 days from now my time at BYU is done. And I'm excited. I'm moving on to some amazing things. But I'm sure gonna miss this. 

Detox

Last week I gave my sister my facebook password with instructions to not return it to me until all of my assignments were completed. 

I'm not the worst facebook addict in the world but I definitely use it as a distraction and I needed to stay as focused as possible last week in order to finish all the papers and assignments I had left to turn in. I also blocked Google Reader [how I follow blogs - you HAVE to try it] from my laptop so that I wouldn't waste any time stalking people that way. [I follow 80 something blogs. Wasting time there is a legitimate concern.]

Since I finished my assignments I got my facebook password back and added reader back to my allowed websites. 

The thing is though, I'm realizing that in addition to just being better able to get things done, last week might have been really good for me in another way.  

You see, facebook and blogs are fabulous tools for keeping up with friends, poking your little sister, getting new news, sharing pictures with your mom, getting new recipe ideas and finding new fashion tips.

But they also really good ways to sit and compare yourself with other people and their lives.

Today while I was catching up on blogs I actually started paying attention to the dialogue going on in my head and this is what I heard:
I'm not as smart as her. I'm not as pretty as she is. I'll never be that skinny. I'm not that witty and funny. I don't have time to cook and clean like she does. My pictures are just from a point and shoot. I'm not talented enough  to... 

And I stopped and said now WAIT a minute. This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

It took a week away from all of it, a detox if you will, for me to be able to pay enough attention to myself to realize that subconsciously I've been making myself sick. Absolutely ill.

Do you remember back in October when I did the Recapturing Beauty challenge? [Posts here, here and here.] I learned so much about beauty. That I am beautiful the way I am. I accepted myself as me. And yet, here I am six months later. Realizing that I allow other people to make me feel differently about myself.

I realized that in all my facebooking and blog stalking I'd forgotten that I am unique. 

I'm not saying that I'm going to get off facebook again or that I'm going to stop blog stalking. Because I'm not. 

What I am saying is that I don't need to compare myself while I'm doing it. I am unique. Why would I try to be like anyone else? 

I need to be conscientious of what I think about when I read other people's blogs. Turns out, they aren't perfect. And I don't need to be either. 

My dad and I had a conversation last week during one of my breakdowns. [I always call my dad during breakdowns. Mom first for sympathy but then dad. It goes like this - Rachel: Dad, this is one of those I'm-having-a-breakdown-times-and-I-need-you. Dad: Need me to tell you the world isn't ending and that you'll be okay? Rachel: Yeah. One of those.] He reminded me that I don't have to be perfect. That this life is meant to be a process of constant refinement and betterment. That if I'm better than I was yesterday then that's good enough. 

That probably is something I was already aware of but at that moment it was the lightbulb moment I needed to realize that the changes I've made since getting to BYU are HUGE. And that I can keep making more changes. And that's all I have to do. 

He also told me to take a nap. 

If you are feeling down on yourself or the world taking a nap is probably the best thing you could do for yourself.

This turned into one of my long winded moments. Sorry. The point is. My detox made me realize that I don't have to waste time comparing myself to everyone else. I'm beautiful. I'm doing the best I can. And that's all I can ask of myself. 

And I probably am going to structure my blog/facebook time a little more so I don't find myself there when I'm already feeling crummy. 

P.S. Carly posted some beautiful thoughts that fit right along with what I'm trying to say. Go check it out. She's probably one of the cutest girls on the planet and brightens my day every time I see her. 

Late Nights with Harold

Harold is my pal. Probably the closest thing I've had to a boyfriend all year. 

Tuns out that relationships with the library don't work out all that well though. Bummer. 

Tonight was my last late nighter of my undergraduate career. 

And my last paper of my undergraduate career. 

Do you want to know how it went? 

10:26. I. do. not. want. to. be. here.

11:02. Why am I a procrastinator? Why, oh why, oh why? 

11:37. Ooh. Ooh. I have an idea. Maybe if I smile coyly at the boy across the table he'll volunteer to write my paper for me. Well it was worth a shot. 

12:48. I think I losing it. Do you think I can plead insanity and get out of having to turn in my paper? A girl can try can't she? 

1:37. I'm going home! Not done. But going home anyway and finishing in the morning. And oh so happy about it.  Because I never have to stay late in this library again. And if I live through tomorrow, it's just the finals stretch til graduation. Totally got this. :) 

"Itis"

Since coming to college I’ve had significantly more medical events than I ever had at home when I lived with a doctor. Really  - in high school the most exciting things that happened to me were a burst eardrum [extremely painful] and some torn ligaments in my knee [which sadly ended my soccer playing days for high school]. But that was it. My sister, her story was different – stitches on her face 3 different times, a broken arm. I can’t decide if it’s because she is more accident prone or because I’m rather boring. Maybe both.

Fast forward to freshman year. Three weeks into the semester I die. Okay fine. I didn’t die. But I sure felt like I was going to. I experienced my first and last gallbladder attack [I have lack-of-gallbladder attacks sometimes now but that’s a different story] and had surgery a week later to remove it. I spent another week at home recovering and then came back to try to pick up the pieces of my semester.

Sophomore year I did really well for myself. Losing weight, feeling great and having the time of my life. For President’s day my friend Sean invited my roommates and I to go snowshoeing! It was a lot of fun and I loved it. Long story short though, I got kicked in the face with a snowshoe spike. Head wound = lots of blood. 5 stitches later it turned out to be quite the adventure. Fortunately, you can’t see the scar at all anymore.  

My junior year was the year of swine flu and wouldn’t you know that the girl who loves pigs would go and catch herself the swine flu. It was miserable. Absolutely miserable. I can think of so many other ways I would rather spend a week. I can’t think of a time I’ve been so fatigued.

I thought it was a little ironic after my sophomore year that once again I had a large medical need but after my junior year became quite apparent that I was destined for some kind of significant illness or injury every year.

I’ve been anxiously anticipating the arrival of some kind of injury or illness this year. But it hadn’t happened. A cold. A lack-of-gallbladder attack. But that was it and I started to think I might make it out after all.

But then I started to not feel quite like myself. My symptoms: Fatigue, lethargy, disinterest, lack of motivation, complacency, apathy, laziness, tardiness, indifference, unwillingness to do busywork type assignments, procrastination

You all know what it is.

Senioritis. And I have a particularly crippling case.

Fun fact of the day: "itis" is a suffix which refers to inflammation. Inflammation is the body's basic and typical response to injury, foreign invaders, etc... which leads to repair and healing. Inflammation can also result in some loss in function. 

So senioritis -  It's a normal response to the experience of being a senior. In the end, healing and repair will occur that brings the body back to it's normal state but in the meantime some loss of function can occur. If that doesn't describe senioritis perfectly I don't know what does. 

So my current treatment options include: practicing self rewards (If you do, then you can), giving my facebook password to little sister for one week, making check lists, studying with people so I don’t feel trapped in the library, eating healthy foods, accomplishing one large task per day, doing one planned fun activity daily, and cleaning my bedroom.

All of these can provide some relief to my symptoms but unfortunately, these are all only temporary solutions. The only cure is graduation.

I can see just a glint of light at the end of the tunnel but I can’t see out yet and I HAVE to get out. The only way out is hard work. So I’m going off facebook and blog stalking for the week. I’ll see you next Wednesday when we’re only 8 days away.