More Traditions???

Here at Converse there are already many traditions in place.  There are probably some that I don't even know about yet.  I enjoy Converse's many traditions probably because my family has a ton of traditions...from "Santa" visiting my grandomother's on Christmas morning (generally the youngest adult male in the family, which right now is my fiancee Brandon(: ), to celebrating Passover, to playing Bible trivia on Christmas Eve (guys vs. girls of course).  I LOVE traditions!!!  I found it really difficult to think of a new tradition to have here at Converse.

In order to help me think of a new tradition for Converse, I thought about traditions that we had at our high school.  We did not have that many "traditions," but there were many events that frequently occured.  My favorite, was our collaborative planning on the first Wednesday of every month.  All of the teachers in each department would "collaborate" for half of the school day and the students would come into school late that day.  I know that in college, we do not have the time to take a day off every month, but some occasional breaks besides holidays would be nice.  I was trying to figure out something that does not occur every month so that we would not have as much time off.  I came up with cancelling classes on the 31st of every month.  This would only happen 4 times during our school year.  If the 31st fell on the weekend, classes would be cancelled on either Friday or Monday.

I really miss all of the in-service and collaborative planning days that we had in high school because they would break up the time in between actual holidays (Thanksgiving, Spring Break etc.).  Sometimes, we would go for over a month without having a five day school week...which was pretty awesome.

I do understand that we cannot have the luxury of taking a lot of holidays, but a few more would be great just to have a break once in a while.

What The Future Holds...

I am so excited for that day in about four years when i have graduated and am a Board Certified Music Therapist. Yay!

My dream career would be working as a music therapist.  I am not quite sure which type patient group I would like to work with, but as of right now, I am leaning toward working in a hospital.  I would definitely be working in the Columbia area.  I don't think that my salary would be a big deal to me if I were doing what I wanted to do.  The middle class would where I would like for my family as a whole to be economically.  To help prepare me for this career, I am putting forth s lot of effort and work into all of my classes.  I try to expose myself to as much music therapy knowledge as I can.  And I am (and will have to continue to) work on my patience, as that will be crucial in music therapy.

Of course I would be doing all of this with my husband, Brandon by my side.  (Hopefully, there won't be any little ones in the picture at this point. :/  ) And that right there could be a setback in my planned out future.  Having kids in college...probably not the best idea, and also not in the plan.  But at the same time, I think that being settled down younger has its advantages.  I know that for me personally, Brandon is one of my two biggest inspirations, and he is always there for me.  I think it will benefit me to be married to him as I am starting my career.  

Right now, my star gazing dream is my wedding.  It's only 230 days away!  I can't wait for my new life and what it has in store for me.  I know that I will be so happy with it.  I could write a whole dissertation on my wedding, but I won't do that tonight.

Anyways...in five years from now I hope to be a great music therapist, a wonderful wife, and a good friend.

To The Class of 2018

Wow! I can hardly think six years into the future.  I can not imagine how the college experience might be different in that short amount of time.  Anyways...

Dearest Littles:

My college experience has been and will continue to be quite different than most all of the Converse (excluding Converse II) undergrad students.  The May before I came to Converse I got engaged, and later that summer we decided to get married after my first year of college.  If you have ever watched Say Yes To The Dress, Bridezillas, or Four Weddings, you might know some of the things and decisions that go into planning a wedding.  FYI, there is way more to it than you could even imagine.  Since we decided to plan a wedding while I was in school, I knew that there would be much more to college the first year than just studying and practicing.  Choosing to get married while in college was a huge decision, and while I do not regret it, I am not sure that I would recommend it to anyone besides the brave and determined.

I would warn all of you to be careful about any major, potentially life altering decisions you may make while in college.  For you the decision probably will not be to get married, but maybe to go out drinking on the weekends, having sex, changing majors, or even transferring to a different school (which I do not know why you would want to).  All of these decisions have consequences or major results.  If you go drinking on the weekends and are underage, and you get caught, you could lose your scholarships.  Having sex can result in getting pregnant, which makes college seem almost impossible to get through.  Changing majors or schools do not necessarily have consequences, they can effect the rest of your life.  And if you do decide to get married while in college, come talk to me.

If you only learn one thing from all of the upperclasswomen (I don't know if this is really a word, but I feel like it should be used at Converse), I would want you to learn to be aware of the decisions you make and how they could positively or negatively they could effect the rest of your college years.
Best of luck!

Another Blink Of An Eye 67 Is Gone

 As I was reading this blog prompt about time, a particular song came to mind.  At my high school graduation, our senior choir sang 100 Years by Five For Fighting.  If you do not know this song you should seriously YouTube it...it will make you cry.  In the chorus of the song it mentions "time to buy and time to lose" and these words made me think about what lengths people would go to in order to be able to buy time.

Many people struggle with juggling all the things they have to do in a 24 hour period, whether it be school, work, children, or a number of other responsibilities.  Personally, I do not typically struggle with procrastination (seeing what time this blog is being submitted, you might think otherwise but I normally do not wait this long).  What I struggle with more, is spreading my self too thin.  I have yet to discover how to avoid doing this, except for not committing to too much at a time, which is really subjective.  For example...right now I am a full time student, a leader at my church back home, a committed sister, and am planning my wedding that will be next summer...just to name a few.  I have had to somewhat give up my responsibilities at church, as I will not be at home every weekend because I am involved with so much right now.  This has helped me by freeing up some of my time and causing me less stress.

Another thing I struggle with is prioritizing my to do list.  If I needed to read a chapter of a text book and practice, I would practice first because I do not like reading.  Since I leave the thing I least want to do last (reading), I end up hating every minute I spend on it and it takes longer for me to complete.  I always get things done on time and am very organized but I leave the not so fun stuff for last.  When I do this Ido not have the "fun" (or at least more fun) task to look forward to. Sometimes I do read the chapter first, and it is so much easier just to go ahead and get it over with.

With both of my flaws with time management stated, I have two pieces of advice for the readers of this blog.  One, do not over commit yourself because in the end you will either run yourself ragged, or have to give up some of your commitments.  Two, do the not so fun tasks first so you can look forward to completing the fun tasks later.  If you do these two things, it will save you a lot of stress and trouble in the long run.

I decided to go to college so that I could further expand my education and knowledge.  I wanted to be able to get a decent job (I don't know if that's as likely these days) doing something that I love.  Most of my family has attended the University of South Carolina, and we are all big fans of the  Fighting Gamecocks.  So when I began looking at colleges, USC seemed to be the obvious answer to where I would attend college.  

Towards the end of middle school, I had many people tell me that they thought I would be a great music therapist.  After more than one person had told me this, I began to look into the field of music therapy. I discovered that the school of my dreams, USC, did not have music therapy as a major at the time.  I found out about colleges in the area that did have music therapy such as Converse, Charleston Southern, East Carolina, and Appalachian State.  This may sound silly, but I looked at USC's website every few months to see if they had added the music therapy major to their School of Music.  At the end of tenth grade, USC still had not added it to their majors, and at that point I pretty much gave up on going to USC for music therapy.  I knew that I did not want to go out of state for college because my family is so close and because I would lose my state scholarships, and CSU did not sound very appealing to me personally.  So that left my audition options to Converse for music therapy and USC for music education.  I wanted to major in music therapy, but really wanted to stay in Columbia and go to USC.  Obviously this caused some conflict in my decisions.  Honestly, being close to home was more important to me than being able to major in what I wanted.

Even though I wanted to stay close to home, I still auditioned for Converse in January of this year.  The day of my audition, while I was in a practice room practicing my audition pieces, I felt this feeling that I was where I needed to be.  I hated this feeling though.  I was in a serious relationship, and am now engaged, and could not imagine being away from him and the rest of our families.  A few months later, I auditioned at USC and did not have near as good of an experience as I did at Converse.  Immediately, my college decision had been made just based off of a feeling (the scholarships did not hurt either).

Then I knew that I had to do what I felt was right even though it was not what I had wanted only months prior.  I am so glad that I chose Converse, because I have already made so many friends, love the professors, and just love the college and environment as a whole.  I cannot wait to see what Converse has in my future and where I will go in life from here.

If I were a muppet I would want to be kinda goofy and silly. I've never watched the muppets so I do not know the characters.  I know, that's crazy to have grown up i  the nineties and never have watched the muppets.  My goofy silly muppet character would definitely play the banjo though.