It happened.

I turned into a college student! As of right now, I have $7.61 in my checking account, I just finished my homework that is due at 2:00, I'm about to take a nap in the library, and I wasted a ridiculous amount of time on Facebook last night when I should've been sleeping. I never thought I'd see the day! Here are the reasons why I thought I could escape the stereotype.

1) I am good with money. I would always have about $100 padding in my checking account so that it was there if I really needed it, and I wouldn't have to worry about overdrawing. Somewhere along the line, that $100 disappeared and now I wait until my allowance comes in to spend money. I could always put the $100 buffer back in, but now, being a college student, I'd probably just spend it on random stuff and then my savings account would slowly drain away like my checking. I'm still good at budgeting my money, and I always have a good idea of how much I have in my account and what I should be spending it on. I've actually become a better judge of when to spend money, and I don't do it as frivolously as before.

2) Even though I am the worst procrastinator in the world, I still get things done the day before so that I'm not so stressed out before the class. But that was just High School. Now I add in time right before the class to get work done. The concept was pretty foreign to me at first, but now it seems normal.

3) Ok, the nap might not actually materialize, but I never thought I'd be this big of a proponent of the library. I mean, it's great. Its walls hold many important works that should help me in my studies, and it provides a good atmosphere conducive to studying, but I always thought I could just do my work in my room. Not so, my friends. At home, perhaps my room could double as a study room. Not at college. It's almost impossible for me to get any good work done in my room. I don't have any desk space and there are far too many distractions. I came a lot to do Chem Lab, it's really good for that. And when I need to just get work done in a big chunk, being at the library is a real help. Who knew?

4) When I first got Facebook, I wondered how people could find it so addicting. I mean, it's just a bunch of profiles and once you've seen your friends' once, you don't need to see it again. Oh boy. That was before Facebook did pictures and before I discovered Facebook stalking. Webshots is a huge facet of the appeal of AOL, and the fact that it is now in such a convenient form is quite awesome. Or horrible. Depending on how you look at it. It's like webshots to the extreme! Facebook stalking is also amazing, finding people and how you know them and trying to figure out everything about people you meet or who are in your class. And then there's wall writing. Lets just say that I never expected it to reach this level, but I am definitely addicted to facebook.

So, yeah. I'm a stereotypical college student. The funny thing is, I love it. Absolutely love it. I've been looking forward to this all through high school, and now it's here and I'm soaking up every minute of it. Every lovely detail of college is my favorite. It's hard to explain some parts of it, but I just love it. I was made for college. Yay! Even though I'm stressed because of exams, I am surrounded by tons of people, some of which are amazing, and the others of which I don't even have to care about. And then after that, I get to go home and hang out with no worries whatsoever until spring semester, and then I go back to the stereotype (this time with better classes). Woo! I'm going to rest my eyes a bit before my 2:00 class now. Zai Jian!

Tests stress me out more than just plain work. If I have a certain quantity of work that can be measured and has to be done by a certain date, I can do it. If I just have to study until I know something, I always stop before I should. Umm, so yeah. I want it to be Christmas already.

i am thankful for:

my wonderful old friends who love me
the lovely new ones i'm making
my family who loves me
my health
my life
goldfish & gushers
being able to go to a wonderful university to learn
having all five senses so that i can fully appreciate everything in the world that God put out there for me to enjoy
having a bright future ahead of me full of so much that i can't even imagine yet
wonderful food to eat and stuff my belly with on fun days like this
soft sheets
and so so much more!

thank you, God! it's amazing and i love it. all of it!

Oh sweet release!

I hate assignments that involve more than me just researching and finishing things on my own. I'm talking about ones like this one for Enst 35 that has been a huge weight on my shoulders for so long. Part of the assignment includes conducting an interview with someone in the North Carolina Forestry world who knows about invasive species. I hate having to actually talk to people. I feel stupid! But worst of all, I hate having to constantly worry about reaching someone, sending out countless emails and leaving countless messages, sounding like a complete and stupid idiot on the phone... I just hate feeling inferior and interviews make me feel inferior. I just talked to this guy for an interview, and he said he'd answer my questions and give me good links for research which made me really happy. It is a HUGE weight off my shoulders. But then I found out that Andy is interviewing him too. Silly Andy. So there's another guy but I need to think of hardcore questions to ask him to get the full potential out of the interview. I guess I'm learning how to be an adult and apply my learning instead of just choking and puking, but I'm so good at choking and puking. Poo. I hate feeling stupid. And I don't kwow why, but I just felt stupid for doing these interviews. My Environment class makes me feel stupid. Great. But I actually do feel like I'm learning, which is a new and welcome experience. I don't know. I just want this case study interview to be over. I was polite and probably sounded intelligent, it's just my first ever interview and I feel like the guys I'm interviewing can tell. I kept emailing within the department, and they probably were talking like "We should probably stop ignoring that stupid girl so that she'll stop sending us her emails." But maybe they think I'm nice and feel sorry for me. I don't know. I just want to have easy classes like math and chemistry and geology. Not classes that I need to apply critical thinking skills. Haha, just kidding. But really. It's so stressful and all I want to do is sleep forever. Christmas break can't come soon enough.

rah rah carolina-lina

This whole "college" thing is starting to sink in. It's starting to get past the stage in which everything is new, and I'm actually starting to believe that I'm going to be here for four more years. This is the beginning of my future. This is where I'll get all the knowledge I'll need to be a functioning member of society. It feels good to start thinking for myself. I think it's all sinking in because I'm realizing more and more that the life in MA doesn't involve me anymore. I mean, it's a little depressing, but not that much. Like, this weekend, I had a schedule all to myself that was completely different than my sisters' at home. I know it's been like that ever since I've gotten here, but I feel like I'm entering that part where I don't know what they're doing and they don't know what I'm doing. It's my independent life now. It's just weird that I'm consciously recognizing it happening. Ok, enough weirdness.

This weekend was fun! Friday night I went with the College Life kids to Chili's and then some of us went and hung out in Allan's room for a bit. It was fun, but I was tired and had to peace out early. Then yesterday I went to the football game and the basketball game. We lost by a field goal in overtime at the football game and that was so depressing. But we won the basketball game by like 30 so that was un-depressing. It was good to sit down at the basketball game after standing up for like forever at the football game. And I like basketball a lot. I got to see big ol' Tyler Hansbrough dunk... and get intentionally fouled by this guy from Catawba. He was a jerk. I felt so bad for Tyler when he was on the ground! It looked like it hurt. The announcer had to calm the crowd down when we kept booing the guy that fouled him later on in the game. "Number 44 made a mistake, let it go..." It made me laugh a little bit. So, that was fun. Then I came back to the room and chilled out and went to bed early so that I could survive waking up for the early service of church today. 8:10 is very early to leave for church. But I survived.

I'm sad that I missed the boat on the best concerts this year. First Coldplay, then Nickel Creek last night. I love those bands! Too bad I didn't know about them. I have to get better at concert-spotting. There will come a good concert that I will be able to see... one of these days.

Ok, now it's off to my 3rd Carolina sporting event of the weekend-- a soccer game. What a fan I've become!

83 degrees on november 9th? amazing.

So today I got new jeans. "Hot pants" if you will. No more is Emma Refvem a one-jeaned girl. I have two pairs. This drastically expands my wardrobe, so that I don't have to wear swetpants every day of the week to "save" my jeans for the weekends. I believe that reflects more on my lazy clothes-washing habits than on my lack of clothing, but whatev. I like having new jeans. I need to break them in. I love a good pair of jeans, most definitely.

You know what else I love? Emails from long-lost best friends. That's right-- I recieved one from Emmy today! Emmy Christina Albrecht Tedder. My long lost love. I miss that kid so much and it's good to hear that she hasn't disappeared off the face of the earth. She's a cool kid.

I also love being silly. I got to do a lot of that at Windy Gap this past weekend. I was a baker in the kitchen with Ms. Amy Stelling and we had a fun fun time. We braided bread! I got burnt on my arm from the cookie sheet! (it's okay because the cookies were good and i enjoy scars.) It was amazing. Windy Gap this time was a time for bonding with and loosening up around my new College Life friends. As our time in College Life goes on, I love it more and more. It was different to be on work crew instead of with the other kids or as a leader, but the adjustment taught me some lessons about what being a leader is all about. It's going to be a fun growing experience.

It's too bad that I procrastinate a lot at school because all I really want to do is start reading novels again. I bought "Life of Pi" and I absolutely cannot wait to start reading it. It looks quite interesting. I miss the thrill of being in someone else's mind for the short amount of time I spend reading the book. I feel like I can add those experiences to my own and it feels nice. So I can't wait to get all caught up on schoolwork.

The weather has been beautiful and really warm for November, and my mood has lifted along with the increments on the thermometer. Just another validation of the fact that I probably have Seasonally Affected Depression. When this cold snap comes, I'll probably get a little bit depressed. But that is also exacerbated by my sucky schedule. I want it to be next semester. I like the classes that I will have. More my style of classes.

Speaking of classes, I must study chinese. Zai jian, folks! (that means goodbye)

i am sad because both of my kitties died while i was away at college.

someone please save us, us college kids

I apologize for slacking on my blogging as of late. I find my time occupied by class, studying, hanging out, sleeping, and FACEBOOK. Oh the facebook will be the death of me. I'm trying to curb my addiction-- we'll see how that goes.

So Halloween was... an experience. It was fun to see all the costumes-- the most memorable to me were the phonebooth and characters from Bill & Ted's excellent adventure and tetris pieces. There were more, but I forgot them. There was an abundance of Anchorman crews (one of which I was a member-- Veronica Corningstone) and Team Zissous and facebooks and quailmen, which were all funny. I saw a few iPod commercials too (bright posterboard behind them, black clothes, an iPod, it was cute). All in all, however, a sober Franklin Street was quite sketchy. Being around so many drunk people was crazy. Haha, drunk people. I had interesting conversations with drunk people that night, I got knocked over by one, and also decided to "escort" one around. A hilarious situation arose from one of the conversations, though the person involved in the situation may or may not have any idea. It was also cool to see so many people from my high school/county. Everyone comes to Chapel Hill for halloween! The bad thing about Halloween was the aftermath. I got a solid 5 hours of sleep that night, and had to go to my 8:25 class that morning. Lets just say that I don't function well at all on 5 hours (being accustomed to 8 and all), and was zoned out the entire day. To top it all off, I had to spend every extra moment in the Library to work on my Lab Report. I finally got the nap today that I'd been looking forward to all week, since I didn't have time before. Craziness. The pictures were priceless, though. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I am going to Windy Gap this weekend and can't be more pumped about it! We're going to ride down there in Nan's Durango and jam out to a mix I've just thrown together, complete with some oldies jams to dance around to. We've started a mini girl's bible study that is quite reminiscent of The Setup. We haven't named it yet, but I'm working on it. It's going to be very fun! I really enjoy fellowship like that. We all get each other and can grow from each other and it's just gonna be good. Besides that, Windy Gap is going to be amazing just because it's Windy Gap! I don't have to worry about registering (because of the lovely Meredith Bryson who's taken up that responsibility for me) and I will let myself forget about homework. That's a good sign.

So, college. It's going well. I'm learning how to handle myself, and learning a few things about myself, and learning some cool stuff in classes, too. Like Chinese. Who knew? I've learned that I don't enjoy putting clothes away. My parents have always known this, only now I realize it's importance. I've learned that I am really interested in Environmental Studies class, but I've found myself to be a slacker in it. For no particular reason. It's just a bit of a time management issue, but at least I like it! I might get a B in it, but I'm okay with that because I know that I love it and I know that I'm learning and I know that grades don't define my life. That's a bit of a slacker point of view, but I'm quite tired of caring about GPA. I think this class is my form of "sticking it to the man"-- the "man" being GPA. I don't need to get into a school before graduating, and I'm not planning on going to graduate school immediately after college, and I don't even know where I'm headed in the future. Really, the reason I'm okay with having a B is because I realize that I got off to a bad start. I think I need to get this out of the way so that I get back into the groove. Once this class is over, hopefully my itch to rebel will be out of my system. I might not even get a B, I might get an A! I did do extra credit and I do relatively well on my recitation grades. We'll see. I'm just resigned to the grade in that class.

It feels good to blog. I forgot the feeling, which is sad. I've had this thing for so dang long, it's almost insane. Haha, weird. Ok. Now I'm going to pack for WG. Adios, amigos!