Becoming

When I was a little girl I used to look in the mirror and try to see what I would be like when I was older. It's funny to compare where I thought I would be to where I am now. There is only one thing that I predicted on that day that actually came true: I went to college. To say I am a planner is an understatement. I live to write lists and plan things out, that is who I am. I had a pretty good plan for my life. I was going to become a dental hygienist, I was going to make it into BYU and get straight A's (HAHA), and I was going to go on dates like crazy. I learned that life doesn't go according to plan, and this year was an eye opener for me. This year was one of those crazy life changing years for me. The ones where it's super uncomfortable and the whole time you are wondering if you are even making a single right choice. This past year has taught me a lot, and I am grateful for it.

1) SOME DOORS WILL CLOSE, BUT THAT JUST MEANS THAT THERE IS A GREATER ONE DOWN THE ROAD

One of these uncomfortable changes was my major, I had jumped around to several different majors in my first two years of college and was just unable to find my "nitch". Nothing felt right and no matter how much studying I did, I was just not doing well. I had flirted with the idea of becoming a graphic designer and living the cool life (seriously, graphic designers are pretty rad). I went into the advisement office, sat down and told my adviser that I knew graphic design was the thing for me. Unfortunately, she didn't think it would be the smartest route for me to take (ugh), and I left that office feeling like a part of me had been ripped out and fed to the dogs. Seriously, it was no good. I called my mom in tears, I had KNOWN that this is what I needed to be, this is what I WANTED to do. I had a job interview right after this, and was really nervous that I would be told "no" once again. I started to get down on myself and my mom swooped in and gave me the pump up talk of the century. I went to my job interview where I was informed of a major that I had never heard of before--landscape management. (What the what?!) There was something that went off inside of me, something that drove me to register for my landscape design class, a little fire that kept on burning. I fell in love with everything I was learning, it made sense, things finally clicked. I had found my nitch, and I found it right after I had been rejected from something that I had thought was going to be my "jam". This was a heart wrenching experience at first, but has produced some of the greatest blessings in my life.


2)  MY GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS HAVE COME FROM MY GREATEST FAILURES

I am a perfectionist through and through. I am competitive (I'm really good at keeping that on the down low, but now you all know...). I work hard to get where I am at, I try and give everything 110% and it kills me to see myself fail at something. I have had my fair share of failures this semester and have experienced those moments where I feel as though the world has come crashing down. I have learned that I don't have to do everything alone, thanks to Christ's atonement, and that my failures can be made into learning experiences that give me the chance to grow and become better. Rad, right?! I have found that if I keep trying and working at giving things my best, I can always look back and say that I tried, and in some cases, trying is all that I needed to do. I think that learning to take your failures and make them into something that you can learn from is powerful and something I will continue to work on for the rest of my life.

3) SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO HAVE A CHECK ON YOUR PRIORITIES

Fun fact: I am NOT a morning person. I hate getting out of bed and would stay in bed for a good 45 minutes until I gave myself a pump up talk to get out of the covers. This semester I set a goal to be more productive with my time. I had a professor give a little lecture on time at the beginning of the semester as my nose was in my phone, and I decided that I needed to make some changes in my life. Things were controlling my time, and I needed to rearrange my priorities. I read a book called "The Perfect Day Formula", and was on a roll. I made rules for myself, and I stuck to them. My social life did suffer a little, so I wouldn't suggest this to all college students, but I made it work. I gave myself 5 rules:

• I would get up every morning at 5:00 am and would be in bed by 9:00 each night, no excuses. If I got to bed a little late I would still wake up at 5:00. 
• I would get limit social media to only Instagram, my Snapchat was deleted, and Facebook was limited to the weekends. 
• I would exercise every morning, FIRST THING. *This one was a struggle for me, because I justify working out later in the day, and then just eventually never do it, haha oops...
• Homework would be put away every night at 8:00 (this one was a struggle, but it forced me to focus on my homework and make it my priority.
• I would spend 30 minutes everyday writing in my journal, reading scriptures, and/or reading good things in general.

Like I said, these rules KILLED my social life, but my grades have never been better, and considering I was working 20 hours a week and trying to juggle classes and everything else, this helped a lot. I learned a lot about time and how to spend it, and what I was most willing to spend my time on. In those moments where I didn't have homework or work, I found myself wanting to be around the people that I loved. I looked at my phone a lot less and stopped watching TV *gasp*, (except for HGTV once every other week... but that is a must). I did allot time to spend time with people, I wasn't a complete hermit. I was blessed with the opportunity to play basketball--we even made it to the championship game--with some of the greatest girls. I played volleyball every Thursday night with some stellar people. So no worries there ;), but again, my time was spent on more important things. It was spent on the things that mattered the most. 

4) MONEY DOESN'T GROW ON TREES

This one was a hard one for me (and is still hard to grasp). You think I would have it down after being in college for 3 years, but I guess that sometimes you just need a wake up call to get some stuff to work out. I was sitting in accounting, looking at Old Navy (because my closet is basically 95% Old Navy) and had about 10 items in my cart adding up to a number that made me cringe inside a little bit. It finally hit me, I needed to make a budget and stick to it. WHAT IN THE WORLD?! I have always been a penny pincher and have found it hard to buy things, but with "one click shopping" I had started to tap away at my bank account. I made a change, and found that it is possible to live off a modest budget and that the clothes in my closet look just fine. It was a humbling experience, but it has taught me a lot about being more aware of the choices I make, because they always come with consequences. It's never fun to look at an empty checking account.

5) REPENTANCE IS ACTUALLY BEAUTIFUL

I cannot stress this one enough!! Seriously, I have learned so much about Christ's atonement in the past year, and I am sure that if you have a conversation longer than 30 minutes with me, this will come up. I decided this was going to be something I was going to study because I didn't understand it as much as I would have liked to and I fell in love with this beautiful gift that has been given to us. I remember a young women's leader telling us that repentance is daily. I looked around the room, what in the world were these people doing to need to repent every single day?! Now, I can say I am a bit older, and maybe a centimeter wiser (if you could measure the amount of wisdom gained). Repentance isn't about feeling terrible or awful, although those are the things that sometimes bring us to repentance. Repentance is about change, it's about turning back to your Father in Heaven, it's about working to become. It really is a beautiful thing, and repentance is something we can do daily. We mess up, we are human, and Heavenly Father understands that. It's about our willingness to change and become the best we can be. Repentance helps us refocus our blurred vision on what is important in life and start moving toward it once again. I could go on forever, but just know that I am grateful for my Savior and his role in my life. I have a testimony of Christ's atonement and the power that it has to help us BECOME!

6) NATURE IS GOD'S GIFT TO ME

This might be something that is a little self-centered. I know that nature wasn't made just for me, but it is one of my greatest blessings in life. I grew up working in the garden with my family, mowing our lawn and the lawns in the neighborhood, helping pick black berries for pie and jam, and doing a ton of service projects involving working outdoors. I love being outside and I have had some awesome experiences in nature. Hence why my major totally fits me. Sometimes I crave mowing a lawn or planting a garden. I think nature has so much to teach us about life and about the gospel if we just take the time to really ponder on it. We live on such a beautiful earth! Take the time to look around and appreciate it.

7) YOU GET WHAT YOU MEASURE

I am a goal setter. I have a list of goals that sit on my magnet board that I look at every day. I'm not going to say them on here because they are more personal, but they are daily goals that I work to hit everyday. I was taught the lesson, "You get what you measure" in accounting (this is the management part of landscape management, just in case you were confused hehe). I now have a different approach to goals and how I write them. They are things I need to be doing everyday to achieve a bigger goal. I call them my "mini goals". They help me to evaluate where I am at and how well I am doing. This helped me IMMENSELY in school, and in many other aspects. I used to be really overwhelmed when setting goals because they just seemed to big to conquer. I wasn't seeing any changes in my life, I felt stagnant and as if I wasn't moving forward. It was awful. I started measuring how I was doing with my mini goals and it worked!

I promise my life isn't perfect, I still have those moments where I just want to curl up and cry because things are just coming at me too quickly. I still have moments where I look at my life and think, "what in the world am I doing?". But I also have moments filled with joy, and have the opportunity to look to better days ahead, because "this too shall pass". There is no perfect formula for life. But I try my hardest to do my best, and in my book, I think that's just as good. My life is messy, it has ups and it has downs, I eat smoothies for at least 2 of my 3 meals a day, I can barely find my keys in the morning, I got my identity stolen. But I know that they joys that I experience make up for these "unbearable" days. I am grateful for uncomfortable growing pains in life and the lessons that they have taught me. I wouldn't trade them for the world! Life is about becoming.

Things I Wish I Knew Before Going to BYU

I remember before starting my freshman year at BYU I read all different kinds of blogs about what college would be like. A lot of them were about schools that weren't like BYU. They talked about drinking and partying, how to get into the best sororities, and how to live off of coffee and red bull for finals week-- they did have some good advice about studying and other things too. But it didn't seem to apply to me much, especially when I was going to a school that is mostly LDS. You see, BYU is a pretty different experience than most other colleges, there is an honor code that is pretty strict, no sororities or frats, and prayers before class. Not only that, but BYU pushes you to grow both intellectually and spiritually. You have access to so many things and it's amazing! So here are the morals of all the lessons learned and experiences endured: 

• Sit down at the beginning of each month and schedule your month out--write when the big assignments are due. This will seriously help you stay on top of what is due, and it helps with procrastination. Then, at the beginning of the week write a checklist of the small things that need to be done each day.
• Get a group text going with your future roommates. It will be annoying at first, but you get to know their personalities a bit before spending the rest of the semester with them. Me and my roommates set up a google doc with the kitchen supplies and other things we were all going to bring, it made it a million times easier and we don't have 6 different can openers.
• Go to Goodwill to get your kitchen supplies. Don't go spend a ton of money on all the fancy stuff. It will just get ruined, believe me, it's not worth it.
• BYU is hard. You have the best of the best competing with each other. You won't have all A's like you did in high school, and if you do come out with all A's kudos to you, you're a genius.
• Be very open to new experiences.
• College becomes a time where you try and become the next Martha Stewart. You try and create new recipes with the little food you do have, some are successes, others are more of a flop. No matter how good it sounds, sardines, brown rice, and peas don't have the best flavor together.
• STAY ON CAMPUS TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Find a building, go sit in there. No matter how disciplined you think you are, there is no way that you are going to be able to focus in your dorm. There is always something to be cleaned, a nap to be taken, or even a roommate to talk to. It is a dangerous trap
• Go to all the sporting events and other such things you can. Even if you don't like sports, the atmosphere is crazy fun and you meet a ton of new people. 
• Get a job. This one might sound a bit crazy, but hear me out. You will have a lot more down time than you think you will. You're only going to be in class for maybe 3-4 hours each day. You are going to get bored. If you work on campus you end up meeting a bunch of new people, you expand your friend group. I met some of my greatest friends at work. It gets your mind off school for a bit and you get some extra spending money. Who doesn't like that? One of my roommates felt the first semester out and then got a job second semester. That's a good option too.
• You will become really close with your roommates. It's funny because they almost become second family to you. You'll tell them everything, and they will tell you everything. By the time winter semester ends you won't know what to do with yourself, it'll be hard to say goodbye.
• Make an effort to go to the temple at least once every two weeks. Blessings will come because of your unselfish service. The temple is literally walking distance from you, and no matter how packed your schedule may seem there is always time to go. 
• Prepare for a lot of tears. Homesickness is real, and it will hit when you least expect it. You'l be stressed about something and then you'll just want a hug from mom or dad, and then the water works always start there. Just know that it will hit.
• You will call your mom everyday, sometimes twice, sometimes more. I love my mom, but don't forget about your dad too. He loves you just as much, call him. Call your grandma, call your aunt, seriously. It's way fun and they always want to hear what's going on in your life. 
• Storage bins, storage bins, storage bins. These things are amazing. I got 3 sets of drawers (two for my room and one for the bathroom) and even had 2 really big bins for shoes. There is a lot of room under your bed to store things, and there is even more room in the closets. 
• Make a grocery list before going to the grocery store. This is VITAL. I tried to cook really fancy meals my first semester and ended up dropping like $300 a month on food. Yeah, not good. I finally decided that those fancy meals would have to wait until I had an actual family to cook for. Second semester I was able to do $150 a month and still live. I would get things like frozen chicken from Costco, rice, chicken nuggets, cereal (LOTS OF CEREAL), and other quick things like that. I also ate a lot of fruits and veggies, I would get those every two weeks. 
• Have fun. Don't get me wrong, it's totally awesome to hang with the roomies every Friday and Saturday night, but you need to get out more. 
• You will learn a lot about yourself. You don't have your parents there to tell you what to do and when to do it. You'll find that your room might get messy, and that you are late to church. Decide before you go to college what kind of person you want to make yourself. You are setting habits that will be with you for a long time.
• Our room did Sunday dinners. This was pretty much the only time we all sat together and ate. We had a rotation going. We had a blast with it, we had people from all over the country and got to try some of their favorite meals. Invite friends over and play games afterwards. Those were some of the best nights.
• EXERCISE. It helps with the stress and it helps keep you in shape. The freshman 15 is real, for those of us with not so fast metabolisms...
• Get on your knees every night and every morning and pray. I learned to pray for my roommates. Look for struggles they might be going through or if they might have a test or a date. You'll learn to love them even more. Not only that, but make scripture study important. It will slip away if you don't make a conscious effort to keep it up.
• You will learn more about Charity. This is so real. This will probably also prepare you do be a mom someday. You will probably hear every college student talk about the dishes situation. Here is the best advice I can give you on that: "just do it". The sink will be piled high and the stove will be covered in some nasty tomato sauce from the night before, there will be crumbs all over the counter and plates left on the table. You have two choices, be angry or have charity. Brin and I had a running joke, every time we would clean the kitchen we would say, "Charity is the pure love of Christ." It is so true. As you find ways to serve your roommates, and that might be doing the dishes for the 4th time that week, you will grow to love them.  

I could probably think of a million more things to put on this list. I loved my freshman year and the people I got to share it with are top notch individuals. You learn so much about yourself and how you work with others. It's an amazing experience that I wouldn't ever give up.

They Did Not Doubt {02/15/2015}

"Yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they would not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it." Alma 56:47-48 

I came across this scripture the other day during my scripture study and immediately thought of my mom and the influence she had on my life, and so I thought I'd blog about it. :)

Almost every time I am walking from point A to point B on campus I am on the phone talking to my Mom. I call her every day, sometimes even twice a day, and occasionally four times a day. Our talks consist of everything from boys, to weather, to work, to how much I am going to die this semester. Sometimes I call her on the verge of tears telling her I am done with college and want to become a professional car driver or caddy for the rest of my life, and immediately I am hit with a pump up talk. She is my biggest cheerleader and the person behind all of my achievements, because I probably wouldn't have had the guts to get though any of that stuff without her.
It's crazy to me how fast you become homesick while away at school. One thing that has become evident to me as I have had the opportunity to go to BYU and be away from home is how much my mom did for me.
She:

• Cooked dinner
• Cleaned the house 
• Made sure that the fridge and pantry was ALWAYS filled with food
• She bought the cool snacks 
• Helped me with my homework
• Watched any/all chick flicks with me (even though I am terrible to watch movies with)
• Did the laundry, folded it, and then placed it in our rooms
• Took care of finances: paid the bills!
• Reminded me of the little things that I needed to do 
• Called the doctor, dentist, ect. and went with me to my appointments just because I would always have her explain what was wrong with me this time haha
• Gave hugs when they were needed most

Now that I live exactly 816 miles from her these efforts and many more are made manifest to me on the daily. I now have to wake up early to get my laundry done, actually write down my week to make sure I don't forget anything, schedule my own doctors appointments (and go alone!), and cook all my meals. I knew my mom did a lot for me, but I didn't realize just how much my mom has to do each and every day until I left the house. It's crazy to think the immense amounts of work which Moms do everyday that goes unnoticed by others. I can't think of a greater example of Charity than of a Mom, and more specifically, my mother.  They give up their lives so that they can see you flourish and accomplish such great things, they love more readily than anyone I know, they are nurturing, and have a powerful influence on their children. My mom is my best friend and I am so grateful that I have someone like her! I am grateful that were able to build such a strong relationship with each other before I even got to college, and I cannot stress how important that is for anyone! Mom's are made to love, and they will love you no matter what mistakes you have made, how many times you don't make your bed, or if you forget to take out the trash (after the fifth time she has asked). Mom's are important. And I love my Mom.

A Slew of Events {11/08/2014}

In avoidance of my homework, I decided to write a blog post. Smart idea, I know.

I'll just make a little bullet list of the events of October/beginning of November and elaborate on some of them. (No promise on chronological order)

I've hit up some BYU football games, and they're pretty cool if I do say so myself, I'm stoked for basketball season though

We had our first cleaning check. We are generally fairly clean, there might be some dishes in the sink every now and then, but for the most part we pitch in some help and do it if it needs to be done. We passed the cleaning check (besides the oven part because it was still on self clean and had a couple more hours to go, but that's a minor detail..) 

I had the opportuinity to go to General Women's Conference and fulfill one of my biggest dreams--which was to be in the same room as the prophet--I just love the general meetings. I got to go with my Aunt Kate and her Mom, along with my cousin Megan. We had such a fun time, and even made it on TV, luckily I was taking notes, bonus points for me. haha. One of my favorite quotes from that conference was "Temples are an expression of God's love." How true is that?! Heavenly Father has provided us a place on earth where we can go to free ourselves from the world and everything that goes along with it. How blessed I am to have one within walking distance from where I live.

We hiked the Y. We don't have a car, so we walked to the Y and then hiked it....And on the walk there we may or may not have gotten lost. I think the walk there was longer than the actual hike, but we had a fun time. Megan and I took the lead and were cruising to the top in order to get the full view of the sunset.  The sunset was breathtaking (we attribute some of it to the lack of oxygen we had in our lungs due to the really fast pace in which we climbed the mountain...)

Abby, Brinley, Megan and I went with some friends to SLC. We split up after a while and Brin, Megan and I went to dinner at the Garden (SUCH GOOD FOOD!) and walked around temple square. My favorite part of temple square is the Christus statue. Every time I visit temple square I insist on going. I love the statue of Christ. The statue depicts Jesus Christ with His arms opened. I get chills every time I see it.  His arms are always open and ready to accept anyone who will put forth the effort and draw near to Him. I have a strong testimony of my Savior and all that he has done. He is my hero, someone I look up to, and someone I want to become like someday. How grateful I am for his undying love for me, even when I slip up and make mistakes every now and then. 

The roommates got together and decided to rent a puppy (yes, it's a real thing). Trixie was a total cutie and had A LOT of energy, but it made for a fun afternoon and some cute pictures.

I GOT SHARPIES. If you know me, you probably know that I love to letter. For my Book of Mormon class I chose to write quotes from the Book of Mormon. It's become a favorite pass time of mine here at college. 

I went to my first ever hockey game (the Utes vs. USU) AND got to see my cousins all in one weekend, which was pretty rad. 

I taught Abby and Megan to make cinnamon rolls this weekend. We might or might not have been listening to Christmas music while doing so...They turned out great and we still have some left over--which means DINNER!

Today, everyone wanted to work out with me. So, we moved the couches around and made enough room for everyone to get their workout on. I've been doing Insanity and this was my last day of my recovery week (round 2...) and they wanted to see what it was like. We had some fun to say the least, lots of yelling and lots of motivational words passed around as people started stopping. I have been going at Insanity for a month now (the only thing that keeps me from gaining the freshman 15..)  I’m a total analogy person, and as I was finishing exercising today I thought of one, so bear with me. Last week I took a break from working out, I was lazy and decided I didn’t want to put in the time and effort (BIG MISTAKE). At first I felt gross, but as the week went on I stopped caring and I began to eat sugar whenever I felt like having it—which was a lot (oopsies..). On Monday I decided to jump back into working out and see if I could do the recovery week (which are the easiest discs in Insanity cardio wise) I found that it was a lot harder than I remembered it being. I couldn’t even finish the first video! (That is crazy sad btw)… it took a lot more effort to decide to do it every day.  I liken that to the gospel, just because it helps me understand things better. When you fall away from reading your scriptures or saying your prayers you start to feel a little different, sorta like something is off,  but as time passes and those things begin to slip away, you start become lazy and replace it with other things such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or yes, even Pinterest (guilty is charged). When you try and get back into it, it seems harder, you aren’t able to read as long, or maybe you aren’t able to stay with it as long. But it takes a lot to come back, and a lot of will power on your part to stick with it and regain the spiritual strength you once had and then add to it.