Current Thoughts On Life: A Very Clever Title

After several discussions with my best friends and my family, and especially after this trip to Finland... I've realized a few things.  I'm currently in the process of finding myself again. I'm rediscovering who I am as an individual, what makes me happy, and what makes me tick.

After these two trips to Alaska, it really struck me that I'm happiest doing the things I love. Sounds stupid and self explanatory, I know. But really what became of this realization is that I make myself happy. My choices, my beliefs, my actions, my consequences... My path... These are the things that make me happy. And then I looked around. I looked back at some of the things I had, and I realized I've been clinging to what feels safe. It felt safe because it was something I had grown accustomed to. Something that had been there for a long time. And sure, it once made me incredibly happy! But looking around at my future and where I'm headed, it's not the things in my life that make me happy, or that should anyway. It's me.

And sure I sound really full of myself in saying that, but let me go further. This last year I was so in love with my life, my job, and my potential. I found my passion. And I remembered something my family had always told me "you can do anything you set your mind to." On graduating from high school my principal went a step further to tell me I was "a force to be recokoned with." And I am. And I will do what I set my mind to, God willing. But thinking about this in conjunction with my previous statement, it's not anybody else's duty to make you happy. It's not your job to do that for anyone else either. Following that logic is simply foolish...

I was talking to someone recently who has grown closer to me than I ever expected, and I shared one of my favorite quotes:

If we rely on other people to make us happy we become reliant on a system that is not innately stable. Its easy to do this, yes, but people change. People constantly grow and become better (or worse). The people around them shape them in ways they never fully expect. The same is true for ourselves. I can tell you right now that I am almost a completely different person than I was 4 years ago.
Because of this fact it is crucial that we focus on making ourselves whole people rather than relying on others.

This is not to say that we should remove ourselves from relationships and the people we love. These people are there to help us grow, as I said, and they can indeed help us on our paths to happiness. They can add incredible joy to our lives, and they can support us when we are at our weakest. But be careful that you look first to yourself. Be independent, look for the things that make you uncomfortable and grow beyond them. Make yourself independently happy on life's journey or you will be left with nothing when the branch fails beneath you.

I have a lot to consider in this vein lately. I know I still have growth to accomplish. But somehow I know that I'll get there. I've put my mind to it, and, well, I talked about where that will lead me.

This. This is how I want to live my life. What about yours?

Travel and The Upcoming Adventures of 2019

Phew! Its been a while yet again! However, I'm really happy about how things are going this semester. As it stands right now, I'll be going on three trips this year alone, two internationally!

In just three weeks I'll be on a plane back to my favorite place - Alaska. This time I'll be much further North, and it'll be for research purposes.  I'm assisting one of my professors in the deployment of geophones! What this means is that I'll be out in the snow for probably 10-12 hours per day, placing small white devices that listen to earthquakes.  We're hoping to learn more about the Denali fault. As exciting as this all sounds (and don't get me wrong, I am very much excited!) I am definitely NOT prepared for the -30 to 10 degree average temperatures. Yikes. I have all the gear, I'm just not there mentally yet. I have three weeks to get ready.

Besides that trip, I'll also be flying to Finland just a short week afterward to visit one of my best friends in her last semester studying at Vaasa! This decision was very much more spontaneous, and while I know I won't regret it, my wallet is complaining.  But... That is the downside of traveling and experiencing new things.

Lastly, I'll be doing my field camp in Spain! I announced this more than a year ago but its finally happening! I have plane tickets, and I'm ready to fly out in June.  Guess I better get ready to hike for 12 hours a day for five weeks. Oof. Regardless of how sore I'm going to be, I can't wait to cross yet another thing off my bucket list.

Besides the craziness of all that, I also will be completing my last semester of my undergraduate degree this May.  I'm so excited for what the future holds, but I'm extremely nervous. There is so much change happening all extemelex quickly... I hope and pray I hit the ground running. Here's to a great year! Happy 2019!

Adventures in The Last Frontier

Hello everyone,

It's been quite a while since my last post... I don't dare to go back and look.  After talking with some people close to me I realized I haven't posted in a long time, and I guess its something that's been missed. So here it goes.

This last year has flown by.  In November last year I was offered an internship working for another gold mine in Alaska! I was caught completely off guard by the answer, especially as I had only handed them my resume. I never applied for the job, but I'm sure glad they called me.  After being asked how I felt working around bears during my interview, I laughed and said "well, we have bears in Colorado... I've never dealt with one but I understand the protocol." Little did I realize how many bears there actually were in Alaska.

As soon as I accepted their offer I set to work figuring my summer out.  I played with the idea of living with a friend while I was there, but when that idea didn't pan out, I had to figure something out.  While I first thought that I was required to have housing in town, it became less of an obligation and more of something I was determined to do.  After all, if I was going to Alaska for three months, I might as well make the most of it.  In the end I was very fortunate to have landed an excellent housemate - a woman with a new condo.   She was a teacher and she was a bit older than me, but she had the same spirit and spunk I did.  It was like she was young at heart.  But wait, I have to describe how I got there...

Well, after determining that I was renting a room in town, I then had to figure out how to get to Alaska.  Immediately I told my parents that I was going to drive there and immediately the response was "you are NOT driving the car to Alaska!! That's so dangerous and so far away!" Really it wasn't much farther than a road trip I had done the summer before, so after some bargaining I got my wish.

Then, a week after I got home from school, my father and I set off for Alaska. It was a long trip - we took six days, but we enjoyed ourselves the whole way there.  My favorite location of all was Banff and Jasper.  The mountain ranges there are more spectacular than any I've ever seen.

But despite some mild car trouble, we got to Skagway, and then ferried the car over to Juneau.  Juneau is only accessible by sea or plane.  People talk about how remote Alaska is, and I've read things and heard plenty of stories, but I was never prepared for what I saw when we got there. The road into Skagway was filled with beautiful tundra landscapes and amazingly green canyons. Juneau itself had forests so thick that they were a part of the city.  You could step out of your backyard and into a rainforest. Oh, and there were bears.  On my first day of work as I drove to the parking lot where I would catch a bus, (then a boat, then another bus to get to work) I saw a black bear browsing someone's lawn.  In Alaska the wilderness still has the upper hand rather than people. There are constant reminders there that the forest and its creatures were there first, and that we are truly the intruders.

But besides Alaska being my new favorite place ever and the place I want to live for the rest of eternity... I had an excellent summer. I learned a lot of very practical skills at this internship like core logging and exploration.   I had the opportunity to do so many things that not many people my age can say they've ever done, and I feel so lucky and so blessed. I will never regret my decision to drive there (no matter how much of a hassle it was) or rent a place.  I learned more about myself all at once this summer than I ever have before, and I found my passion in geology.  And while I know I still have a lot of experiences ahead of me and that I still have lots to learn, this one was the best yet.

Thank you to my family for making this trip a reality. Thank you also to my friends in Juneau and elsewhere for teaching me and helping me grow.

What a beautiful world we are privileged to live in.

To see more photos of my adventures, please click here and be sure to follow me: https://www.instagram.com/meadowsparrow77/

How am I so lucky?

To everyone out there still looking:

Find yourself a guy who values the little things. Find someone who hides little notes in your drawers and Cadbury eggs around your room because he knows you love them too. Look for someone who knows how crazy your days are and brings you lunch because you forgot, someone who cleans up your room to surprise you and folds your random piles of laundry. No, I don't expect these things from him, and I never asked him, but each little thing adds up and shows me that he cares. If you can find someone like this, he's a keeper.

Thanks for the great weekend, my love.

Field Camp!

You guys! I'm super excited to announce that I will be going to Spain for field camp!  This means a few things:

1. I get to travel outside the country (bucket list)
2. I get to go to Spain (also bucket list)
3. I GET TO DO GEOLOGY IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

I can't wait.  Just thought I'd share this little happy moment.  I'm definitely looking forward to June! I will keep posting about my adventures on here.  Even though I'm really bad about keeping it up.  Sorry.  

Crazy Day Indeed!

Wow ok, so I gotta be honest in writing this post.  Today was quite a day.  To be fair it was a Monday, and that's probably why it was so crazy.
Regardless, its a whole new experience for me to understand the pressure of a project.  Up till now things had been pretty relaxed at work which was great.  But honestly I like being busy more.  While sometimes that involves being frantic, I'm definitely sharper and on my game on those busy days.

However, being busy at a grocery store and being busy with a project that is your own are two different types of busy.  The first is more what you would feel when everyone else is looking to you to be on time which is to be expected with customers.  But being busy and under pressure from your project is more what it feels like when you overbook your calendar... Because everything you planned is still under your control and your success depends on you.  There may be other people at the company expecting results... but when you know you have something due based on your own deadline, there's no body to point fingers at.

While pointing fingers and throwing blame has never been my thing and its not at all what I'm looking for today, it really​ just makes me realize.  I'm in charge of this.  Yes I have the help and support of everyone I'm working with (thank God), yes I am only an intern, but if I want to say I succeeded in my own eyes, it's really up to me.  I guess this applies to a lot of things, but it really hit home today.

Yes, today was insane.  The craziness was a good change of scenery but still not a pleasant experience.  Lots of things went unnecessarily wrong that were outside my control.  There were several people that helped me sort out the kinks and for that I am extremely grateful.  But ultimately this project ​is up to me, and I will be responsible for making it succeed.

I can do this!

First Several Weeks at Barrick

Hello again!

Once again I'm consistently bad at writing these posts to keep up with my life.  But of course, now that I've been hit with a cold I have time to sit down and catch up with stuff.

I wanted to play catch up with my first several weeks at Barrick!

The first week was all training.  While the material was for the most part pretty dry stuff and it was a lot of slideshows in a dark room (zzz...), our trainer was an awesome guy who did his best to make it interactive and not boring.  This was very appreciated haha.  The scary stories people told about mining accidents and how easily they happen was probably the worst part... But it makes you think about everything you do.  It makes you realize that something you take for granted that might not immediately affect you, could kill someone else.  And while that is scary to think about not only your life but the lives of friends being in your hands, it is important.  It really fits with their motto, "Everyone going home safe and healthy everyday."

After training we took a tour of the mine.  The mine sits in Golconda, NV, but originally the land around it was part of the tiny town of Getchell.  We toured what remains of the town... there are a total of like 4 buildings, including a school house on Barrick's property.  The mine operation at the Getchell mine started in the 1930's, originally as an open pit gold mine.  When WWII started it was the only gold mine that stayed open, but not for gold purposes.  Because of the geology of the area there are a lot of hydrothermal minerals, including arsenopyrites.  In layman's terms, this means that we have incredible high levels of arsenic in the rock.  Therefore it was used for mining arsenic for the war.  While its no longer mined for this reason, the extreme levels still pose a hazard to all the miners in the form of dust.  Every miner is required to take a urine test for these levels on a regular basis to check if they are too high.

After a while, other companies purchased the area and started the underground operations.  These were very dangerous in those days, not only because of the technology used to mine the area but because of the ground itself.  The area is well known for its very unstable and gravely terrain.  After killing just as many miners in the surface pit as underground (which is a very high statistic), it became known as the 'widowmaker mine.'  Kinda scary right?  Well thanks to modern technology and shotcrete, the underground is a much, much safer place... the surface pit is no longer used because of instability.

Touring the underground was like a giant maze.  Let me just tell you, there are a lotttt of tunnels and headings and station names that I'm still struggling to remember.  As a geologist though, the mine was much less exciting than I thought.  All the walls (ribs) and ceilings (back) are covered with shotcrete to make them stable, so there is not very much real rock for me to look at.  Except at the headings (headings are the ends of the tunnels where they dig the ore out, btw).  The headings are orange and black streaked with white sometimes.  The black is the carbonaceous ore, the orange is orpiment and the red is realgar, while the white is usually dasite which is a granite-y type rock.

My official project this summer is to study and fill in gaps related to the high carbon values in our mine.  Why it is there? We don't really know.

Anyway, hopefully this has been a good catch up! Hope nobody else is fighting a cold during the summer (which, by the way, is the dumbest thing ever).

Stay safe, friends!

(Disclaimer: None of the images belong to me this time.  Rare, I know.)

First Day!

Well, today was my first day!  To be honest it was a lot of paperwork and MSHA training.  We got up at 3:45 this morning... Well, I woke up at 2:45, my roommate didn't get any sleep really.  We got ready to go and drove to the parking lot where busses were supposed to pick us up.  We found a line of miners waiting for a bus so we joined the ranks.  A few minutes later we realized that those were the wrong busses... These were going to Elko. That was not where we wanted to go haha.

The real busses were across the parking lot and labeled Barrick.  Funny how that works.  We got on in two of the last seats.  As we started off, a guy from security who had been asleep behind us spoke to us, probably noticing that we were new.  "You can recline the seats if you want, they don't go very far but it might feel better." We took his advice and he promptly went back to sleep.  The ride took about 40 minutes to get us to the mine.  On the way there we saw an amazing sunrise.  The pictures I have, taken through grimy windows, don't do it justice.  There were so many shades or purple and orange, it was beautiful​.

The bus driver told us where to get off and where to go, and as we left the bus the looming mine shaft in the distance rang its bell.  I can't quite describe how I felt just then, a mix of tired, terrified, and thrilled.

We went inside, I said hello to my supervisor, and we were all ushered downstairs.  6 interns in total this round.  There were apparently more coming later.  We started in on one of many talks and slideshows about paperwork and safety, policies and protocols.  Its honestly a little scary hearing all the horror stories and warnings and safety measures we have to remember.  After 9 hours of this we were done for the day.  My supervisor found me in the waiting room and asked me to follow him.

Even though today was filled with essential learning, he gave me a taste of what I would be working with.  Using a program called Vulcan, they had mapped everything about the mine, its grades, ore quality, and more.  It's so interesting to see the bigger picture of geology besides the close up of the individual rocks.  I'm so excited to return.

When Do I Start?

Hello again! Over the course of the last few days I haven't done much haha. I saw a lizard and some quails though!

 I caught up on some things I wanted to do and then... Well proceeded to be frustrated with the bad wifi and basically sat around. Let's just say I caught up on a lot of Supernatural haha!

While my parents were here we also drove by the sand dunes.  Did you know there were sand dunes in Nevada?? I did not.   I'm still amazed.

Also, check out this sunset! 

Eventually my roommate got here and got all moved in.  We finally got everything put away and settled the next day.  Then we proceeded to spend the next day sitting around watching more TV. Let's just say we haven't had a chance to figure out Winnemucca yet.  

Anyway, we start tomorrow.  Our first crazy early morning! I'm excited to finally get started! We got this.  Wish us luck haha.

Welcome to Winnemucca, NV

Alright! I've made it to Winnemucca!

The drive was very long... 12 hours overall with some stops.  I was exhausted last night haha.  Getting up at 4AM and then driving on four hours of sleep is not the greatest.  We went through Wyoming which was very boring, and then through Utah and Nevada.  I had never been to Utah before, and I have to say I'm very impressed.

The landscape was so mountainous and green, and there was so much cool geology! Also if you've never seen it, the great salt lake is MASSIVE.  It was also really interesting driving by it, there were little messages and pictures traced out in the salt with rocks.  It was cute driving by and seeing "I love you" and peace signs and hearts.  I remember​ seeing something about Trump too.  Gave me something to look at besides just salt.

So far Nevada seems rather dull.  There aren't many trees around here, just dirt and scrubby bushes.  It is the desert after all. Winnemucca is a very, very small town with very little going on except puns and events that make fun of the town name.  You'd be surprised how many ways you can use the word Winnemucca.

When we got to where I'll be living it didn't seem like much, but aside from some minor maintenance fixes, the place where I'm living is pretty darn nice! :)

After unloading my stuff we went out to the Martin Hotel for dinner.  They served a variety of Basque foods and all of it was delicious.  They had the weirdest food combo I've ever tried: salad with beans on top and salt, garlic powder, and pepper on top of that.  It was sooooo good.  Like I would eat it again in a heartbeat.

I also discovered that Winnemucca has some funny street names... They have Melarkey Street, Potato Road, Potato Place, and West Potato Road. There is also Haskel Street for any programmers out there, haha.

I'm planning on meeting my boss for dinner tonight to meet him before the big day next Tuesday!

I am both terrified and excited for everything going on.   Now to unpack my life for the umpteenth time and get settled in.  I'll keep posting updates!

And They're Off!

Finally headed out to Nevada! I'll explain more about my internship in about 13 hours.

Latest Adventure: Barrick Internship

Hello everyone! I wanted to get back into the habit of making posts, so this is the start of many this summer.  

This year I was offered an internship with the world's top gold producer, Barrick Gold.  I will be in Nevada working on geology underground at the Turquoise Ridge mine! I'm very excited but also very nervous!  Having never been underground before, this will be a very new experience.  I will keep everyone posted on my adventures in this newest chapter of life. :)

Thrombosis Awareness Week

Alright guys... it's been quite a while since my last post.  Couldn't even tell you how long its been or which one was last.  However I have several things to update.

This week begins Thrombosis Awareness Week, May 1-6.  But why am I telling you this?

Here goes the story.

In April 2016 I was put on put on birth control for dealing with acne.  For several years prior to this I was told that it was the only way to deal with my horrible cystic acne.  Antibiotics were temporary, creams only worked for a while, but birth control was the way to go... Or so they said.  

Around the end of September and early October 2016, I started noticing that my stamina was decreasing very greatly.  I was finding it very difficult to make it up stairs without running out of breath, I was extremely tired, and overall just felt useless.  My first thought was: wow, this is awful but it must be because of how stressful school has been.  This was quite a reasonable assumption for me to make, as a couple weeks prior I had been pulling really late nights with a lot of stress and homework to get everything done.  I thought I was feeling the after effects of that hell week.  Boy was I wrong.  

At about the same period as this tiredness, I felt a pain in my left calf.  It was an unusual pain, something that felt close to the bone, like a tendon or something similar.  It somehow felt familiar too, like I had had the same kind of pain before, so I simply ignored it.  It usually went away with walking around anyway.

After about a week and a half, the pain in my leg got worse (though I could still walk it off), and so did my breathing.  It was to the point where after one flight of stairs I felt like I was going to pass out on the landing on my way to class.  I couldn't sing in the shower anymore because there simply was not enough oxygen in my lungs to do that and shower.  I was exhausted.  I had filled out WebMD tools and symptom checkers all over the place.  Most of them led to pretty scary conclusions such as stroke or pulmonary embolism.  "Surely it can't be that?" I thought.  After all, the symptoms for those that had been described by my gynecologist were very different.  She said to be wary of 'stabbing pains' and 'swelling' and things like that.  What I was experiencing was nothing of the sort.  I had a slight tickle in my lungs and the pain in my leg was dull.  "Definitely can't be that" I thought.  My mom told me to go to urgent care but I told her the pain wasn't that bad.  It really wasn't, I could deal with it.

I started taking my inhaler thinking maybe my lungs were reacting to something, but it never helped.  I thought it had expired so that was probable cause.

Eventually, on October 4th, I went to the school nurse, asking for an inhaler refill and something to help me breathe.  She talked to me for a while and I described everything that had been going on.  She thought it could either be pulmonary embolism or some kind of pneumonia.  She did her best not to alarm me with her suspicions but told me to go to the ER.  At this point I was like "Cool, ok thanks, I'll drive over there," but no, she wanted to have me driven over there.  She offered to call an ambulance for me.  At this point I started freaking out.  I declined and called my roommate to pick me up.  She drove me to the ER, doing her best to make light of the situation with me, promising that we'd be out of there after the X-Ray the nurse ordered in time to get pizza.

I was admitted pretty quickly because they had phoned ahead, and they started wiring me up.  At one point there were no fewer than 5 different nurses in the small ER room with me at once trying to figure out what was wrong.  They put me on an inhaler to try to open my lungs, they were drawing blood, running tests, trying to get information from me.  It was crazy.  Finally they discovered that my blood was positive for clotting factors and I likely had clots.  I started crying.  The doctor that had broken that news on me basically just left with no more than a pat on my knee.

They soon did a CT scan and found that I had many blood clots in my lungs (explaining my trouble breathing, haha).  They gave me a belly shot of blood thinners and admitted me for the night.  This whole time my roommate stayed by my side and I am forever grateful for this.  And she got other friends to come visit and bring me pizza!  I was not disappointed by that.  Afterward my other roommate came by with my stuff.

My parents drove six hours to make sure I was okay, arriving there at midnight.  Later that night they did an ultrasound and found the mother clot in my calf where the little ones had broken off of.  I was terrified.  I was diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and multiple Pulmonary Embolisms (PEs).  After a terrifying and sleepless night in the hospital they ran another ultrasound on my heart to make sure it wasn't labored under the blood clots, and ran some more tests.  Eventually they found that I didn't have any genetic factors involved, it was only my birth control.

Funny isn't it? The one thing that was supposed to help solve unbalanced hormones and acne almost killed me?

This should not have happened.  For multiple reasons.  Just as a PSA, Gianvi is dangerous, so please consider it before accepting this prescription.  There is an open lawsuit against the maker of this product, it should not be on the shelf.  Secondly, the symptoms of a DVT and PEs are NOT always what they describe them as.  They can be different for everyone, so please be extremely careful of this.  This is an extremely dangerous condition, as it can lead to stroke, heart attack, and death.

Because of my close brush with death, I am now suffering several consequences.  There are certain medications that I will never be able to take.  In the future if I decide to have kids I have to be extremely careful.

Anyway, I've been harboring this story for a long time, and brewing over it.  There's still a lot I'm still dealing with, but I think it's good to get off my chest.

I hope this story is useful for somebody who might be experiencing the same things.  To a lot of the doctors I saw, I was a very unique case because my symptoms didn't match.  They are still amazed that this happened to someone who was only 19.  I hope this helps raise awareness about this very serious condition.  Please keep this in mind, and be safe.  

Happy New Year

Dear 2017,

Everybody has been ready for you since about September. Now you are finally here and I'm starting to feel like life is going too fast.  During you, I turn 20. I will have lived two decades. It probably doesn't seem like much, but from my perspective it does.  Right now, things should be picking up.  So much is already being expected of me, and there's more to come.  It is around this time that many things are supposed to happen, and life is supposed to follow a certain path.  My hope for you is that nothing veers too out of line, that new "firsts" will come my way and broaden my horizons.  I hope that you will be filled with good, and happy surprises and blessings.  Every year brings its own sorrows with it, but I hope you show me, and everyone, more love than hate, more good than bad, and always more happiness.

I pray that you will open my mind to greater possibilities, show me how to be more optimistic and positive, and reign in my reactions.  Please also show me how to be a better person, daughter, friend, girlfriend, geologist, granddaughter, and everything else that I am and want to be.

My only new year's resolution is to learn from you; about the world, about life, and about me.

Please teach me. I want to grow.

Open Letter to College Students

To all of my friends and acquaintances returning to or starting college:

This year is going to be great.  If you’re a freshman, moving in might seem kind of scary, being away from home can kind of suck, but you’ll survive.  You’re going to meet all types of new people, probably many that you won’t like.  But that’s okay, you don’t have to like everybody.  And the few you do find that are worth keeping will help you on your journey as much as you will help them. 

You will be stressed, you will fear tests and teachers and projects, but you will make it.  Sometimes you might feel stupid, like you shouldn’t be where you are.  I promise you, you are not stupid.  You took the same tests as everyone else to get to where you are, and you endured your own suffering, just like they did.  Everybody deals with stress and tiredness, its how we come out of it that determines who we are.  If we give in, we won’t get anywhere.  But if we keep going, do our best to accept the circumstances as what they are and work with them, we all have the potential to overcome all obstacles. You deserve your shot, and you have earned it.  Go make the most of it. 

But keep in mind it will not be easy.  Even so, always give everything you do 100%. Your homework, your classes, your friends, your relationships, and yes, even your fun. Especially your fun.  You may find yourself with less free time, so enjoy it to its fullest too.  And sometimes this will mean faking it.  It is not always possible to get enough sleep, or finish your homework on time, or make straight A’s.  But no matter what, never quit.  You can do this.  You have it in you to make it, and you will do it.

And even when it’s really hard and nothing is working the way it should, keep smiling.  Even when you’re feeling the worst, smiling will always make it better (even if it’s fake).  So take a second to smell the fresh air when you walk to class.  Really feel the sun on your skin or the cold wind in your lungs.  And smile. Because everything is going to be okay. 

Chips and Cracks

I realized something tonight while I was having a conversation with my boyfriend.  I know I've written similar things before about people being imperfect and unique, but this is a different perspective on that.

People are like old, worn, teacups. Each of us has a different set of cracks and chips from where we've fallen apart and been put back together.  Some of our rims might be thicker or more delicate, some of us might be pretty or simple.  Some of our cracks may run deeper than other cups.  But we are all subjected to changes.  We may be used for containing hot liquids or cold, or perhaps we get dropped too roughly in the sink.  But all of these changes affect the very material of who we are.  And, like a very loved and favorited teacup, each time we are dropped or start to crack, we are put back together by those who love us.  In the end each time we are dropped we do change some, and perhaps we don't retain our original character or luster.  And indeed we still carry sharp edges that may poke the ones who love us.  But in the end these chips and cracks do not matter because we are a favorite teacup of someone, and they will love us regardless.  Nobody enjoys being cut by a sharp piece of ceramic, but the cup contains more good qualities, memories, and personality than any of the others.  It is, after all, our favorite cup for a reason.

Breath of Fresh Air

Sometimes it's good to take a break. I know that in the rush of stress, and due dates, and responsibilities, it gets really hectic, but stopping for a moment can be so beneficial. I think that's something I've just really come to grips with lately. Sometimes I feel like there's so much to do and so much going on, and many times this is the case.  But it only gets really bad when I tell myself that "it'll get better once it's over." Sometimes this is the case, like with tests and studying.  Other times its not.  When you have a continual steam of things to do and you just keep pushing to reach the finish line, its not going to happen.  Chances are you'll reach your breaking point before you ever reach the end.  So when you're so busy doing the constant stuff and you're feeling overwhelmed, stop. Stop before your body really hits the wall and you start falling apart. Stop and take a breather so you can keep running in one piece. Read a book, take a hike, go out with friends, do something crazy and fun so you can start at it again with a fresh spirit and the courage and energy to make it through. Even if you feel like you don't deserve a break because you haven't done well on a test or a homework, you do deserve it because you tried. All we can do in life is keep moving forward, but sometimes it's necessary to wander off the beaten path for a change in scenery.

Second Place!!!

I'm so overjoyed to announce that the Colorado School of Mines Sliderulers won second place in the swing dance competition tonight! I'm so proud of my boyfriend and his team for doing so well!!  Congratulations guys, you definitely earned it! Next year its time to beat CU, once and for all!

P.S. Here is an updated and much higher quality video! Enjoy! :)

Best Weekend :)

I'm so happy I got to spend these last three days with my favorite person in the whole world. I had so much fun touring more of Rapid City with you!! I loved just being able to spend time with you again and forget about all the stress for a while! :) Though I already miss you so much, I can't wait to see you again, and I'm praying these last 5 weeks will go by quickly.  Love you soooo much! <3 

P.S. Thanks for the chocolate chips and the NEW WEEZER ALBUM!! :D I'm still so excited about that!    And helping me re-pot my plant. And being brave in getting the dirt for her. And yeah, you are just the best! :)

grin em

Spring Break, at Last!

What a gift Spring Break is.  You would think that two and a half months of college is nothing, after returning from Christmas Break, there is no motivation left.  But thankfully I've found a way to restore motivation!  Talk to the same people or relive the experiences that gave you the passion for what you pursue.  That's what I did!  After grinding away through a semester with no fun classes and no classes that are actually part of my field, I needed reminding of why I joined the field of geology.  Today I visited my earth science teacher from high school, the real inspiration behind my love of rocks, and I have returned with a renewed energy.  Even though the rest of this semester will probably still suck, I can't wait to start up my geo classes again next fall.  Hopefully that will be enough motivation to keep me rolling through the rest of the year!

Not only has it been a restorative time for my motivation, but I'm also getting things done.  I've been busy, but not busy in a bad way. More like catching up with the fun things I had to put aside when the semester began.  But now my to-do list is gradually shrinking and I'm happier than ever! Here's to looking forward to Easter Break, haha!