Personal Triumphs

I have a confession. I'm super competitive. Not many people know or believe this about me. I'm not competitive in the loud, obnoxious, "If you win I'll hate you forever" type of way. I'm competitive in the "I have to beat you or else I can't feel good about myself" kind of way. I'm usually able to, in general, keep quiet about my little obsession with having to be better than everybody else (which, by the way, I'm totally not).

Pretty sure I've been this way my whole life. At the bookstore we had to sell discount cards. If I hadn't sold more discount cards than anyone else, I was going nuts inside my brain. I also tried to make sure I had more sales than anyone else. Not that my bosses (or anyone for that matter) saw or cared in the least about that, but I sure did.

In school I always secretly compare my grades with everyone else. Anytime I get the chance to figure out another students grades I always grasp at it to make sure that I'm doing better, or at least as well as said student. If not, then I get all depressed and work super hard until I make that happen. I force myself to try and be in the top ranges. I don't necessarily have to be the best (cuz that's totally a lost cause), but I have to just be better than usual.

Last winter my roommate Ashley worked really hard and got a 4.0 GPA at the end of the semester with 15 credits. I love Ashley to death. She's very smart and a great roommate. But I just felt like I had to beat her. Secretly, of course. I never told her how much it bothered me. But that's one of the reasons I took 20 credits last semester and did so well. I had to just prove to myself I could do it.

It's a bad obsession overall. But in some ways it's good because I push myself so hard to be better, and I actually do become better.

Today at the gym I was really excited that I finally made my goal of running 4 miles in 50 minutes. I ended up going over 4.5 miles in one hour. I was really really proud of this little triumph of mine. Until I looked at the guy on the treadmill beside me who was on mile 6 in 45 minutes, running without even wheezing. There's no way I'll ever be able to do that.

Then I went over to the weights. I was really proud of myself for being able to finally do this one arm machine at 40 pounds. I felt like this was a super successful workout. Personal triumph. As I got up, feeling the burn in my arms, I noticed the guy sitting down right behind me. He changed it to 110 pounds. Again, no chance I could ever beat that it seems. Fail.

For me, going to the gym and improving on my exercising is a great personal triumph. I have to be careful not to let other people who are way more in shape than I am ruin that for me. It's nice to go to the gym with my old roommate Ashley because we're both about the same level and we both push each other to do a better workout. Well, at least she helps me, I don't know if she has that weird competitive thing or not.

It made everything better when I came home and my roommate, who also works out, told me it looked like I lost weight. I'm not sure if she was just trying to be nice or not, but that made it all totally worth it.

Now I just have to stop comparing myself to people all the time. That can be my next triumph.

Silly People

I lost my voice. It's just gone. Actually, it's not totally gone, but it's sure hurting my throat a lot.

I saw the Tinker Bell movie the other night. It was cute. I can't WAIT for the newest Disney princess movie to come out this December. The Princess and the Frog it's called. Apparently it's animated and just like the old classic films. I'm so excited for it!

In another side of things...

I get really annoyed when I get the whiny guests that I can tell like to just manipulate people all they can as a hobby. I don't mind giving real, genuine, decent guests free things. For example a little girl was crying the other day because one of her pins fell off her lanyard. I got down and let her pick her favorite pin from my lanyard and gave it to her. So cute and the parents were thrilled.

I had 46 hours last week, 48 this week, and 44 next week. Before I came here I figured if I could work between 40 and 45 hours a week every week while here I'd be fine. Guess what? I'm doin' fine.

The sad part though is that most of my shifts are 10-7 or 11-6 type shifts. And I only have one day off a week. So there's pretty much no time to play. Ever. My life basically consists of getting up, showering, making a quick breakfast, throwing a sandwich together for lunch, going to work, getting home, cleaning the kitchen, messing on the computer for about half an hour, cleaning some more, making dinner, going to bed. Every day. On my one day off I get really excited to sleep in.

And I just noticed it's almost 1am. When did THAT happen!? What the? Well, I have to wake up at 7am tomorrow so I'm going to go now. Anyway, hope this was a good enough update. :)

How Did I Get Like This?

I noticed while taking notes in Humanities of Islam today that I write weird. I remember in elementary school being taught how to write. How paragraphs need to be indented on the first line and then normal the rest of the way until you start a new paragraph. When I write I usually keep the first line of my paragraph normal and then the rest of the paragraph I indent each line. Weird... it doesn't even make sense because I was taught the other way and the other way saves more room. But hey, that's just how I do it.

When I type I was taught to type the same way. Indent the first line of the paragraph and go normal the rest of the way. Obviously, as you can see from the way I'm typing this, I've veered from that as well. I learned this style of typing from my sister and highly prefer it.

So I've easily thrown away those elementary (and some were even required in high school) habits and changed my ways to how I like it. But still, any time a teacher gives out a hand out whether it's the syllabus, a certain map, or worksheet or whatever, regardless of whether we turn it in or not, I'm still in the habit of writing my name at the top. I've at least gotten to the point where I just think about it and as my hand makes it's way to the paper I remember that I don't need to, but still. Silly little thing.

I'm pretty sure this gets at least in the top ten if not it's the winner for the most pointless, time-wasting post ever. I just really wanted to update and surprisingly enough had nothing else to say.

Hard Hard Hard!

At the beginning of this semester I was thinking "Yay! No tests! This won't be too bad. Just a pile of research papers to work on after Europe. I'll have an entire week and a half and I even like research papers. If I can just get a few done each day then I'll have it done two days early! This'll be fine. Man, what a great deal."

Not so.

The papers are horrible enough to make up for the fact that there are no tests. First, there's about a million of them. Second, it's not just "find information and write down what you learned." It's "find information, study it, think about it, crack your brain open thinking about it, and then come up with a ton of your own genius ideas and write what you've learned, how it affects life today, how it affected life back then AND (the kicker) bring everything together into one huge paper summing up how the world has changed starting in the Renaissance and continuing all the way into today."

Just to make things "nicer" though, the teachers put no limits on these papers. "Do we need a works cited?" "Use your own judgment." "How long does this paper have to be?" "Use your own judgment." "How will this be graded?" "Oh, we'll know how hard you tried." "How do you want it turned in?" "Oh it doesn't matter, just get it to us somehow." "What style? APA or MLA?" "Whatever you want."

Cuz that makes things a lot easier. In case you can't tell I'm kinda freaking out. I've spent all week sitting in front of this silly computer screen, breaking my butt (no really, my butt hurts. You try sitting on a couch all day!) and snapping my brain in half trying to write these papers and bring everything together. I think I prefer tests actually. Cuz then at least I know what material to go over. I'm given the material. I don't have to spend hours searching for contradicting information to write a paper that says something along the lines of "Some people believe this about this painting, but others disagree. Many think it was meant to be like this but other critiques find this other interpretation to be accurate. In summary, no one really knows the answer to this question."

Okay. So things really aren't that bad. I try to take a break every day to go outside and exercise somehow. And food breaks are always happy. And I'm learning a lot and feeling really accomplished every time I finish a paper. I've also been getting distracted. Hence why I'm here. Plus the weather's been beyond amazing this whole time! Love it! Totally love it! Now all I have to do is get back to those papers... anyone know how to "discuss the tensions between church and state as evidenced by Henry VIIIs formation of the Church of England?"

Typical Europe Questions Tangent

The past few days I've been trying to come up with ideas of what to go and see and do while I'm in Europe. Doing this is making me about a thousand times more excited! I still have a lot to do before I leave, so I'm torn between whether I really really want it to hurry up and get here and whether I really just want to put it off another week so I can get everything accomplished that I need.

Speaking of that though, I thought I'd note some of the things that never change when I go to Europe. Considering this will be my fourth time and all...

Primarily, the people. They (meaning friends and people I leave behind) never change. I get the question at least every day now. Sometimes more. "So are you excited?"

Okay, seriously. How do I respond to that? "No, no. I'm not excited. Ya know, I just spent my entire life's savings on it and our culture as a whole knows that Europe is like, the ultimate vacation, and I have been talking about nothing else for the past month and a half, but no. Definitely not excited. Busy maybe. Stressed, yeah. But excited? Gosh no."

Giving them some credit however, it is hard to come up with things to ask people who're traveling a different question. What else are they supposed to say? And I have to admit that I myself am guilty of that exact same question directed toward some of my classmates.

The other obligatory question that always happens after I get back from Europe is "How was it?" Okay people, can you get more vague? How... was.... it? Huh? How was the food? How were the people? How was the language difference? How were the museums? "How was it?"

"It? Oh, yeah, it was uh... very Europe-y. Really. I felt like the Europe-ness was all over me the whole entire time."

Unfortunately, I feel like when people ask those two questions (Are you excited? and How was it?) they're really just looking for the typical answers. "Are you excited?" "Yes, definitely!" "How was it?" "Oh it was amazing!" Meaning those questions actually mean little more than "Hey how are you?" Which is obviously the question that you always are supposed to answer, "Oh I'm fine how are you?" because everyone knows the the person asking the question really doesn't even give a nip as to how you're doing. They just want to act polite and pretend to make conversation.

So maybe from now on I will just answer the typical, "Why yes, I am excited, thank you." And, "Oh Europe, that old place? Well, it was wonderful." Forget originality. Forget enthusiasm. Just stick with short, simple and polite.

Or I'll be obnoxious and memorize this tangent and then reel it off next time someone asks me that question. Yeah, I think that'd be more fun. Teehee!