October 01, 2011

Looking ahead

Two more semesters left of school. 12 more credits this semester and the next and I will have a masters degree. I feel like time has gone by so fast and there is no way it's going to get any slower anytime soon.

So much to think about these days. I know I need to find a part time (preferably work study) job, but I can't help but be much more concerned with what's coming post-MIIS graduation instead. Where should I look for a job? Can I stay on the West coast? Will I have the luxury of picking where at all? Would I be able to get a job that is enough for me to make my monthly student loan payments?

...and there's also that impulse that kind of wants to look into Halloween costumes. *cringe*

I have been dedicating a lot of time to extra-curriculars hoping to really give my resume a boost. I joined the STOP Anti-Human trafficking club and I am being more active in the Conflict Resolution Association club. I am also on the core team to put together a Conflict Resolution conference for spring semester. I am also considering contacting the Monterey College of Law and see if they still want me to do volunteer small claims mediation at the county court. I'm hoping that doing all of these things will make up for the fact that I've pretty much decided against doing the internship program for my last 12 credits.

In other news, I LOVE my new apartment. I'll admit that it is one of the reasons I decided to stay in the area for this year. I am really close to school, Trader Joe's Walgreens, and the weekly farmer's market, so there is really no urgent need to drive anywhere. I also really like living with my friend Tina and having a place where I can have friends over. Last Wednesday, I hosted a pizza night/study group for some people in one of my classes and on Thursday, Tina and I hosted wine night once again. I wouldn't do any of these things at my old place! I am also making friends with the next door neighbors and there's a cute but kinda creepy cat on my street that always stares at me when I walk by. I am actually kind of disappointed when it's not there.

Times are crazy (but kind of awesome) and I was too distracted while writing this blog to remember what else I was going to say.

September 10, 2011

Effort

I realized something recently. This is something that's really irked for a long time and I wasn't always conscious of it- effort is a VERY important thing to me. I get very put off by people who can't be bothered to figure things out, don't try to make a good impression, or try to work towards what they want. Some people can't even bother to use their own brain and common sense!

I have so much difficulty with these people because I am -always- trying. I don't live life half assed. I do things that aren't necessarily in my comfort zone. I put out a lot of effort everyday for the sake of other people. I have days when I am relaxed, but I don't glorify it like laziness is the greatest thing on Earth.

Call it crazy, but I just don't like to be inefficient, unimaginative, unhelpful, unmotivated, and unwilling to try new things!

These are the things you become when you are a person who does not TRY!

June 20, 2011

Sleep?

It's almost 3:30 am and sleep just isn't coming. My body keeps overheating although I've already retrieved an ice pack from the freezer and my brain just won't shut up. I haven't brought an ice pack to bed with me since summer in Japan.

Blame it on the somewhat tense situation of the past evening and the ill feeling it put in my stomach, but I just keep thinking about times long gone. I keep thinking about facebook messages I could write to people from the past and then I have to stop and wonder why I would ever want to. These people are out of my life and nothing would come from me spilling my thoughts and experiences to them. No harm, but also no point.

Don't you just hate it when your brain is tired, but still very restless? You find yourself thinking about and getting depressed about events and things that you've already moved on from ages ago. You lose sleep and end up tired all the following day when you're trying to be productive and actually get things done.

I'm fine, I'm just hoping that forcing myself to blog from this tiny cell phone keyboard will be enough to tire my brain out to let me sleep. I am struggling to think of a topic, but just before picking up the phone, my brain had absolutely NO trouble thinking of unimportant things to fuss over. Let's hope it doesn't find inspiration again once I post this.

Here's a question that I think about sometimes- Am I an inflexible perfectionist in all aspects or are other people settling for too little?

It's 3:45... can I sleep yet?

May 30, 2011

Reactivate Migratory Mode!

I almost feel like I shouldn't even be blogging right now. It's late and I should get to sleep. But I kind of felt like blogging, so I figured that I shouldn't keep myself from doing so when I actually think I might get around to it.

I am halfway through grad school. Actually, I'm MORE than halfway through grad school. I've completed 36 of the 60 required credits for my program. I can't believe that for my last two semesters, I only have to take 12 credits! That's the bare minimum to be full time and I've never EVER had so few classes before. I'm kind of glad about this because I had a terrible semester health-wise in which I spent the entire time so frustrated with myself that I kept time and time again having to fall short of my own expectations of myself. It's a little too soon to tell, but I am hoping that through that awful experience, I've learned to be more patient with myself. I like setting high goals and standards for myself, but perhaps now I can learn to become more lenient when the circumstances aren't quite in favor.

For my last 12 credits, in the spring semester of 2012, I was accepted into a program in which I will do an internship from February to late July. Actually, I wasn't accepted into this program initially, but I got in after I made an appointment with the coordinator and worked out a misunderstanding.

It's good to be able to fight for what you believe you deserve and a big starting point with that is to know what you deserve.

I think I've come a long way in that regard. I have a much better idea of what I deserve and what I am capable of than I have ever had.

When I was younger, I've always had people telling me that I didn't deserve things that I had accomplished. When I got the role of Becky in the school play, Tom Sawyer, in 5th grade, a classmate approached me and said "I can't believe you got the part of Becky." To that, I replied, "Talk to Ms. Moncrief (the director) about that." When I was the 6th grade basketball team that my dad co-coached, he decided that I deserved the "Most Coachable" award. He told me later that he and the other coach considered the possibility that another kid might say I only got the award because my father was the coach. He told me that I earned it, so it would be wrong for me not to get it, and not to listen. It was a good thing he told me that because some kids actually DID do actually that. On top of that, being a younger sibling tended to leave me feeling smaller, sometimes invisible, and I was often picked on. These kinds of things greatly altered my perception of myself for a long time and it's been a tough thing to overcome.

If I were still like that, I don't know if I would have met with someone to discuss acceptance into a program I was rejected from because I don't think that I would have taken the chance to apply in the first place. Applying for things has been getting much easier and every time it feels a lot less like I am forcing myself onto a limb.

I always talk about my standard for myself and how high they are. I forget to talk about how flexible they can be. When I apply for something, I don't think about how it must be so much easier for others to do so, I think "Wow, I've come a long way to bring myself to be able to do this!"

I don't tell people this at all, but in spite of everything, I can honesty say that I am really proud of myself. Yes, I do sometimes feel very weak in comparison to people who seem to have it all so easy- those super type A people who seem to be able to always do so much and are so great at everything they do. I want so bad to be one of those people, but at the same time I acknowledge the fact that it wasn't an easy task for me to get to where I am now. I'm at a point where I can do what they do with just a bit of aggressive pushing and a little boost of confidence. Who ever saw that coming?

Wow, I wrote so much but I haven't gotten to what my title is about.

I feel like I am returning to this blog of 3 years ago when my mom upgraded her place and then I moved to Japan- resulting in three moves that summer. I am putting most of my stuff in storage here in Monterey and moving back to her place during the summer so that I can save a little rent money and be closer to where my internship is (in the San Jose area). At some point, I am going to arrange a new place here in Monterey and move back for the new semester.

My classes for next semester are promising and I'm excited to think about things I can do for my summer internship. Not to mention I am sure my semester long internship in Spring 2012 will be really great, too. I feel like everything is coming together and making the shape of a specific goal.


When I was younger, the future used to intimidate me, but now it doesn't scare me at all.

I am SO excited about what's to come.

February 24, 2011

Emo blogging

I'm attempting to calm myself down now.

Blogging will maybe help.

I'm having a bit of a meltdown- I know a big part in it's intensity has to do with the fact that I am really overtired. I woke up last night at about 2 am from an odd dream and couldn't get my brain to calm down until around 5. Then I had to wake up two hours later to get to school early because the home internet wasn't working and I had to do some reading for my class at 10.

I've had lots of pain lately in my neck and right shoulder. I don't know why exactly, but although it's gotten better, the pain has been randomly choosing to flare up. It's really infuriating because of course I need to read a lot for my classes. It's REALLY hard to keep up with the reading when you can neither look down at the book or comfortably hold it up. I've also had a head cold lately which has made it hard to concentrate- another struggle in my already difficult plight as a grad school student.

I'm taking 16 credits and working about 12 hours a week... I'm usually on-the-go Monday through Thursday from morning until evening. Then after that, I have tons of reading and work to do until about midnight and on Fridays and the weekends. I'm fine with this, actually, I like being busy and I like what I am doing. I am the type of person who kind of thrives when just a bit overextended. However, with these complications with my body slowing me down I begin to feel like the mountain of work is insurmountable and that I am falling short of everyone's expectations of me... and worse- my expectations of myself.

After pushing myself, my fatigue, my bad concentration, and my (for some reason) irritable stomach through four hours of work which followed the class I had this morning, I was driving home. I was driving through the tunnel and planning to stop briefly at Nob Hill to get some food, when all of the sudden my right shoulder pain flared up REALLY bad. It hurt to use that arm on the steering wheel and even just the weight of the arm was bothering it. I was so annoyed because I wasn't even doing anything out of the norm to it and I certainly didn't need to add that to the day. I had to buy food with no appetite for eating whatsoever and then I finally went home. I stepped through the doorway and felt that I was away for a week instead of just around 10 hours.

I have so many things I need to catch up on this weekend because of the difficulties I had with my neck and getting sick. I felt already so overwhelmed. Plus there's the MIIS career fair that everyone says I should go to tomorrow and someone who was one of the chaperons when I went to Japan for the first time with the sister city foundation died and his funeral is this weekend, too. I was so overwhelmed- do I secure the future or show respect for the past that played a huge role in where I am now? And with SO much work to do in the present how can I do any of those things?

So I got home tired and overwhelmed and just kind of broke down.

I was on the phone with my mom a little while ago during perhaps the worst part of this little breakdown. She kept reminding me that I am doing well and that she would DEFINITELY be telling me otherwise if I wasn't.

I don't know why I have so much self-doubt. I don't know why no matter how much I achieve, I never feel like it's enough. I don't know why although I keep striving to better myself, I still can only think of myself as inadequate (at worst) or "passing" (at best). I know I spent my childhood and youth around lots of people who would respond to my achievements with things like "I can't believe YOU of all people won~", "you only got this because someone else refused it", and "you only got this because~"... but I know these things are ridiculous and they shouldn't have affected the way I look at my achievements so much.

I've learned to live and even thrive with the self doubt- working to try to prove it wrong and silence it. It has been a strong motivator in my life for years now. The bad thing is that my self doubt causes me to think that other people think poorly of me- when I keep pausing in my day to day hustle and bustle to remind myself that the only thing I am fighting here is the nagging feeling in my own head. No one thinks poorly of me- at least that I know of. I am not being judged so strongly by outside sources, but in my own mind. This is something I am unaware of, but I find myself projecting these thoughts onto other people all of the time.

What's frustrating is that I know how lucky I am. I have a comfortable place to live, food in my (ingrateful) stomach, I am safe and relatively healthy, and for GOD SAKES I am one of the small percentage of people on this Earth who can say I am where I want to be and doing what I want to be doing. I can also say with no hesitation that I know I will be heading to even more things in life that will make me very happy. I am aware of suffering in both faraway and nearby places and I know about people who are rightfully frustrated because they just can't get where they want to go. I know rationally that I earned being where I am although I can't feel it. Amidst all of this good fortune in my life there's STILL that doubt. Who am I to have this doubt? I feel like I have no place to get like this when overall, things are going so well. Why can't I just be ok with being sick and sore and not be able to read over 100 pages a week sometimes. Why can't I be as patient with myself as I am with everyone else?

There's nothing else to do but to just let the rest of this emotional hurricane finish it's little rampage. Then I'll look over my information about the career fair to decide if I should go or not and look for a place online where I can leave the Sister City Association chaperon's family a message. I'll do my best with the reading and other schoolwork because my best is all I can give any time.

Deep breaths... I think I am starting to really calm down. I actually really do think the breakdown was probably about 97% due being overtired and in pain. Most of the time, I am really grateful for where I am- even if I do often feel overwhelmed with the loans hanging over my head and out of depth around some of the other MIIS students.

Please no lecture-y comments. If you post any, I will definitely reconsider letting you in on my problems in the future. Especially since I am perfectly aware that I am just kind of bouncing off the walls emotionally due to sickness/fatigue/everything else and this is not a proper representation of how I usually am.

Phew... emotional breakdowns make me thirsty.