Oh, College.

Hey friends, it's time to check in again. I am now almost half way through my first fall semester at WSU and I am feeling utterly defeated. Eighteen-thousand hours of homework later, and I'm barely treading water.

I took on a 17credit load this semester, and when you couple that with out of the class study time and student organizations, it literally feels like I have no time to catch my breath. My life is a constant stream of work and commitments.

I'm so stressed my chest is tight, and my face is so pimpled that I look like a pre-adolescent who got into the greasy bag of potato chips. It's awful. I'm drinking so much coffee to stay awake that I feel like I'm having heart palpitations.

So, lets take a little look-sie back into the first couple weeks of my fall semester...

WEEK OF WELCOME 2014

The first couple of days were magically music and ice cream filled. Week of Welcome, the week that everyone moves into their dorms and gets settled on campus before the first week of classes, went swell. It was a week full of familiar friendship and meeting new people. We spent our days reveling in the familiar ways of Summer school, chowing down on free ice cream, attending orientations, and meeting other students. I was excited to get to know more people in my major.

Dave Matthews Concert with my Mama!

The weekend between week of welcome and syllabus week, the first week of classes, I hit the road and headed back home for the weekend and my Mom and I were blessed with the opportunity to go to a Dave Matthews Band concert together. It was absolutely incredible. I have never been so breathless at the sound of music, but there is something special about the passion of Dave Matthews, and it radiates. Better yet, now that we live in Washington, we were able to catch the tour in one of their "home" locations, which was astounding in that Dave valued the location as much as his performance, and it was refreshingly raw, and real, and personal. By far the best concert that I have ever attended; and I'm relatively positive that is is the best one that I ever will.

Here is my Mama and me before the concert

It was an absolute dream come true for me. I have wanted to see them live for years. As a child, my Mom and Dad listened to him all the time, and though the lyrics may not have always been kosher, I look back fondly on those days of my chubby little cheeks moving up and down as I belted out his anthems and smiled bigger than the sun. It was surreal to get to experience his music live, and such a huge blessing that it was my mom that I got to share it with! AHHH, I can't even express it fully, just know that it was incredible. Like, really, really, really good.

But, I digress..

SYLLABUS WEEK

It was after this wonderful and musical weekend that I had my very first day of fall classes. Technically, this was not my first ever day of college since I have been at WSU since the end of June, but the fall semester is so vastly different than the summer session that I attended that it feels there can be no true comparison between the two. So, I launched into classes.

There's this thing that happens when you first start your classes: you tell yourself that they will never be as bad as people before you have made them seem and so you jump in feet first and you never look back. And granted, those first couple weeks are nice. For me, syllabus week was full of "Good Mythical Morning" watching dates with Samuel, friendship fellowship, and overall appreciation for the chapter that I was jumping into.

I attended what felt like countless "general meetings" to figure out what clubs I wanted to join, and one night I dressed up all spiffy and landed a position on my school's local Cable channel.

Supes classy photographing my interview attire in a public bathroom. ;)

I was interviewed by three different student produced shows here on campus, seeking out a position anywhere in the Cable 8 kingdom here at WSU, I was invited to be the Assistant Director for a scripted comedy called "Idiots" and I couldn't have been more thrilled to be a part of it.

SEVENTH WEEK REFLECTIONS

Entering now into my seventh week of classes, it's safe to say that all of the enthusiasm and vigor that I possessed those first couple of days has been zapped. My bones ache, I am so tired. Almost halfway through my semester and I am feeling like I am drowning.

College is hard. And it's ripping me a new one.

I thought that I was ready, but honestly, you jump in not knowing what to expect and then a bulldozer just comes through and starts plowing through everyone. Only the strong survive. Kidding...sort of.

Between all my classes, relationships, and work commitments it is hard to find a second to just be, and that is one of the things that I am learning is essential to the soul. Needless to say, this semester has been different than I had initially expected it to be, and that is both an incredibly wonderful thing and an overwhelmingly negative reality.

I am having a terribly hard time keeping up in some of the classes that were supposed to be some of my easiest, and, I swear, I am losing hair because of it. I'm gonna have little bald patches and a constant stream of acne for the next four years if everything continues at this rate. It's been incredibly humbling for me.

In high school I never had to study for anything, and I rarely, if ever, struggled to understand anything - but college is an entirely different reality. I'm sinking rather than swimming, and that is a hugely humbling experience for me... it is also an extremely frustrating one.

I genuinely think that God is just using this semester to show me that I'm actually not superwoman.

My classes are falling apart, my show is wreck, and my mind is a disaster zone. I feel like I'm trying to run through a pool of molasses.

College is hard. No one prepares you for that.

But hey, don't let me be a negative nelly forever, because as much of a wreck as some of these days have been, they have also been incredible.

Just last week, my friend Sam played in the Washington-Idaho Symphony and I, along with a group of friends, got to go and listen. It was incredible. I've always had a weird relationship with live music, it makes me more emotional than anything else, as soon as that first chord echoes through the auditorium, it's over for me. I get crazy insane goosebumps and teary eyes, and through the whole performance I sit there catching flies in my mouth because my jaw has dropped from the sheer beauty of it all.

I'm so lucky, more blessed than anything, to have such a great friend so deeply passionate about something so beautiful because it gives me an excuse to escape reality for a bit at the hands of those musical performances. Music has a profound effect on me. It washes over me, bringing with it the tide of serenity in the tensest situations. Music is one of my greatest escapes, and live music - well, I'm getting chills just writing this out.

In a variety of ways, I think that the event of music is one of the times when the Lord is most present to me, showing me his presence in the beauty of the gifts that he has given to his children. That may sound a little cheesy, but I think that it's so true, because even when I sit there listening to Sam mess around on the piano - no big performances or anything - there are no words to describe the calm and gratefulness that wash over me. Music is a profound blessing to me, and my soul has been covered by it these past few weeks and I couldn't be happier.

Another super cool opportunity happened just the other day when I was able to attend the presentation of speaker Karen Crouse, writer for the New York Times. Now, let me just preface this by saying that the NYT has always been one of my number one choices for employment. I won't deny that I have romanticized it in my mind, and because of that a dream of mine is to one day write for the Times. So, naturally the opportunity to speak, and to be spoken to, by someone on staff was an event that I couldn't pass up.

More than a little exhausted, I posed for a picture with Karan and some friends. Those dark circles under my eyes are pretty much a constant now.

Karen was wonderful! She was inspiring, and intelligent, and overall interesting. Even more amazing was the fact that I was able to talk to her in person and hear her take on the industry and what it had to offer. It had been an extremely long day by the time I made it to her presentation, and before waling into the hall I was nothing short of the walking dead. But her passion and her inspiring words woke me up to a point of almost nostalgia for the future that I may have in the industry. I am so thrilled to have been there, and look forward to what comes of it in the future.

Reigning myself back to the present, however, I realize that through this semester God has been using my time at WSU to show me the value of relationships. The further I progress into the semester the more I realize that I cannot do it alone. The more thankful I become for the shoulders I have to cry on, or the people that I have to make me smile on my darkest days.

God has been good, and though I have been stressed and exhausted, my relationships are often the only thing that keeps me going.

FOOTBALL AND FRIENDSHIP

It's no secret that I love football. Catch me at a game and you'll be utterly surprised by the guttural battle cries I am able to muster in the heat of a play. Cougar football has been a seriously huge part of my keeping my sanity here. Game nights are my break nights, and I get to spend them in the company of the people that I love watching one of the sports that I love.

And besides, cougar pride is a real thing, and it's nowhere more apparent than at football games.