My days have kind of blurred by this week. I wake up and I go to work. After work I come home for an hour to change and eat. Then I go work again until I come home and go to bed.
I knew this was going to happen when I started my new job, I guess I just had this crazy idea that I was prepared to jump right into a 67 hour work week. I still don’t know how I thought that.
I know that right now is an adjustment period. I’m definitely still learning how to balance everything, but I haven’t exactly done that with a whole lot of grace this week. I’ve gotten out of bed late a few times. I’ve gone to pack a lunch and realized all I had to pack was a sandwich for a 12 hour work day. And in the chaos and exhaustion, I haven’t exactly been as smiley as I tend to be when I’m getting enough sleep.
But when I’m tired and want to start complaining, I have a few really awesome friends that remind me what I’m working for. They send me songs that motivate them when they’re struggling. They send me goofy memes and stickers to make me smile. They remind me that I’m working toward something really important. But I think the best thing they do is bring my stubborn butt back down to earth to remind me that I am blessed to have one job, let alone three.
This is only temporary. I might not be the new editing intern at a big publishing company. I’m not doing freelance work for that fancy online journal all the cool kids are reading. I’m not a grad student or a published author.
I am a cashier. I am a teller. I am a cleaning girl.
And glamorous or not, I am grateful to be all of those things.
The last year and a half has been kind of insane. I studied in Oxford the end of 2013. I went from barely knowing what I wanted to do with my life to being pretty sure I was going to move to England to finish school and (maybe) live and teach. I applied to Grad school and got accepted into the program I had fallen in love with. I graduated college. And, most recently, I’ve been waiting for the decision on my application for a Fulbright Grant.
When I found out I had been accepted to the Master’s program of my choice, I was thrilled but a little bit terrified. How on earth am I supposed to afford to live and study in England? But instead of accepting the possibility that I might not be able to afford this program, I got to work. I’ve been saving every spare dollar I have. I’ve been looking for a better job with more hours. I’ve considered every scenario in my head that could help me pay for this.
The one program that I was really banking on, though, was the Fulbright Grant. This grant promised everything I had ever dreamed of – being a part of a group of fellow scholars. Not having to worry about tuition or housing expenses. It would be like getting paid to get my Master’s degree.
And today I got the email. The subject line read “Fulbright Application Status.” I had been waiting for this email, the one that would tell me if I had been recommended for further consideration. I opened the email, closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. As I opened my eyes and scanned the paragraphs quickly, I found the words nestled at the bottom of the first paragraph:
I regret to inform you that your application is not among those recommended for further consideration.
I exhaled. I hadn’t realize I had been holding my breath. I closed my eyes again, reminded myself I knew that it was likely this would happen, and whispered the words
God, I know you have a plan. I know your plan is better than mine. I’m learning to trust. I’m learning to wait. Help me to trust your will.
I opened my eyes, took in another breath, and smiled. I could choose to cry and say that I’m never going to get to England, but what good would that do? The only thing I can do right now is pray and keep working. I’ll make it to England. I don’t know how and I don’t completely know when, but I know I will get there. I know this is one of the most cliche things I could say right now, but when one door closes another one is bound to open.
I just wasn’t expecting one to open so soon.
As I sat on my bed, writing this blog post only minutes after reading that email, I remembered that I needed to call into work to confirm my schedule this weekend. The person who picked up the phone told me that a cleaning position had opened up right before I called. She offered me the position on top of my weekend shifts. Oh, and I’m also starting my second job this next week. Between the two, I’ll be getting at least 44 hours of work each week.
The door in front of the Fulbright Grant might have been closed, but there are so many other doors and windows that are being pushed open. I’m going to England, I promise you that. I’m just going to have to work a little bit harder to get there, and that’s more than okay.
If there has been a theme running through this blog and my life, it’s probably been balance. When I was in school I was trying to balance classes, work, internships, family time, study time, friend time, and the shiny unicorn of adulthood I’ve come to know as me time.
But now, for the first time since I was in pre-school, I’m not a student. The thing I’m starting to realize is that I’m in the weird place of in-betweenness (I’m making that a word for now). I’m not in school, but I will be (hopefully) in the near future. I’m working, but only on the weekends until I start my second job. I have things that need to be done, but none of them seem to be accompanied with any sense of urgency.
So I’ve spent the last month resting. In this time I’ve spent more time with my family and friends. I’ve allowed myself to spend a little too much time reading and watching YouTube videos. I’ve allowed myself to take some time to breathe after one of the most challenging semesters of my undergraduate education.
This time to rest has been energizing, but I can’t relax forever. But there isn’t really anything demanding my time and attention in this moment. All I really need to do right now is wait.
And in this place of waiting I find myself reaching for a sense of purpose and balance, but my grip isn’t quite tight enough. I thought trying to balance an endless list of tasks and relationships was hard, but I’m finding that balancing these things when I am the one who decides what needs to be done is actually a lot harder.
Being an adult is weird and I’m still learning how to function properly, but I think I’m excited to see what I can do with this time. I don’t want to do nothing, and I know I can’t do everything. So I think for now I’m going to focus on finding meaning in the waiting. I don’t know what that’s supposed to look like, but I’m ready to see what happens.
Comment Question: How do you achieve balance in your life? Do you work best with a routine, or do you prefer flexibility? I’m curious to hear how you’ve mastered the wonderful and scary phenomenon of adulthood.
As I’m writing this blog post it is approximately 1:50 a.m. on (technically) Christmas day. I’ve just spent the last two hours watching a movie while drinking tea, and about two hours before that I was hugging my mom and brother and telling them “Merry Christmas.” It was a wonderful night, and I can’t stop smiling.
This is the first “normal” Christmas we have had in a long time. The years before this have been shaded with awkward post-divorce Christmas arrangements, arguments, slammed doors, and a lot of stress.
This year has been better, though. Tonight I went to a Christmas Eve service at church with my mom and brother. The mere fact that Deven went to church with us put a smile on my mom’s face that I haven’t seen in a long time. She kept taking him by the hand and introducing him to people that have been praying for him for months. It made me so happy to see her so happy, and it made me even happier that we were all together.
Later we came home and opened presents, all of us sitting on the floor by the tree. At one point I stopped and looked at my mom and my brother, both of whom were laughing. And in that moment, and in many others throughout the night, all I could think of was how blessed I am.
Tonight was an answered prayer. This is my last Christmas in Michigan for a while, and I’ve been praying for a peaceful Christmas. But more than that I’ve been praying for healing. Because as scared as I am of moving to England by myself, I’m more afraid that my mom and brother will still need me. I need to know that they are going to be okay.
And as simple as it sounds, tonight was an answer to both of my prayers. We had a wonderful Christmas, and as I looked at my mom and my brother tonight, I couldn’t find a trace of pain in their eyes. That doesn’t happen a lot, but it’s happening more and more.
I can’t expect everything to be perfect by time I move (or anytime, really). I’ve been telling myself and others that everything was going to be okay, “because I know God is in control.” The problem is that for so long I have said those words, but they rang hollow in my ears. I’ve been holding on to my mom and Deven. I’ve been holding onto my fear that I can’t fix them if I’m halfway across the world. I wasn’t afraid of leaving because I wasn’t ready; I was afraid of leaving because I wasn’t sure if they were ready.
We still have a lot of healing to do. I know that when I move it’s going to be hard for all of us. But tonight, in the midst of giggles and throwing wrapping paper at each other, I know we’re going to be okay.
And with that realization tonight I was hit with the words I’ve been avoiding: It’s okay to let go. They are going to be okay. I am going to be okay. Jesus didn’t come to this world for me to hold onto the things that I’m too afraid to let go of. He wants me to give him my everything. I thought I had done that, but I was wrong. I had given him myself, but I had not given him everything.
Tonight he showed me that he is working in this family. He is working in my mom. He is working in Deven. He is working in me. And as stubborn as I am, as painful as the growing process is and will continue to be, I am so thankful and blessed to know that the only one capable of holding us all in his arms is Christ. And I don’t know about you, but I’ pretty sure that is the best Christmas present we could be given.
For those of you who might have been reading this blog for more than a few months, you might remember that I used to write a lot about my weight loss journey. You might also have noticed that I haven’t really written about that journey in a long time. I could give the excuse that I’ve been busy and school has been crazy, but I’ve found the time to write the occasional blog post and post YouTube videos almost every day this month, so that’s not exactly the best excuse.
So instead of giving you some excuse, I’m going to be honest: I haven’t lost weight (consistently) in about four or five months. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could say I haven’t gained any weight, either, but that’s not true. Since July I have gained almost 10 pounds (gasp! I know, terrible). But that isn’t the whole story, either. Since I have been home from Oxford, I have continued to lose weight, gain weight, lose a bit of weight, then gain some more. In the end, I have gained more than 20 pounds in the last year.
This year has been an insane mess of emotions, decisions, and growth for me. It has not been easy, but I can confidently say that it has been one of the best years of my life. But I think that all of this growth and figuring out what I want to do with my life has somehow resulted in my pushing the weight loss thing to the side for a while. One of the things I’ve been talking about for a long time is finding balance in my life, and this year I have been working really hard to do that. For the first time in a long time I’m getting more than four hours of sleep at night, getting good grades, and managing to spend more time with friends and family. I still have no idea how this is happening, other than by the grace of God.
But even though I have found a better sense of balance in my life, my health has kind of been pushed to the back seat. Oddly enough, I’m spending time exercising this semester because I’m taking a fitness class that requires me to do so. So why am I still gaining weight? I have a couple theories. The first is that, even though I’m working out four times each week, I know that I’m not putting my all into it. I’m usually finding myself doing the minimum requirement for the class and then getting back to the rest of my schoolwork.
The second issue probably has something to do with what I’m eating. If I’m going to be completely honest, I have to say that I have not been eating very well the last few months. Part of this is because budgeting has been a bit difficult at home. And even though I know deep down that this is a horrible excuse, when our food budget is cut, we usually end up buying the cheapest things we can find, and that usually means all of the boxed, canned, and frozen processed foods we can find on clearance. When you reach a point where you go a few days every week or two with nearly-empty cupboards, you kind of stop worrying about how many carbs are in your dinner.
Now I want to be clear about something: I am not asking for pity. I’m not trying to make excuses. If anything, I’m trying to identify for myself what is going wrong in my weight loss plan so that I can make the changes I need to make. I’m also hoping that you (yes, you) could either help keep me accountable or maybe give me some advise on turning things around. I’m not ready to give up on reaching my goal weight, because I promised myself that I would get there. It has taken me almost three years to lose the first 120 pounds; so even if it takes me 10 years, I’m going to lose the next 120 pounds. I just need to get back up, make a new plan, and start moving forward again.
Tonight I was having a conversation with my mom, and we somehow got on the topic of marriage and children. The words “I don’t know if I’ll get married or have kids” left my mouth and I immediately knew that I had said the wrong thing. Actually, a better way to put that is I had said something my mom didn’t want to hear. But it’s not just her: a lot of people in my community don’t want to hear that out of the mouth of a 20-something year old woman. It’s just not natural. Or something like that.
I can think of two women in my immediate community who are in their thirties and are still single, and most people assume that they deserve our pity because they are single. As a young girl I assumed that this was a fair judgment, but only because that’s the way my community thought. As an adult, though, I’ve realized that my quality of life is not contingent upon my relationship status. My future is not incomplete if it doesn’t feature a backyard wedding and gag-inducing “we’re pregnant” photos plastered all over Facebook (not that I don’t love my friends that are posting such lovely photos of their expanding abdomens).
Now before you start drawing your own conclusions and get ready to tell me I’m either crazy or that I’ll “find the right guy eventually”, I want to be clear about something: I am not saying that I do not want to get married. I’m not saying I don’t ever want to have children. In all honesty, I’ve thought about these things and what they might look like for my future. But I am not saying that a life of being single is out of the question, either.
All I know is that if my success and happiness are built on romantic relationships, then it will be a life that is lacking. I think that it can be too easy to see marriage and children as an end goal, an elevated state of being or accomplishment, and that is the thing I do not want. I don’t want to give one element of my life higher recognition than it calls for. I want to be more than just a wife or a mother because who I am is so much more than just this one possible piece of my identity.
So what do I want, then? Ultimately, I want to learn to place God at the center of my life. I want to be able to find joy and peace in him rather than solely in my job, my family, my friends, or my education. All of these things are good things, and in their proper place can be sources of great blessings. But I know that I have a tendency to make them more important than they are in relation to Christ.
To find joy and to feel fulfilled I do not need a wedding ring. And conversely, my single status should not be understood as a status praising my independence or empowerment, but instead should allow me to focus on depending on God and learning over and again how broken I am without him. So for now I am choosing to be single. I’m learning to depend on him. Everything else that follows is just an added bonus.
I don’t usually post the videos from my YouTube channel on this blog unless I have a really good reason to. This just happens to be one of those things. I was going to write a blog post about this experience, but at the time I was still processing everything and talking it out made it easier to describe.
Most of my vlogs are not this serious, but this was kind of an important thing I wanted to talk about.
A number of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me the following YouTube video posted by the PBS Idea Channel:
(Note: It’s pretty long so you don’t have to watch the whole thing, but it’s pretty great and I think it’s worth a few more minutes of not doing your homework)
In the video, Mike Rugnetta, the host of the show, poses a kind of interesting question: does the internet have dialects? At first I thought of the idea that the internet has its own sort of language or dialect within the English language, but what Rugnetta is talking about here is something more complex: dialects within the internet itself.
I was so intrigued by his video that I decided to write my linguistics term paper on this topic. I’d like to think that I have been an active member of a few online communities, both as a creator and as a viewer, and I think that gives me enough experience with language and the internet to at least have some say on the topic.
But as I have been trying to research for this paper, I’ve found that it might be harder to argue for than I realized. First of all, when referring to dialect are we referring to accent, vocabulary, syntax, semantics, or is it something more than these linguistic terms? Rugnetta talks a little bit about the idea that a dialect is much more than how someone speaks, but how they use that language in communities of practice. I don’t know about any of you, but I have definitely experienced nuanced differences in the way different online communities behave and interact and even how they utilize language together. The issue I am still having, however, is finding a way to properly explain this in an academic paper.
I could talk about the use of certain vocabulary terms within internet communities (i.e. the denotative and connotative understandings of the word ‘nerd’ in the Vlogbrother’s community versus a sub-community on Reddit). I could talk about how certain communities value grammar in ways that others might not (though, let’s be honest, this is the internet and there will always be prepubescent trolls in the comment sections who have never even heard the term “comma splice”). But how do I properly represent those communities that most definitely share ideas, values, and concepts of reality, but their members are so diverse that the actual language they use is not necessarily connected?
The internet is a pretty big place with a lot of different communities, and trying to determine whether or not those communities have their own “dialect” is a pretty big task that might not fit neatly into a ten page term paper. That being said, I’m still really interested in how language is used in online communities and if or how it functions within different communities. I’d like to think that the internet, as a whole, says something important about how we understand and function within community. One thing I want to know, though, is what does our use of language online say about the types of things we care about or find worth forming a community around? And what separates those online communities from a good old fashioned book club or discussion group?
I don’t have any real answers just yet, but I’m having a lot of fun thinking about these sorts of questions, and I would love to hear your thoughts on language and the internet. Do you use a different “dialect” within different online settings? If not, have you ever stopped to think why? Let me know in the comment section below!
It has reached that point in the term where the following things can be overheard on a daily basis on most college campuses:
“How is everyone today?” [various grunts, moans, and other noises that were anything but proper English]
[in a happy voice] “I got four hours of sleep last night!”
Student 1: Can we move the quiz to tomorrow? Professor: No Student 2: Can we vote on it? Professor: No Student 1: I’ve always been in favor of democracy over dictatorships
I’ve also seen many a fellow student passed out in some of the most inconvenient locations, most of them using backpacks and jackets for makeshift pillows and/or blankets. Yeah, midterms are definitely here.It might be easy for me to laugh at the woes of fellow students, but I promise I’m not doing it out of malice: I am right there with them. I fell asleep reading my linguistics textbook the other night, and I was sitting in an upright position at my desk. I’m pretty sure my blood is currently a strange mix of red and white blood cells and concentrated black coffee right now, and yet I still manage to frequently forget what day it is.
Why is this, though? I think it’s because most of us have hit what some of us like to call ‘the Wall.” This happens every term. You start out at the start of term with enough energy to poke an eye out and some strange desire to genuinely learn, then all of a sudden you run nose-first into a giant brick fortress of sleep deprivation and information overload.
I don’t care who you are, how smart you are, or how great of a student you are: you have hit the wall at some point in your life. Even if you’ve never gone to college, most of us have hit some sort of wall like this. And if you haven’t yet, I have two questions for you: 1) Are you lying? and 2) Are you human?
Now most of you probably know the symptoms of hitting the wall. Sometimes it results in lack of energy and a new kind of love for power naps. Sometimes you give in to this lack of energy and motivation and develop Handsintheair syndrome, characterized by concerning levels of procrastination because, quite frankly, you just don’t care.
But just because we know that we have hit this wall does not mean that we know how to get over it. I am almost 22 years old and I still have a hard time getting past the wall. Do I jump over it? Climb it? Can I blast through it? Am I allowed to just walk around it? The answer, I think, depends on who you are and just how big your wall is. I realize how ridiculously vague and unhelpful this sounds, but bear with me for a moment. Sometimes we get to the wall because we are a little bit tired and overwhelmed, and sometimes it’s because we honestly have no idea how to get around this giant barrier standing between us and where we really need or want to be. So, in no particular order of importance, here are a few techniques I’ve learned in getting past the midterm (or the life) wall:
Figure out what kind of wall this is – Recognizing what kind of wall you are up against is the best way to figure out how you are going to get through it and help you see just how big or small it really is. Right now I’m up against the midterm wall. I’m tired. I have a lot of assignments to complete and a lot of tests to study for. Oh, and I also have to have a life outside of school. The bottom line is things are kind of overwhelming right now, but not impossible. My wall. in this moment, is not impossible to get through.
Remember that it is only temporary – I know how easy it is to convince yourself that you are going to be stuck in this moment forever. There might be a few exceptions, but I can almost guarantee you that you won’t always be stuck here.
Be honest with yourself – When you hit the wall, recognize that you have hit the wall. Do not let yourself sink into an endless void of YouTube and middle-of-the-day four hour naps. You are better than that. Fall into the void, just do it while telling yourself that you really need to get out of it, then actually work to get out of it. This brings me to my fourth point,
Have a plan – Once you hit your wall, chances are you’re going to be a little dazed and confused for a little while. Once you start coming to your senses, though, you need to have a plan. Think of ways to get around the wall. For me, this is usually manifested in a no-internet rule for a certain amount of time each day. For other walls (like trying to not be unemployed) I would set a goal to submit at least three job applications a day. Whatever you are up against, there is probably something you can do to slowly get through it.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help – They don’t usually tell you this in Adult 101, but I’ll let you in on this secret: asking for help is ok. I’m not kidding. Talk to people that are older and more experienced than you are, they might actually have some great advice to give you. And no, this does not mean you are dumb or a failure, it means that you are smart enough to realize you actually don’t know everything. Just try it, I promise you will not die.
I hope this has been at least a little bit helpful to those of you poor souls facing the midterm wall right now. I’m staring at it too, but I promise it will get better.
Comment Question: What are some other techniques you have used to get over the wall? Let me know in the comment section, I would love some other ideas.
Also, side note, here’s a video that I made with a friend about essay writing, and I think it definitely relates to this post.
We live in a culture that seems to want to tell its children one of two things. The first is that they can be “whatever they want to be” when they grow up. The second is that they can be whatever they want to be as long as what they want to be is practical and financially beneficial. On the one hand, I know that telling your kids that they can do anything might be a little bit unrealistic, though I think there is some truth in it. I wanted to be a dinosaur when I was three, but did my mom say to me “of course you can be a dinosaur!” No. At least not in the literal sense. I might actually have been a bit concerned if she encouraged that much past the age of six or seven. This might be an exaggerated example, but I think it’s important that we recognize the difference between distorting reality and providing constructive encouragement (I’ll get to what I mean by that in a minute).
After I stopped wanting to be a dinosaur I started telling people I wanted to be a writer. Do you know what the response usually was? “Why don’t you do something else that will be a little more practical?” And by practical they meant “attached to a steady paycheck.” So instead of majoring in English, I started my college career as a double major in Journalism and Political Science. I still shudder when I think about it.
After one year of pain and misery, something strange happened: A couple of very wise professors told me that there is more to college than getting a piece of paper that says “Give me a job, please.” Yes, they said that. No, they were not joking. I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.
Did it sink? No? No worries, it took me a while to understand this foreign concept, too. I mean, isn’t that what college is for? To get a job? Well, partially. But there is so much more to it. Yes, I want to have a good job at the end of this finance-sucking wormhole of textbooks and essays. Partially because I need to pay off loans. But there has to be more to it than that, even more than having a job that you like.
College is supposed to be the place that helps form you as an entire person, not just a floating head that can spit back vocabulary terms. I’m reading The Idea of a Christian College by Arthur F. Holmes right now, and I think the following quote from the beginning of his book speaks to this issue our culture is facing:
For the question a teacher must ask about his teaching is not “What can they do with it?” but rather “What will it do to them? What sort of men and women will they become by wrestling with the material in the way I present it? And what sort of materials and methods could I develop to help them become more fully the people they are capable of being?” (24)
Until we move away from the notion that college can only serve as a place to make acceptable employees, we are going to be deprived of the possibilities that a college education can and should be. Let’s stop focusing on regurgitation and start teaching our students how to think critically, and I mean really think critically. Let’s stop telling our students that they have to take this math class and that biology class “just because” and help them see the real value of understanding why these disciplines are key parts of our world. Let’s stop preaching the need to be practical and encourage our students to be something that matters to them. College should not be a place that you have to “suffer through” just to work in a job that you only kind of like (or worse, a job that you hate). Instead it should be like this:
It should be a liberating experience that enlarges horizons, deepens insight, sharpens the mind, exposes new areas of inquiry, and sensitizes our ability to appreciate the good and the beautiful as well as the true. (Holmes 19)
Now before you start skipping off to be a dinosaur, I want to be clear about something. Yes, we should be encouraging our children and students to do something they care about. Butthat does not mean we should paint a false picture of reality that lets them assume that the world will be handed to them wrapped in cotton candy and kittens. Encourage them, but do it constructively. Let’s raise our kids to dream big, encourage our students to do what they love, but only if they are willing to work for it. You have to want it. There is no instant gratification in life and success.
Now I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that if we start thinking of college as a place that produces whole persons rather than state-certified employees, then maybe we will have a new type of college student and a new kind of employee. The type that actually wants to learn. The type that asks questions. The type that isn’t afraid to work for something even when the world tells them they’re wasting their time. The type that is passionate and excited about life, ideas, and people. The type that sees the world in terms more complex and beautiful than pieces of paper and paychecks. The question, then, is how do we start?
Side note: if you are feeling a little bit discouraged about doing what you love, watch this short documentary. I promise it will make you smile.
Finding the Pieces 