Yippee!!! Yesterday officially marked the beginning of my birthday month! I’m so excited because I get to celebrate and officially take my self-proclaimed title of “Birthday Princess.” Is it bad that I love celebrating my birthday? I don’t know, but either way I’m not going to stop doing it! It’s crazy for me to think that this Sunday I am going to be turning 20 years old. I realize that 20 isn’t necessarily a monumental birthday, but for some reason it feels like a big deal to me. I’m not a teenager anymore! 20 just sounds so much older than 19 to me.
I wanted to take this opportunity to do a little bit of self-reflection and kind of keep you all in the loop of where I am right now in every sense – personally, academically, health-wise, blog-wise etc. Just warning you now this post is long, but please bear with me.
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School: I would be lying if I said school was easy. As a business major, I have a lot of math-heavy classes that I need to get through because they’re required and let me just say they are not my cup of tea. Last semester was really challenging for me. Let me just say it was one of the only times in my life I’ve just been praying to pass a class rather than striving for an A. I couldn’t get organized and my old organization methods just were not working anymore, I couldn’t get myself to study the way I used to be able to, and I was just overall feeling really unmotivated. This semester I’ve had major progress though which I’m really happy about. I’ve successfully come up with an organization method that totally works (blog post maybe?), my classes seem to be somewhat easier, and I’m a little bit more interested in my classes. I’m also really excited about a new minor I’ve applied to add to my course plan that’s called Communication Design. It’s an interdisciplinary minor where you take classes the arts, communications, and business school and I could not be more thrilled!
Personal Life: I’ve always been the type of person who doesn’t like being alone. My kind of alone time is being in my room by myself with my family just outside my door in another room. Other than that I’ve always pretty much hated it. The thing about being in college though is there really is no such thing as a lone time and you don’t really realize how much you love it until it’s gone. Unless you’re lucky enough to have an apartment to yourself you live with roommates/apartment mates and your friends are always around to soak up your extra free time. I’ve definitely grown to like alone time a lot more, but when I’m home with my family I try to spend as much time as I possibly can right by their side. That’s another thing – I’ve been going home more often than I did last semester. People always say that you shouldn’t go home when you’re in college or that it’s not a “real college experience.” I have to disagree. Just because I decide to go home for the weekend instead of staying on campus doesn’t mean I am missing out on any crucial experiences. Quite honestly, the only thing I’m missing out on is sub-par food and a weekend of fraternity parties, which I will happily pass on.
Health: Managing my weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is something I have struggled with for the majority of my life. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt like “the chubby girl” of the bunch. When I first came to college I lost a little over 10 pounds and was feeling really good about myself, but by the time I finished off my freshmen year I had gained it all back and then some. (The Freshman Fifteen is real guys. No joke.) I’ve always been a major foodie – living in LA it’s hard not to be – so it’s never been a matter of me constantly eating junk food or fast food, but it’s more a problem of portion control and knowing when I should and shouldn’t indulge rather than just treating myself to what I want when I want it all the time. I think it got to the point where I was just discouraged from “trying to lose weight,” but not seeing results and eventually I gave up trying. Giving up is never a good thing and it’s never too late to make changes to live a healthy lifestyle. “If Khloe Kardashian can do it, so can I!” I’m even kicking off my journey to a healthier me by giving up fried foods and going low-carb for Lent! Hopefully the low-carb diet is something I’ll be able to stick to once Lent is over too. Luckily, the one thing I have down pat is drinking water. I drink water constantly, so that’s never been a problem for me. Please don’t get me wrong though guys – I absolutely love myself and everyday I am grateful that I have a healthy, strong, and abled body. I just know it could be better and I’m hoping I’ll be able to take this more seriously when I’m “another year wiser.”
Friendships: My favorite part about college by far is the friends I’ve made. I love that I have friends in and out of my sorority and in all the different groups I am involved in on campus. Each of these friends brings different value into my life and I am so grateful for each and every one of them. I have my super close core people (you know who you are), but what’s even better is that I’ve branched out to have so many different circles of friends. I’ve been able to get closer to girls in Gamma Phi since living in the house, which has been especially great as well. I’m grateful that I’ve mostly been able to maintain my friendships from home as well. My best friend since pre-school is even going to be home from college to celebrate my birthday with me this weekend!
Blog: Though it might not really seem like it lately, there are few things I love in this world more than this blog. When I started it almost four years ago (crazy how time flies!) I never imagined anyone would read it let alone would I have thousands of followers. It amazes me every single day. Despite how much this blog means to me and how fulfilled I feel when I sit down and write for it, one of the things I’ve struggled with the most since being at school is prioritizing this. I think this might go hand in hand with having less alone time and me not managing my time well enough. Honestly, it makes me really sad when I think about how I’ve kind of neglected this corner of the internet over the past couple months. I’m not going to promise that I am going to blog everyday starting now, but I will promise that I am going to try my best to prioritize it more than I have been.
Love and Relationships: This section is kind of weird to be writing about because it’s something I’ve never really talked about with you guys. I’ve had boyfriends in the past, but I don’t currently have one and I haven’t had one since I graduated high school. To be completely honest though, I don’t really want one right now either. I mean do I get a little jealous when I see other cute couples around campus? Of course, it’s natural. I just don’t think a relationship is the right thing for me at the moment, so I don’t want to look for one. I have so many other things I need to get in order (like getting back into blogging for starters) before I can make that a priority. If something happens out of the blue, I’m open to the opportunity, but again I am not pursuing anything. Finding a relationship in college, especially at USC, is really hard too because of the strong hookup culture, which is so. not. me. Quite frankly, I find it a little appalling the way some girls throw themselves at guys in college. So there’s that, we probably won’t talk about this topic again until something serious happens.
Style: When I started my blog I was literally the embodiment of the word preppy. My closet consisted of mostly Vineyard Vines, Lilly, J.Crew, and Ralph Lauren. I used to scoff at the idea of wearing black ever opting for navy blue instead and my idea of branching out in terms of style was buying something with vertical navy and white stripes instead of horizontal. While, I haven’t completely abandoned those traits, I will say I’ve become a lot more open to different things and I’ve branched out a bit. I’ve been open to prints other than stripes and I’ve even come to love the color black. (I truly never thought I’d see the day that happened.) It’s been kind of fun trying different things (like ripped jeans LOL) and seeing how I can mix them in with my tried and true favorite pieces. I’m still drawn to simple and classic pieces, but I’m not as afraid of experimenting anymore either.
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations and thank you for reading! I know that was a ton of information that quite frankly most of you probably don’t really care about. I just felt like I needed to get all of that out there and out of my brain. That’s why I started this blog in the first place anyways – to be able to say whatever I want completely unfiltered. I hope you guys enjoyed this little life update and for those of you who have been around here for a while, you have no idea how much your support means to me. I love you all so much!
Comment below what kinds of posts you’d like to see around here!