Guest Post on Tight Wad in Utah!

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College Student Saving in 8 Original Steps

A Leap of Faith

In exactly 2 months from today, I graduate! I can't believe it! So so crazy! I still don't know what I'm going to do, come May. I know I've said this before but I always knew that I wanted to go to college and get a degree, but I never planned for after that. Yet here I am--with the world at my feet and I have no idea which door to take! I have been praying like crazy and I have received little answers and course corrections here and there, but I still don't know where I want to go and what I want to do. I have been applying for a ton of jobs in Utah, but it finally dawned on me that I am never going to figure out which path is right for me, if I'm not testing all the options and doors. So, in this last week, I took a leap of faith.
I applied for a bunch of internships out of state! I know this probably doesn't sound like much of a leap, but it kinda scares me to death! I don't know if they'll even come through or not, but my determination and character are definitely being built!

I was flipping through the ensign yesterday during sacrament and I came across an amazing talk by Richard G. Scott. In it, he said,

"As you walk to the boundary of your understanding into the twilight of uncertainty, exercising faith, you will be led to find solutions you would not obtain otherwise. With even your strongest faith, God will not always reward you immediately according to your desires. Rather, God will respond with what in His eternal plan is best for you, when it will yield the greatest advantage. Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. That causes your faith to increase and your character to grow."

This truly spoke to my heart. It was exactly what I needed to hear--reassurance that not knowing where to go, is ok. For now at least. It's really tough, but it is teaching me true faith in God's plan, in His timing, and in leaning on the Savior for support and comfort. I know God's has his guiding hand in our lives. He loves us. And he is there to catch us when we take that leap of faith.


I like to look at it like cliff jumping at Lake Powell. When you climb the rock and you're getting ready to jump, the water looks so far away and you are tempted to go a little lower. But you don't. You take the chance and run and leap, pushing hard off the rock. Your heart plummets when you realize how far you are falling, and you scream with anticipation, but the exhilaration of hitting the water with a big splash and then kicking to the surface, is incomparable. It is only then, that you turn around and look back up at the cliff you just plummeted off of, and realize, "Wow. That really wasn't that high! And boy, it was fun!" Everything turned out just fine!

I am excited for when that day comes that I can look back at this leap of faith and realize how much it changed me and helped me to grow. Even if, I get a great job in Utah that I love, I still took the chance to try all the doors. And that, in it of itself, is building faith.

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The Second Blog

For my awsome social media class, I had to create a second blog that is not my personal blog.
It has already been so much fun!
The name of this wonderful blog is:
Southern Utah Hodgepodge:
The Hustle, The Housing, The Hobbies, The Hodgpodge

(clever name right?!)

Anyway it is pretty great! Check it out and keep up on the news of Southern Utah!

As fun as it is, it will be a lot of work. This blog might suffer a little, but just know, if you don't hear from me, I'm still alive and I'll try to keep updates on life comin!

A Landmark Day

Today,

is my last first-day-of-school.

Yes!

I’m graduating in exactly 3 months and 27 days! I am super excited!

So many people have asked me in the last while what I’m going to do when I’m done with school. Well here is your answer:

I DON'T KNOW.

However I do know two things:

1. I’m not going to grad school

and

2. I’m not going on a mission.

Over the last month, the mission thing has been on my mind a lot and a ton of people have asked me if I am going to go. I haven’t really had much of an answer to give them. Until now. I have been praying very hard and pleading with the Lord to give me direction in my life.

I have learned one amazing life lesson.

Last week I was sitting in Emily's (my amazing cousin) missionary setting apart. She is going to be one great missionary! However, I was sitting there, surrounded by all of our family listening to the stake president, when I had this overwhelming feeling that this isn’t for me.

The Lord has amazing plans and blessings for me too but a mission is not one of them.

Now, with firm conviction, I can answer those who have asked. No. I am not going on a mission.

But it’s not because I don’t love the gospel. It’s not because I don’t want to share it with people. It’s not because I’m ungrateful. It’s because it is not where I’m supposed to go come the end of school.

The Lord has something different in mind.

I don’t know what that is. But the great lesson that I have learned is that  

answers come in pieces.

They don’t come in one big sweep. But they are obtained bit by bit. They correct our course in little adjustments and direct us to be where the Lord needs us to be.

I don’t know what the next 4 months will bring. But I have the faith that I will continue to get my answers little bit by little bit. Each of us have a great calling in this life—to be ourselves! To do our very best and live up to our full potential. To let God lead us in the direction and down the path that He needs us to go. It may be unexpected and it may be hard. But it is well worth the effort! The blessings will come back to us and we will recognize God’s amazing love throughout our entire life.

We are not alone and He is there to guide us each and every day in the little steps we take!

Busyness Withdrawls

You know how usually the week before finals is way worse than the ACTUAL week of finals? Well, this semester, that was only partly the case.
Every week this whole semester, BEFORE the week of finals felt like the week before finals.
(Please re-read that sentence a few times to make sense of it.)
But I'm not complaining. You have already heard about my busy semester.
If you have not been privileged to hear, please click here.

The week before finals started off beautifully
with putting on
the production of the year at Southern Utah University. (FYI- the preparations for this have been happening since June, but we jumped on the band wagon in August.)
As a committee member for the President's Gala (a banquet and program for all the old rich people- aka the donors of SUU)we spent
countless hours scheduling, coordinating, phone calling, meeting attending, decoration gathering, actually decorating, tree fluffing, table setting,
pine bough cutting, and running around
like chickens with our heads cut off.
(Ok not really, but sometimes it felt like we were getting that desperate!)

This is the wonderful team and the progression of the event!

In the end, Wednesday night turned out beautifully with only minor problems. However, we were sure exhausted. So we pleasantly relaxed while being serenaded with Happy Birthday Jesus by the
Oak Ridge Boys.

Our group was pretty much the awesomest ever!

After Wednesday, all my projects and papers were finished for the semester and most of my presentations done. All I had to worry about were finals.
You would think I would have felt relieved to relax and catch up on some
much needed sleep. But no.
I went through serious busyness withdrawls!!
Tell me please- What am I going to do for a whole month for Christmas break!
I will be going crazy by the time January 10th comes around and school starts again!

The Reason

I am a runner. I haven’t always been. In fact I used to hate running.
As I have gotten older and life has gotten more stressful, I have come to find an exquisite release that comes from running.
And only runners understand this.
 
Now, running is almost an addiction.
Yes, there are many days that are hard.
Yes, there are days when I have no motivation.
Yes, there are days when its extremely painful.
But every time I just make myself do it, I am surprised at how much better I feel.
Running is not for everyone. But running is most definitely for me.
I used to hate running. Running in competitions was not fun to me. For the first time in my life, last Saturday, I ran a race and it was fun!
Yes, there were points when it was hard.
Yes, there were times when I wanted to give up.
But just like in training, I simply made myself do it and the accomplishment I felt afterward was incredible. It still is!

I understand that finding the motivation to do something hard can be extremely difficult at times.

But life is not measured by what we start, but by what we finish.

Find something that you have always thought was impossible. Set the goal to accomplish it. Set small goals working toward the big goal. You won’t regret it. I promise. What is there to regret about trying hard, getting a few skinned knees, but coming out victorious?
(Make sure your sound is turned up. This is one of the most motivation things I have ever seen.)


My goal is to run a marathon.
Someday I want to be in the league of marathoners.
For now I’m setting the smaller goals. I will continue to training for and run half marathons and triathlons.
"People say that we're searching for the meaning of life. I don't think that's it at all. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost beings and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." Joseph Campbell, The Power of Moab

Feeling alive is really what life is all about. It’s not about winning the race, but the experience we have along the way.

That's the reason why.
The reason why I run.

A Packaged Halloween

Halloween was quite an adventure this year! I had some great bonding moments with my roommates and some wonderful catching-up with old roommates!
We successfully made our own costumes from bubble wrap and duct tape! It was great!
Although we made these awsome costumes, we could really decide what we "were." After much deliberation, we came up with "A Package Deal!"
ha ha ha (Yes, that's meant to be funny)

And we had lots of fun messing around... (We put glow sticks in between the strips on our costumes for the dance! It was so cool looking!

These are some wonderful girls that I seriously miss SOOO much! But we had an amazing time at
THE HOWL!

And of course we had to mess around a little bit...

And then for old-times-sake, take a 2 a.m. outing to the Big D (aka- Dennys).

I love and miss you guys already!!!

The Busiest Semester of My Life!

Literally. This semester has been absolutely crazy and the busiest of my life. I am taking 18 credits of classes, working over 15 hours a week, training for another ½ marathon, and trying to keep up on a social life. In a typical week, I spend over 35 hours on homework, 20 hours in class, 10 hours exercising, and 50 hours sleeping (this could possibly be the most important aspect because if I don’t get enough sleep, there is no way I would be able to function in everything else). That does not leave a whole lot of time leftover for everything else in between. I tried to take all the numbers and percentages of hours in a week that I spend doing things and it wasn’t all that impressive to look at. But I’m not a math major, so we’ll chalk it up to bad math skills and the many mistakes I probably made in the process. Anyway, I feel super busy all of the time! However, if there are important priorities to take care of, I DO make sure to take time for them (example: religious stuff, friends, family, etc.).

It’s funny because it has been the trend to have one EXTREMELY busy week and then the next week is SUPER slow. Then, the week after that is extremely busy again. Why is that? Can’t it all just even out? The answer my professors would give me is: NO. Absolutely not. We want to test you and torture you to the point of exhaustion where you can’t think straight and everything we boringly lecture about in class is so muddled in your brain that you can’t sleep at night. Then we will test you on it see how much you can sift out of your mud-clogged-brain, put it all on paper in little dots, and then go out and write a 20 page research paper about it all. But make sure to throw in random terms from the required book that catch our eye and make us think you are smart, so we give you full points on it. I want you to think about my class, and my class only. It is truly the only thing that keeps this world spinning. OH! But we do want you to succeed and learn and do your very very best so we can shake your hand at graduation and send you on your way to pass on the wonderful mud-clogged-knowledge we have given you.

Oh the philosophies of a professor!

ANYWAY, it also seems to be the trend that the more I have to do and the more busy I am, the more productive I seem to be. Why is that? Well, even though life is extremely busy, I still make sure to have tons fun. (After all, this is my very last year of college ever!) But sometimes I have to combine the fun with the work. Here are some of the fruits of my labors. Enjoy my ability to be creative in my advertising classes and still get homework done at the same time!

(FYI: not all of these are copy-write legal. But they were only used for assignments in class, therefore I won't get sued or anything. However, there are a few that have been published as legitimate work! Wahoo!)

Book List

So, as you can see, I have a list of
100 things to do before I die
on my blog.
The other day I was thinking,
why not make a list of 100 books I want to read as well?
I started on this list and got stuck.
Many places online have lists of the Best Books
and I got a lot of ideas from there.
But, I need more!
What are some of your favorite books?