perspective

Hey all. Thought I'd check in even though I don't feel as though I have anything significant to post on.

First of all, I'm pretty excited about this: http://blog.students.ubc.ca/careerservices/2010/09/22/lessons-in-leadership/ As Student Leaders for Career Days we were asked to submit a blog post if we wanted. And hey! There I am :). It's pretty cool to be posted on something more likely to be viewed.

I am also thinking about submitting a workshop proposal for UBC's leadership conference! I would absolutely love to be involved in it, so I'm trying to think of a good thing to put forth. I'm thinking maybe even along the same lines of what was in my blog post... because really I am (or was?) one of those unlikely leaders that needed to learn that it really was for everyone.

Or something.

Pretty cool things are happening in general though, and it's all pretty neat. I have to make sure I stop and realize it all, because I'm putting a lot of focus on the negative lately and letting it drag me down. I think. It's also dragging the rest of my life down with it. You should SEE my apartment! And I haven't done a proper dish washing in weeks (resorting instead to just washing the dishes I want to use). I also haven't gone to the gym since I went home in August.

That is ALL going to change this week though. Need to end September with awesomeness (I think a month of dragging my ass and being borderline emo is quite enough time) so that October - my FAVOURITE month! - is amazing like it should be. Plus I need to prepare myself for my last year before I'm 25!

I'm so cool.

Also, I'm pretty sure my parents and Todd and 'Tale are coming up the weekend before my birthday!!! So I want everything to be perfect for when they get here plus me in happy order :). YAY!

That's all.

the dream that you wish will come true

Very strange life. The day after I made the "I Want" list, including a want for SSHRC to write itself and for me to have some extra money for things, I got a crazy e-mail.

They chose my SSHRC application from the alternates :|.

This means, that I have suddenly been chosen for a scholarship!! And not only do I not have to write a new application anymore, but I have suddenly earned $17500.

WHAT?!?!?!?!


My life is so weird sometimes. I'm so freaking excited though! And my Curriculum Vitae is still recovering from the Awards-related orgasm.
Things are coming up Jennifer!!

now and then: i want

So I googled myself, and I'm very google-able, and I found my OLD blogger. What was most interesting was the list of what I wanted at the time... May 2005. What a major MAJOR difference: not only does it say I want to get married, but it says I want ROMANCE.

Vomit.

Anyway, it inspired an up-to-date "I Want" list:

I Want... (2010)
A clean apartment
To eat healthily
To work out
To do all my readings
A vacuum
A file cabinet.
An MA
A PhD
To be published
Great marks
SSHRC to write itself
...*ahem*...*wink*...
Jeans that fit
Dress pants that fit
Vancouver friends
The ideal man to fall into my life with no catch
Someone to discuss my class learning with
To use words out loud with friends
My friends to love me
Unlimited long distance
Free time
Balance
To be a super keener
Leadership opportunities
Tons of Imagine That contracts
Public speaking lessons
To be bilingual with French
Actual income from my many jobs
Money that doesn't have to go to groceries
A puppy of my own
My dishes to do themselves
A dishwasher
Hugs
To be the ultimate multi-tasker
To be a leader in the field of ECE
A reset to what 2005 me thought was fat (lol)
Independence

(See the link for what I used to want)

imagine

So it took me a while to get back. A lot of stuff happened between then and now, and it's almost, again, one of those situations where by this time I can say "yadda yadda yadda shit happened but it's okay now".

I don't know if it's okay now, in my life.
Sometimes I think it is, that I'm calm and happy and all that business. But looking around my apartment, and especially in my sink, it definitely doesn't look like it. And sometimes it still does reflect some inner turmoil, and I wish I could just get that shit back together. It would have been nice to have kept riding that calm right up to when school started so I can just start adding more things to balance, instead of starting from scratch.

But what can ya do, right? Gotta work with what you have.


In other news, I absolutely LOVE everything about school having started.

Imagine UBC Day was such an interesting experience to observe! It was one of those days that I've heard about at so many different schools: different faculties dress in their colour and chant things about how awesome they are when they encounter other faculty groups. If you follow my twitter, you might have also seen a whole bunch of engineers playing some game with a 5 foot tall soccer ball. Insanity.

My Imagine UBC Day was exactly what I wanted my UBC experience to be.

The morning was spent giving out bookmarks to students, encouraging them to drink lemonade, and advertising for the UBC Trek Program. I LOVE working at tables. I got to interact with so many different UBC students; I was funny, energetic, flirty even. In other words, I leadershipped the shit out of it! It was an amazing feeling :). After that I headed to the Career Services Table and started all over again. The goal here wasn't lemonade but was to get people over to the table, at which the most exciting part was they could dress up as their future career (be it a doctor or bear) and take a picture. I really enjoyed the challenge of it all - it's a lot harder to get people to do goofy stuff than drink lemonade, and it worked :). I love doing those things SO much, and I don't even know why. It's exhausting and, for the most part, annoys people. I guess what I love about it is the challenge to do it effectively WITHOUT annoying people. If it were a career, I would have a really stacked resumé for it.

The FINAL part of the day was the obvious: my class!

That was a rush too! (despite my INTENSE exhaustion by this point). It was a nice course to start my Masters career with: Review of Research in Early Childhood Education. I was able to contribute intelligently, was enthusiastic about participating (probably left over from all the enthusiasm of the day), and made a good connection with the prof and some classmates ("colleagues" is what they call them). In fact, I might have even recruited someone for Imagine That haha! In general, though, I'm just so excited to have made it here. In my VERY first month of Brock, my Don did a goals program, which caused me to write on a die-cut shape "MA in ECE at UBC" and stick in on her wall. There's nothing about me that can believe that I actually made it here from that bright-eyed first year goal.

All in all, the coolest thing I've got from being a Masters student, is everybody's emphasis on how we're becoming strong leaders in the ECE field... working towards being "experts" in the field (especially if we continue to PhD). It's such an awesome feeling, I don't feel like I'm in over my head and I don't feel out of place alongside people a lot older than me. I can't wait to keep learning :).

Man, I love it.

SO MUCH.