things i have learned/experienced over the past four years of college.

-someone will be your friend one day, and then the next day they will treat you like a complete stranger.

-if you throw a party for yourself, odds are you probably won't enjoy yourself to extent that you hope to. if you throw a birthday party for someone else, it will be a really great time. if you go to a party alone, odds are, you will be uncomfortable.

-the cafeteria needs to have to-go cups more often.

-give yourself 10-15 minutes to get to class if you live on campus. give yourself an hour if you live ten miles away. damn.

-people will still hold mistakes you made against you even though you were ultra-drunk at the time they were made.

-people will threaten to call the RA on you for one incident.

-your annoying roomate will accuse you of stealing the food that YOU bought for them. what.

-your freshman/sophomore roomate experience will probably be the best you'll ever have.

-your roomate will keep their bread and peanut butter locked in a duffle bag at the foot of their bed.

-do yourself a favor and live off campus in your upperclassmen years, by golly.

my first day of senior year...as a commuter.

i made the decision to commute a bit later into the summer. it was brought up over a casual discussion during lunch at the olive garden with my mom, sister, and my sister's best friend. since my sister had the extra room at her house for me, i figured "why not?" it's a 15-20 minute drive to and from school, which beats the 45 minute ride from home. it also dawned upon me that i have gone home numerous weekends over the past three years at school. i admit i am a huge homebody and love being closer to my family. no matter where i go, i love to be in a more home-y setting. and i also thought of how much money we would be saving...there was no point to me living in a dorm anymore if i were to go home and visit my other friends at school every other weekend. plus i only had class four days of the week, with only one class on thursdays. that's pretty much half the week at school and half at home. i basically looked at my dorm as a place to sleep. it just didn't appeal to me as much anymore.

i put a lot of consideration into it over the next couple of days and made a big list of pro's and con's to commuting. it seemed that the pro's list was a lot larger than the con's list, which was a sign. i decided to commute.

yesterday was the first day of commuting. i woke up at the crack of 6 o'clock a.m. without the help of my alarm. I headed out at about 7:30 for my 8:30 class. I arrived at school around 8 and had no trouble finding a parking space in the commuter lot. it was sunny so i didn't have to worry about the frustration of carrying an umbrella to keep me dry. i headed to my first class and saw my friend Dillon there, who is also a commuter. my first class was Art & Myth, and was pretty awesome. it puts a lot of emphasis on creation of your own fantastical story. this class will stretch and strengthen what i already know about storytelling and creating characers from my head. after that i had seen that my friend Sarah, who is one of my best friends at school, had texted me to call her when i was free from class. she invited me over to Park River, where i lived last year. it is one of the nicer dorms on campus. i arrived to find they had replaced the old furniture with new, and their apartment looked fantastic. Sarah had a single, which had a closet bigger than any i have ever seen before....it's twice as deep as hers at home! we chatted and i helped her hang up a couple posters. we headed for lunch at Commons (which i still love). afterwards i hung out in Gengras, the student union, until my 2:55 class. yikes. i basically had to wait an hour and a half. that's one thing i know i have to get used to...waiting around for class. but new assignments will occupy my time i'm sure. i had art history, then advertising illustration. our first assignment is to create a win label with an animal on it, because apparently people are more likely to buy a wine with an animal on the label. who knew.

i then made the mistake to go home on the highway and hit 40 minutes of traffic trying to get on 91 south. bad idea at 5 o'clock. i don't mind commuting. as long as i give myself plenty of time to get to school, it won't bother me. i commuted to both my internships this summer and didn't mind at all. i know things that could potentially frustrate me are if i accidentally forgot an art supply or if the weather was terrible driving into school.

it's the better option for me though, and yesterday made me really happy with my decision :)

i'm going to be completely honest.

so, that last post, it's about getting over a past relationship, right?

okay. well i just want to clear some things up and get this stuff out of my head once and for all. we all know my last relationship was a bad one. it ended like, 3 years ago mind you.

some people thought that i wasn't over him because all i could talk about was how crappily he treated me. honestly, i WAS over him, but NOT over the way he had treated me. not introducing me as his girlfriend, breaking up over a text message, and many other ridiculous things....really...no one wants to be treated that way.

one of my biggest pet peeves is how people (ex-friends, ex-boyfriends) can be so cruel and talk smack about you to others like you're the worst person on the planet. well, i will tell you what. if someone makes a judgement about you and tells everyone else, screw it. because the only opinion of yourself that should matter is your own. don't care what other people think because half the time it's made up smack that people spread without any hard evidence. they talk about it and think it's "juicy," getting a stunned reaction from listeners.

i've learned that a lot of people who are insecure with themselves will take a little bit of a problem and blow it up, making them seem like the innocent ones. they feel powerful knowing that they can conceal their problems by making other people seem like the "problem." this goes out to all the people who have talked about me behind my back and told lies about me. i know i'm a good person, and if you judge me by one mistake, you shouldn't even call yourself a friend of mine. i'm better off without people who can't see through all the drama others create.

if anyone wants to believe all that bull about me, that's great! take the easy way out! but i never make judgements on people based on what i hear from others. EVER. i know a person when i genuinely get to know them myself. and i'll tell you, some of those people who have had others talk negatively about them are actually some of the nicest people i know. so make your own judgments. you know what you like and what kind of people you like to be around, so don't get lazy. go and get to know them yourself.

the good of it all

this is an entry from the website "LettersIllNeverSend.com."

it speaks to me and my past relationship to say the least. it really helped me get over it once and for all.

"I hate you. I hate you for doing what you did to me. I hate you for stringing me along. I hate you for being able to carry on with your life. I hate you for hurting me.

I hate myself for ever caring about you. I hate myself for not learning my lesson the first time. I hate myself for believing you. I hate myself for not listening to my gut. I hate myself for being your fool.

Even though I hate you, I love you for showing me true happiness in my life without you in it. I love you for leaving my life so that good things could happen. And I love you for losing me so that someone better can one day take your place.

I love myself for letting you go and finally being able to be happy without you, or anyone. I love myself for having the strength to be alone. I love myself; I have never loved myself before because I always depended on someone else to do it for me. Thank you for showing me how."