iSurvived

It is finished. The long-awaited, often-dreaded, infamous Junior Core is officially over. And I couldn’t be happier. I know its reputation makes it sound awful, but it wasn’t really that bad. It’s actually a ton of fun. But it’s one of those experiences that you’d like to have once. Just once.

So back in December I posted a summary of the first half and a prediction, of sorts, about the coming semester. And I quote:

“The first half of the core consisted of accounting information systems (basically, my least favorite class ever – although Professor Burton was awesome), financial accounting one (yay!), and auditing (what I’ll start my career in). The second half consists of tax (could be interesting), financial accounting two (double yay!), and managerial accounting (tough but fun). I realize I am not a normal person, since I just used ‘accounting’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence (or afterthought), but the world needs people like me.”

Let’s just say, my predicting skills suck. Tax was even worse than info systems. Not interesting at all. Just a bunch of stupid rules with no rhyme or reason. It is now my goal to avoid any more tax classes. Dr. Spilker was fantastic. Loved him. The material? Not so much. Let’s just say I will probably be hiring someone to do my taxes down the road, not because I can’t do them, but because I loathe them that much. ‘Fun’ is definitely not the word I would use to describe managerial. Some of my classmates might use ‘torture’ but I won’t go that far. It wasn’t awful (although the textbook was. Did anyone actually proofread that thing??) but it definitely wasn’t fun. The only fun part about it was our professor, Dr. Buckhoff. To any of my high school friends reading this, just imagine a Mr. Webb, with better handwriting. Financial beat out the rest as my favorite (like that was hard), but it’s kinda my thing, so no surprise there.

What am I going to do now that I have my life back? Start classes next Tuesday. Yipee. So it’s not quite summer yet. Luckily I’ve heard spring classes are pretty chill, and I’m taking two fun classes: weights and pilates. Imma be buff for summmmmerrrrrr!!

In other exciting news, I’ve been following through and doing a lot of rock climbing. I haven’t been back to the Quarry since the last time I mentioned it, which means we’ve been outside!! I’ve now successfully lead climbed and repelled. Sorry parentals if I’ve been giving you a heart attack. I’ve been assured that it’s mostly safe. According to Yahoo answers: “As a rough rule of thumb, mountain and rock climbing is about a hundred times riskier than ordinary risks people take, such as air travel, rail travel, interstate travel, even amusement park rides. This is the reason why insurance companies hate mountain climbing activities.” That’s not so bad, right?

Ohh heyy, just climbing some rocks.

And on that note, happy end-of-the-school-year (when the heck did I become a senior in college???)! Well, at least for all you BYU students. Yeah, this whole getting out early thing kinda rocks. To all my other, less fortunate friends and family, good luck with your coming finals! You can do it!

Survivor

I did it. I made it. I completed exactly half (1/2) of the infamous accounting junior core. Sorry, no speech. What will I do next? Complete the other half of course. Not a super exciting prospect, but it’s looking to be a more exciting/interesting semester. The first half of the core consisted of accounting information systems (basically, my least favorite class ever – although Professor Burton was awesome), financial accounting one (yay!), and auditing (what I’ll start my career in). The second half consists of tax (could be interesting), financial accounting two (double yay!), and managerial accounting (tough but fun). I realize I am not a normal person, since I just used ‘accounting’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence (or afterthought), but the world needs people like me. Clearly, I have a personality (I am NOT the 99% - haha), or you wouldn’t be reading my blog because it would be really boring. Or maybe it is? In that case someone should probably tell me. Thanks in advance for being gentle.

Juusssssst kidding! I know you guys love me so much!! And just for that I’m going to talk about accounting for a couple more sentences. I want to relate the ordeal that finals week is. We have a partially comprehensive final in each subject – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at 7:00-FREAKING-AM. Campus scheduling hates us. So I was stuck there all week. Usually I take all my finals within the first two days and then get the heck out of there. Instead, I had to stress the whole week about tests. And we don’t even know our grades yet. We won’t know for like another week. I know, my life is sooo hard.

I was looking back over my blog and realized that my last post was over a month ago. You’ve probably been dying to know what kind of trouble I’ve been getting myself into. Or not. Either way, I don’t have some great excuse for why I’ve been negligent.

Ok, if you’ve kept up on my blog you’ll know that sometimes I like to go off on tangents. This is one of those times. Maybe you’ve noticed, but I tend to use some bigger words on here than I do when I’m actually speaking. This is because I like to think in big words. Seriously, sometimes my mind is like a Jane Austen novel. But when I talk, I use smaller words, because who really wants to sound like they’ve come straight from Pride and Prejudice? This little complex of mine tends to lead to my spoken sentences being all jumbled up and the sporadic changing of topics. If you’ve ever noticed this, now you know why! My brain is thinking too quickly and in big words, so I’m frantically trying to translate into smaller words, and by the time I’ve done this my brain is already on to the next topic. For example, my brain is thinking “I am disinclined to acquiesce your request” and my mouth is trying to say “No.” Please tell me I’m not the only one that does this!!!

Now back to what I was talking about before. Yes, I’ve just been negligent. Or lazy. Or both. I mean, nothing grand has happened or anything, but I could have afforded my readers the courtesy of a little update to let them know I hadn’t forgotten them. I say that like I’m a big deal with thousands of readers, hahaha. To the dedicated few, I thank you. To sum up what I’ve been doing for the past month: school, more school, Heather’s (my roommate) birthday (the big 2-4!!), even more school, Thanksgiving, and hot chocolate parties. If you haven’t been to one of our hot chocolate parties, and you live in Provo, COME! This was all Heather’s idea, but I’ve definitely jumped on board and dare to call myself a co-host. She had this tradition before her mission with a bunch of Spokane buddies, and they called it ‘Cocoa Chat’. Well, it’s technically still called that, and she makes all these hilarious signs for it. Anyway, it’s now open to the public and we’ll start back up after the break. It’s at 9:30 every Sunday and BYOM (bring your own mug). Get in touch with me for directions.

So the only other thing I’ve been doing is finally getting around to editing my Spain photos. Since I work for the on-campus computer labs, I got to download the entire Adobe Creative Suite 5 – FOR FREE!! Basically, the greatest perk ever. So now I can do some pretty sweet stuff with my pictures. I’ll post a link to the Flickr album they’ll be in eventually.

One last thing before I go. This past weekend I had the privilege of seeing one of my best friends of 13+ years, Miss Jessica Jeske, be married in the Bountiful, Utah temple to a very lucky man, Mr. David Howard. Congratulations to them both, again. I’m so happy for them, and so glad to see how happy David makes her. They are a beautiful couple. And, you guessed it, I was there to take some great pictures. Coming soon!!

Thanks for sticking all the way to the end! Someday I’ll learn that if I regularly blog, I won’t have to spend so much time writing such long posts. Well, until that day…

P.S. (I know you're thinking will this ever end??) I can't believe I'm just mentioning this now. I'M HOME!!! Yes, I'm j-chillin' in beautiful Coeur d'Alene for the holidays. And I'm in heaven. I love this. Don't worry, I'll let you in on all our crazy family traditions later. But that's a post for another day. Ciao! 

13.1

If you had told me a year ago that within the next year I would run a half marathon, I definitely would have laughed at you. I could barely run a mile! I must give credit to Miss Carrie Cook (aka Carrie Cool) for being my inspiration. She ran her first half back in the spring, and it was then that I decided a half marathon was on my bucket list. Now I figured it would be a couple years before I got around to it. But lo and behold, I was talked into the Halloween Half – just five months away. I started training right after I got back from Europe. I printed a nice little training schedule, with short runs or cross training four times a week, long runs on the weekends, and two rest days. I’m proud to say that for the most part, I followed it pretty closely. I have to thank Susie for whipping me back into shape after two months of delicious Spanish food, and for suggesting that real running shoes might help my knee problems. They did.

Training became slightly more difficult once I got back to school, but I kept to my schedule as best I could and ended up running 13 miles at one point (but not 13.1. I was saving that for race day). I’ve found that once I get past four miles, I can just go. I don’t know what it is about the first four, but they’re tough. My four milers were always the hardest.

Race day – October 29 (Happy Birthday Uncle Ken!) – came bright and early. I was up at 6:00, ready to go. My momma (so glad she could be there!) dropped me up at the starting line, where they had a huge tent for all 3000ish racers. We were way up above Sundance, and it was FREEZING. I think it was 26 degrees when the race started. Luckily, all the body heat kept everyone warm. The race started at 9:00, but we had two heats, so I started around 9:20. In the meantime there was a costume contest – this is the Halloween Half after all. I wasn’t too extravagant. I just wore all my clothes inside out and backwards. My shorts looked pretty funny though. They have the built in undies, so it looked like I was wearing a diaper when I put them on inside out. I got a good laugh out of it.

Like I said, I was off at 9:20 down the canyon. By mile nine, my feet and knees were starting to ache, but I just kept going. There was nothing else to do but keep putting one foot in front of the other. As cheesy as that sounds, that really was my thought process. My initial goal was to finish under 2:45:00, since that’s how fast I ran that 13 miles I mentioned earlier. I finished in 2:23:01. Yeah, baby! What a great feeling. I smoked it.

You can bet I loaded up on the protein afterward, yet I was still more sore than I’ve ever been. Come Monday, I could barely walk down the stairs (and of course I live on the third floor). I was hobbling around like an eighty-year-old. But I kinda like that super sore feeling. It makes me feel like I made it through something super tough, which I guess I did. I’d like to give a shout out to all my friends and family who encouraged me through this process, especially my parents who were both there to see me finish. I really couldn’t have done it without you.

Is a full marathon in my future? I can’t quite say yet. I’m not sure I’m physically capable of doing that. But a year ago I thought I couldn’t possibly run a half either, so I guess you never know. I’ll probably keep doing halves every now and then. It’s brutal, but the feeling of accomplishment afterward is so worth it.

I also practically ran 13.1 miles mentally this week. I had four, count ‘em four, midterms. But like last time, I had no class the entire week. It was great. I finished up Thursday morning and enjoyed my nice, long weekend. No more midterms this semester! I can’t believe it’s almost over. Seriously, where the heck have the past two months gone? Is it weird that I’m feeling sad about leaving this semester behind? Yes, yes it is. I’ve just been having so much fun though. I’m crossing my fingers that the next one is just as good, or even better.

Sweat, tears, and victory.

Hallelujah! I made it through my first week of accounting exams! It only took me nine hours to get there. But, you want to know another reason why accounting is the best major on campus? We get the entire exam week off. That’s right, no classes. All week. So when I finished my last test Thursday morning, my weekend began. And oh how joyous it’s been. Those exams weren’t easy, mind you. It definitely wasn’t your easy-breezy Accounting 200 test. But I feel like I did the best I could. I think I held my own. I’ll know for sure in about a week.

And now I’m free to go watch Conference this weekend. We are so blessed to have prophets on the earth today, and I can’t wait to hear what they have to say. By the way, ladies, I hope all of you were able to listen to President Uchtdorf’s talk from the Relief Society Broadcast last Saturday. AMAAAAAAAZING. The love and the Spirit that filled the room were indescribable. The power in his words was breathtaking. If you missed it, you can watch it right here. How handy!

P.S. I ran 13 miles this morning. And now I can barely walk, but that’s okay! No pain, no gain, right?