Today was my last day at my first real job.

[I don't count my flower shop days as my first real job because I never worked more than 15 hours per week, and those 15 hours felt much more like play than work every week. Man, take me back to the floral scene, please.]

Like most normal people, I hesitate to post things about my job on my social media accounts. There are future employers out there! I'm FB friends with my current boss! And most of my coworkers! I can't just spread whatever I want all over the interwebs!

But I think we can all accept that we have things we love and things we don't love about the things we do in life, and the things we do in life include our day jobs. If some future employer comes here and sees that there were parts of my last job that I took a moment to complain about, so be it. I can't not post anything at all (sorry for the double negative), so I'm going to go ahead and say a few words. It'll be just like we're at the funeral for my now dead day job. Here we go...


Things I will NOT miss:

I will not miss the quirks of this old campus building. For example: the bathroom situation. It's like roulette, stall style. Four available stalls become one stall when two of them do not lock and one of them will get stuck shut while you're in there and trap you forever. But plot twist! The toilet in the one working stall sporadically opts not to flush. And yes, that's ew. And there are more old building quirks where that came from!

I will not miss the dress code. We went from no dress code (which rocked) to dress code with casual Fridays (new boss meant new rules, but that was fine) to dress code without casual Fridays (which was an arbitrary decision implemented to make our lives miserable, as far as any of us ever knew). Apparently, nothing brings out the rebel in me quite like a man five steps up the corporate ladder suddenly sending me home because I was supposed to wear fancy pants every day of the week. At least pretend you have a reason for this madness! Ugh. Okay, I'm over it. [I realize that dress codes are a normal part of pretty much every job, so I am actually quite glad to have now built a pretty solid professional wardrobe for myself. It was just the principle of the thing.]

I will not miss the strict working hours. I have worked at this job every weeknight until usually 7:00 (sometimes 6:00, sometimes 8:00), and while that's of course not the latest shift anyone in the world has ever had to work, it really didn't jive very well with Joe's early morning job since he needed to be sleeping about an hour after I would get home. When was I ever supposed to make dinner? I know, my life is so hard.

I will not miss the daily email at 5:01 AM reminding me that there are things waiting to be graded that day. Sorry, but if I don't have to be at work for a few more hours, I'm gonna go ahead and not think about it until I get there. The fact that I can completely set aside my job when I'm not clocked in is pretty much the biggest perk of an hourly wage job, and you're RUINING IT FOR ME HERE! Sorry, didn't mean to yell. I'm a grouch at 5:01 AM. But it gets better: that email will continue to come at me every morning for the next month because apparently it takes a while to get me out of the computer system. Yum.

Okay. That's enough complaints now. Is that just enough of a post on its own? Meh, I'm going to keep going. You're a trooper if you're still reading. Let's move on to...


Things I WILL miss:

I will miss interacting with students on a purely one-on-one basis. Teaching entire classes is a little (okay, a lot) scarier for me than individual tutoring. I'm sure my fears will fade as I gain practice teaching larger groups of students (yay student teaching!), but I will just always have a soft spot in my heart for these needs-based teaching sessions with individual students. Don't make me leave tutoring in the dust!

I will miss the easy access to the BYU Creamery outlet. Discounted food just across the parking lot? Yes please. I once bought a dozen and a half bakery-style sugar cookies for $1.50 (total!) because they were Halloween shapes and it was November 1st. And purchases were tax-free if you used your student card. Tax-free purchases always make me feel downright liberated.

I will miss the free time. My hours were set each semester, but there was quite a bit of flux between busy and slow times. During slow times, I could have everything I needed to do for the day finished in the first 10 minutes of work and then have 3 hours and 50 minutes left of my shift for answering sporadic emails, doing homework, blogging, and listening to Pandora. Then I would have my entire evening free to spend with Joseph! Where else in the world will I find a job that will happily pay me for these things instead of sending me home early to do them on my own time?

But most of all, I will really miss my coworkers and my boss. I could not have landed in a better group of people. You will never find a more understanding or sympathetic or genuine boss than Keenan, who told me before I left tonight that he just cannot wait to write me a letter of recommendation someday (what?). And don't even try to find a funner group of people than the BYUIS High School TAs because you won't. We've had conversations that have made me laugh, cry, and laugh-cry. And I am a noticeably better person for having interacted with the coworkers I've had for the last year. Can I just bring them all with me to my student teaching position next semester, pretty please?


So there you have it. The good, the bad, and probably too many details about the ugly. While I don't think I'll miss having this job tomorrow or the next day, I am pretty sure you'll be able to find me reminiscing about those stupid roulette bathroom stalls by February. And when that day comes, I'll feel so glad to be able to come back and read this lovely, funereal post. Thanks for letting me blab! I'll try to keep my next few word counts down to make up for it...

10 points to Gryffindor if you find the HP reference

I found a really really hilarious blogger a few months ago and decided to read some of her archives over Christmas break cuz no homework means FREE TIME!! And here's the thing: I just really admire her ability to whip a funny story out of every single day. And I also admire the way she just writes random crap and it somehow all ties together before she's done writing. How does she do that?

Anyway, I just wanted to discuss on a slightly-deeper-than-surface level how downright literary it feels to start at the beginning of somebody's personal online story and just read. Maybe it's because I've always been a big fan of books written in letter or email or Post-It note form, or maybe it's because this wouldn't actually be true for all humans but this girl happens to be a good writer, or maybe I'm just downright crazy. But gosh darn it--I feel like I'm learning stuff! I am relating to this person! And if Amy Poehler's autobiography can be a subject for deep discussions at book clubs across the nation, then I'm counting this blog as literary. 

I'm also hoping that nobody ever does this to my blog, ever.

And I'm gonna be a jerk and not link up to her because it's low-level embarrassing that I am literally reading posts from 1999 with full intentions to go straight through until 2014 (2015! cuz it's coming up!). Lemme know if you're mad about it and I might change my mind.

In the meantime, I guess I should warn you that my posts may very well start to look more like hers, by which I mean they may be wordier and storier (story-er?). I feel like my 2014 blog was "the year of events," wherein I finally learned how to just get the pictures and brief synopses of the cool things we did onto the world wide web in a timely manner. And now I feel like I want my 2015 blog to have less of that (not none cuz I still like pictures) and more of the day-to-day stories of my life. You might get to hear some of the crazy conversations I have with Joe. Goodness knows we're hilarious in the solitude of our little apartment.

This is not an official goal, so we'll see. And yes, this post is a test run of the very thing I just mentioned. NO PICTURES HA!


Also, in the interest of keeping a somewhat running narrative: we have caught no mouse and I'm starting to believe that I scared it enough by screaming and crying at it during its first visit that it may never return. Or maybe it's dead of its own starving accord in the back of our pantry. Ew. Also, are you supposed to replace the peanut butter on the trap after a couple days? Isn't it gonna get all dry and crusty and gross? Will mice still eat crusty peanut butter? Ugh I've been in overdrive trying to think my way through all this and it's exhausting. SOS.

K that's all for real now. I probably won't post tomorrow because, hello, Christmas! But I hope to be back often over this school break and beyond. Happy Christmas, all you Harrys!

Eeeeeeeeeek

That's what I said today when I was sitting calmly on the couch and saw something scurry into the pantry out of the corner of my eye.

[Spoiler alert: it was a mouse.]

But I've never actually seen a real mouse inside somebody's real house, so my first thought was not "mouse!" but rather "spider!" and then immediately after that "NO! tarantula!!" because, um, huge spider?

I am not a screamer in most circumstances (roller coasters, horror films, etc.), but goodness knows I skuh-reamed. 

And that scared the lil guy, so then he ran out of the pantry, across the wall opposite me in the living room, and behind our computer/bookshelf corner. Probably to nibble on our techy cords, the jerk.

I might have screamed a second time, and maybe a third time? It's hard to remember. I think I was in shock. I was definitely hyperventilating. 

I texted Joseph in all caps, and then I did that again for good measure, and then I called my mom because when the husband's at work, the mom is next on the speed dial list.

And then I just cried and cried on the phone for a minute. And then Mom reminded me that these things don't have to live in your house forever just because they spent an afternoon there, and I started to calm down a teensy bit. She also advised me to just leave the house since I apparently wasn't handling things well? (Correct.)

(My eye is literally twitching as I recall these memories to type this.)

But first I moved our stupid cereal from the floor of the pantry, and I took out the stupid trash, and I searched the stupid bedroom for stupid holes, and I put on my stupid heftiest boots to protect my toes from stupid nibbling rodents. Oh, and I put the delicious cake from yesterday into the stupid fridge. I did all of this in an awful, crying mood.

I also texted my landlord because she's always had our back in times of trouble. And I texted Jenna too because we'd already been texting all morning. And I texted Dad to see if he wanted to go to lunch so I could leave the house and not just wander Provo for the hour before work. And then I flinched every single time my phone vibrated from the now five conversations I had going on. I was a lil jumpy.

Fortunately, work was busy when I first got here, so I was distracted. But now I have finished everything and I have a lil break, and I alternate between picturing that stupid mouse either chewing on my backpack or being scared and adorable. Isn't there some syndrome or something where you start feeling sympathy for your captor? This is how I feel every other minute right now.


Ugh, what an emotional roller coaster. I'm gonna wait for Joe to get home before I go inside our apartment tonight cuz this is H-E-double hockey sticks.


And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

Tips for social media survival

[It's been a while since I last brought up this issue, but I'm going to try to wrap up my not-really series on social media and comparison before this year ends. If you want to read what I already discussed, check out posts #1 here, #2 here, and #3 here.] 

So 2014 began, and I embarked on my quest to KILL THE COMPARISON BEAST in my life, once and for all. Unfortunately, this goal was not one of those S.M.A.R.T goals you hear about in board meetings, so I didn't really know where to start. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I've accomplished the goal by now, either! But I like to think that, over the course of the year, I've gained some skills for at least diminishing the influence of the beast in my life. 

I [kind of loosely] worked through the following skills sequentially. By that I mean that I tried to get really good at the first one, which helped me transition to the next one, which moved me into thinking about the next one, and so on. But also it was messier than all that, and I think that's a good thing. If you take any of my unsolicited advice, you just follow it in your own way, okay? Okay.

So! Here's my method.


:: Learn to recognize the beast when it comes to bite you in the rear. Did you just detect some sudden and unwarranted frustration with your life? Are you mad or sad about somebody's recent success? Maybe you're feeling a little left out or just plain stuck. Ack! There it is! There's the beast! For me, any of these emotions + social media usually equals "I've been comparing my life to somebody (or everybody) else's." If you can learn to quickly recognize an uncalled for negative emotion and tie it to its cause, I really believe that half the battle is won.

:: Realize that you're watching an edited film of others' lives. I promise that the people you feel jealous of have their own issues. Lest anyone feel jealous of me (heaven forbid), please know that I cringe nearly every time I look at the southwest corner of our living room. And please know that the previous sentence was edited to exclude that I also cringe nearly every time I look at the northeast corner of our living room. Even when people are being so utterly real with you online, they are still editing just how much realness you get. It's just a fact of internet life!

And this is both a blessing and a curse. I mean, nobody wants to read a narration of every single second of your existence, so thanks for editing. But a life edited into perfection is the beast's best weapon against you. So just step back and ask, "Is their life really perfect, though?" because it may have seemed that way for a moment, but I promise you that it's not. But! Be careful! The beast will bite again if you start feeling overjoyed when you consider what their specific problems might be. Learn to tell the difference between "you're imperfect HA!" and "you're imperfect, like me!" One hurts; one helps. 

:: Reminisce about your own highlight reel. I like what @_megbird_ writes in her Instagram bio: This is the highlight reel, not reality. It's true! (See above.) So think about your highlight reel. Not the one on social media, though. I'm talking about the one of your real, actual life. What do you have going for YOU? Where have you been, literally or figuratively, and what did you learn there? Can you enjoy those memories instead of sulking? Where are you headed? Can you look forward to that with anticipation instead of resenting others' present successes? Is that just too many questions to answer before you scroll to the next Facebook post?? That's the point. Take a minute, a solid 60 seconds, and be grateful for what you do have. Chances are you've got something they might be jealous of, so check you out! (But another caution: the beast thrives on arrogance as well. I know, I ask for such delicate balances to be achieved here, but take my word for it! I've been there.)

This is my weapon of choice every time I see somebody's wedding video pop up on my feed. I looooooove watching wedding videos, but we didn't commission one for our own wedding because of reasons. I have a strong tendency to think angry thoughts toward people with seemingly perfect weddings captured through beautiful video footage, but because of that, I have also developed a true talent for letting those videos remind me of my own wedding, even as I watch them. And then sometimes (more often than I should admit), I'll just thumb through my wedding photos real quick for fun. Ahh, happiness. Gratitude is happiness. Say it with me now.

:: Give yourself a moment to switch from the negative to the positive. Do you magically feel so much better now about that person whom you disliked a second ago? Great! Recognize it and relish it. It feels good to like both your life and their life simultaneously, with absolutely no hard feelings and no comparison beast to be found. For me, this really does tie things up in a nice little bow so that I can move on with my day/week/life/whatever. 

If happy feelings didn't just happen naturally, maybe that's an issue that runs a little more deeply in your soul or something. Keep working on it. The real and honest truth about life is this: everyone's doing their best to get along as best they know how. At the bare minimum, give this benefit of the doubt to your self or your opponent (or both, I suppose) and move on. Give that beast another fight another time. 

:: Post a friendly comment! If you're really in the mood to stick it to the beast, leave a compliment on the very thing you originally envied. Make it genuine and simple and altogether you. If being happy for everyone feels good, spreading that around feels better. And as I've tried to do this, I've learned that people can usually tell when you're posting something with the intention to be deliberately sincere. They usually respond in kind.


A few other thoughts that didn't warrant their own beast-themed bullet points but that I want to share:

:: I made a folder on my phone that is dedicated to social media platforms and called it "Time Wasters." It's been hugely helpful for me to admit that I'm throwing away minutes every time I go in there to check on the world. "None of it really matters! Acknowledge it while you still can!" That's basically how I feel. 

:: I've noticed that comparison is often not even an issue when I am physically standing next to a person who is telling me good news. I very naturally exclaim a "Congratulations!" and other happy sentiments, and I mean them! The problem occurs either later, after we've all gone home, or when it's a long distance reveal, as through social media. Hence the focus on social media here instead of just normal-life comparisons.

:: Choosing to be real in my own internet postings (example, example, example) greatly helped me in my quest this year. I realized how and why people edit so much when I tried deliberately to post things that weren't so hunky-dory. I realized that it's not a bad thing that we all post happy stuff for the majority of our postings, but it's also not a bad thing if somebody wants to post something outside that norm. It normalizes actual life. That's good.


So there you have it. Go kill the comparison beast in your own life. You can do it! I know you can! And feel free to tell me your success stories here because--hello--of course I want to hear them.

I wish you luck in your quest!

I made a thing for my literacy class

And while it may or may not make any sense to anyone not in the class, I'm posting it here.

And although I'm excited to be graduating in one semester, I will still pine for the graphic design major that I never pursued because making this was infinitely more fun than writing the lesson plan for my MathEd final. 

And in case anyone has time on their hands to play around on a suuuuuper fun website, I'll just say you should all check out Canva.com.

And now I'll go back to studying for my last few finals. Wish me luck!

How to tell a true Christmas story

In my History of Creativity class a few semesters back, we used a textbook that told this story:

Albrecht Durer was born in a large and poor German family in which two sons wished to become artists, Albrecht and Albert. According to tradition, the family was too poor to allow both brothers to attend the academy in Nuremberg where they would learn art, so the brothers decided that one would support the other and then, when the first became a well-known artist, they would reverse roles. 

Albrecht won the coin toss and his brother worked in a mine to support him. At the school, Albrecht achieved immediate success, where his etchings, woodcuts, and paintings were generally better than the works of his professors. Albrecht earned considerable fees from his works. 

After completing his studies, Albrecht returned home to allow his brother to leave and pursue his art career. Albrecht informed his brother of the situation, but his brother began to cry and mutter, "No, no, no." When asked why he was crying, the brother responded by holding up his bruised and broken hands which were so damaged from working in the mine that he could hardly hold his mining tools, let alone the tools of an artist. Albrecht was dumbstruck. He then immortalized his brother's sacrifice with a series of drawings of hands (seen above).

Touching, right?? Well even if you don't think so, you should be aware by now that I kind of have a thing about hands, so this story hit my sentimental bone pretty hard when I first read it. Excited to learn more about Albrecht and the rest of his [obviously very saint-like] life, I looked him up online. I read a few biographies, and none of the information in them seemed to match up very well with the story, which was weird. Then, I found this rendition of the above story on about five different websites, copied and pasted word-for-word. I was sensing an urban legend...

And I was right, dangit.

However, if we overlook the falseness of the story, it's still pretty touching. And I'm not often opposed to overlooking the falseness of a story because I had an English teacher in high school who taught us that a story doesn't have to be "true" to be true. If you can take something from a story that betters your life and you as a human, then who cares if those particular events ever occurred or not? (Por ejemplo: why does anyone in the world claim that we can learn so much about life from Harry Potter when we all acknowledge that it's completely false?)

So I present this loosely factual story to you as one based also loosely in the spirit of Christmas. I have had a struggle getting into the Christmas season this year, and I'm really not sure why, but I spent today putting together a package for my best friend who's on a mission right now, and I wrote to her, "I hope you get to really feel close to Christ as you represent him this year." And then I thought to myself, "Why shouldn't I make that happen for myself as well? Why haven't I already done this??" 

It almost shocked me how much more Christmas-y I felt when I deliberately thought about the main point of this holiday. Presents and parties and planning are apparently stressful and obnoxious enough for me to drop all thoughts of Jesus, but I hope I can choose to turn that around for the remainder of this month. I want to be like Albrecht's brother, willing to sacrifice what I have for whomever I love. I want to go even further and make an effort to love and serve those beyond and outside of my family. I also want to be like Albrecht, openly appreciative and loving toward those who have sacrificed for me.

Basically, I want to find a way to share the gift of Christmas spirit, of Christ's love and compassion and charity, far and wide. I'll report back if anything amazing happens.

And in the meantime, I'll spread that Christmas spirit in this little space of the internet by saying this: I know that Jesus Christ came to Earth to fulfill a great work which would both set the example for and ultimately save each one of us. I know that his love for you is real and good and infinite, and I hope that you have a chance to feel it in the coming weeks. 

Happy Christmas!


Image here.

Who needs drugs to have a good time??

Ooooooookay let's lighten things up a bit, shall we?

One of the things I love about Joseph is that he humors my nerdy math moments on a very regular basis. Like, daily. When I find a super cool math problem, I'll make him solve it. Sometimes I pose a question in the car, sometimes I'll write it on a sticky note and leave it on the table, sometimes I practice teaching my next lesson on him...anything goes! And the best part is that he totally enjoys it. I think.

So here are a couple from just this week.


Exhibit A:

I just left this on the kitchen table overnight and he solved it over breakfast. He nailed it! Can any of you folks solve it?

Exhibit B:
Yesterday, as we stood in the kitchen, I remembered that I needed to tell Joe that I had a couple coupons for him to use to buy one of my Christmas list wishes. He would need to be wise in his use of these since he couldn't use both at the same time. I didn't mention the present, but I did pose the following math problem: 

You have two coupons but can only use one on a particular purchase.

       1 coupon offers 20% off of any one item.
       1 coupon offers $5.00 off of any purchase of $15.00 or more.

So which is the better deal? Hint: it depends on how much the item(s) you purchase cost individually and/or together. (That was a nebulous hint. Sorry.)

He talked through this one like a champ as I built myself a peanut butter sandwich. And then I surrendered both coupons and told him to keep all that in mind as he shopped for muffin tins. His knowing smile when he realized my gift-grabbing ulterior motives made me feel as clever as he probably did in that moment, so it was a win-win.


There are a few morals to this story. The first is to find friends (or a spouse, whatevs) who support your hobbies because life's more fun that way. The second is that math is everywhere and useful and stuff. And the third is that you don't need drugs to have a good time! 

I feel like we're close to becoming these people if we keep this up, but I miiiiiight be okay with that...

Image source here.

Wanted: A break

[I wrote this last week but didn't post it. We're a lil more put back together now, but I'm still posting it.]

This weekend I realized that I haven't been grocery shopping in approximately 6 weeks. We had no bread, eggs, Q-tips, fruits, or vegetables. We were low on pancake mix, toilet paper, cereal, sugar, butter, tortillas, and cheese. We did have milk! But only because I buy it at BYU on my way home from work whenever we're almost out, and that happened on Friday.

This weekend I realized that I haven't cleaned off my junk chair in approximately 5 weeks. It held a scarf that was gifted to me randomly by a friend last month, a massive stack of textbooks, mixed class notes for at least 4 different classes, a batch of Shutterfly pics, and probably about 20 off-the-wall receipts. There were 4 pairs of my shoes scattered around its base.

This weekend I realized that I haven't ironed anything in approximately 4 weeks, haven't gassed up my car in approximately 3 weeks, haven't vacuumed in approximately 2 weeks, haven't shaved my legs for at least a week, haven't cleaned the mail off of the kitchen table for the entire week, and haven't really been so busy that I didn't have time for all those things.

And I'm sitting here, typing this, with none of these things remedied except that I stole two loaves of bread and a handful of Q-tips from my parents. And I have a cry headache because I also realized this weekend that I do this "I'm suddenly overwhelmed so I won't do anything" thing every year at about this time of year and then I felt overwhelmed because I recognized an overwhelming pattern AND because I admitted that I'm overwhelmed when I have nothing that's really even overwhelming. And I told all this to Joseph and he responded with comforting and loving words and a really long hug (three, actually) and the right amount of common sense.

And I wanted to tell this story because if anyone wants to drop by with eggs tomorrow I'll love you a lot. 

Jk. We're opting to eat out tomorrow night so we don't have to worry about dinner. DON'T BRING EGGS.

I just wanted to tell this story for reality's sake. This is my life, right now, tonight. It'll probably be better in the morning, and it'll definitely be better after Thanksgiving break, but for right now, I just don't have it all together. And that's probably fine.