To live and learn

Its been great but.... THANK GOODNESS ITS OVER!!!


In honor of the end of the semester (and since I finally have a few minutes to do something slightly more insightful on here and more meaningful to me) I just wanna share 10 of the most important things I have learned this semester.

1) I doesn't matter the time or the distance really, there is just some love that is and will always be there and missing that person may not get easier with time, but I'm ok with that... I don't want it to get easier because that love feels stronger that way.


2) Though life gets really hard, for many reasons, as I let the Lord be the leader of my life, things work out, prayers are answered, and I know things will be ok eventually... I know the Lord can help me do more with my life than I could do by myself and I'm grateful for that even though some of the things I have to do are the hardest things I can imagine doing.

3) After taking a little mini class on Abuse for one of my religion classes, I realized I might wanna go more into the abuse counseling aspect. I felt really strongly that I could do something along those lines. Its just heartbreaking to realize how many lives get broken and how many people don't find their way back from those experiences... I wanna be one to help.



4) After talking to one of my teachers, I realized that I will be spending my summer doing my favoritest thing in the whole widest world!!! Studying! That's right... he says I need to take the GRE in September so if I suck (which I likely will) I can retake it in November... many people spend months preparing for this wonderful adventure but I will be spending about a month or so... how terribly exciting!
5) After saying goodbye to my mom for the length of my time remaining here on Earth, my appreciation and love for the temple has been magnified 100 times. I am so indescribably grateful that my parents were married in the temple so I can be with my mom for eternity. I can't imagine how much harder saying goodbye would have been had I not had that reassurance that I've had for much of my life that I will be with her again and those ties won't be broken as long as I'm doing those things that I need to be doing. I'm so grateful.



6) I found out about this website called Kiva that you can join and give microloans to people all over the world who are working to bring themselves out of poverty. Its amazing how it works. You can give $25 towards a loan and once those people start making profit, they pay back the loan to all the people who have contributed. They something like a 97% payback rate and you can choose who to give loans to and read their stories and their business ideas and so on. So you can put in $50 towards a couple loans and after a few month or so you start getting that money back into your account which you can then give to someone else. Its great and I STRONGLY reccomend that everyone should check it out. Just go to http://www.kiva.org/about or you can watch a video about it on here



7) I have realized that the more I learn Spanish, the more I love the language. I love being able to listen to people speaking Spanish and know (sometimes, haha) what they are saying. Its an amazing feelings. Its somehow a self-esteem boost.

8) We had this little lesson thing for FHE and read a little book that is now one of my favorites. Its short and sweet but filled with all kinds of meaning. We talked about it in terms of dating, in terms of our relationship to the world around us and most importantly our relationship with the Lord. You can look at it in so many ways, I think everyone whould see/read it at least once so I'm putting it here :D





9) After having a few issues with what seemed to be heart issues but was really I think anxiety and stress and other issues from a semester of hard times... I realized (or I guess re-realized since I knew this and did this in times past) that sometimes you have to find and be grateful for the small joys in life. There is always something to be grateful for and happy about and if you don't take time to enjoy those small things then other things can overwhelm you.




10) And last of all, I feel I should include that I learned all kinds of lovely psychological stuff. Since its my major I should probably have learned something useful in all these classes that should help in my future endevors. I had some good times in Bro. Delton's class, lots of laughing and a couple times so hard that I cried (I get that from my mom) and had some good times in other classes and overall it was a...productive semester...





So overall, though this has been one of the most difficult semesters or more like THE most difficult semester I have had, some good things, good learning experiences have come from it and for that I am grateful.