Holiday Jitters

This has to be my favorite time of the year. I'm not a fan of the cold weather, but all of the wonderful holidays are amaizng. I'm very excited to see my family. I get to see my parents and sister all the time since I try to go home on the weekends. The excitement is getting to see the part of my family that I only get to see around this time of the year.

Thanksgiving is going to be nice, being able to enjoy the amazing food. But, what makes it even better is the day after! No, I don't go to the mall and shop. Instead, we have a family tradition of putting up all of the Christmas decorations and decorating the Christmas tree. This is the first day of the year that I put on Christmas music and start to get into the Christmas spirit.

This year is going to be a first for my family and I. Friday night I will leave to meet with Shawn to spend the rest of the holiday weekend with him and his family. I'm not used to having to share my time with my family and someone else. My parents are having a harder time adjusting to this new situation as much or more than I am. It's hard trying to balance family and a relationship during the holidays.

Not only is it difficult balancing time between family and the relationship, but it has also created an even longer Christmas list. And as we all know, a longer Christmas list equals more money I have to spend. I'm lookingforward to the holidays even though I'm not sure what they're going to bring this year.

My Rough Outline...

This is the concept I have for my outline but please let me know of any suggestions because it all makes sense in my head but when I went to put it down on paper I'm not quite sure it turned out the way I wanted it to.

Title: Student Athletes: Is it all fun and games?

-Intro
-Thesis: Something about the misconception of student athletes and the lives they live while at college
-Student Athlete
+What is their opinion of being student athlete
+What is the daily schedule of a student athlete like
=What is it like being a student athlete at OBU
=What is it like at a D-I school?
+What is their opinion of being a non athlete?
-Non Athletes
+What is a non athletes opinion of being a non athlete.
+What is the average daily schedule?
+What is their opinion of student athletes?
-Coaches
+How can athletes balance school, athletics, and social life?
+Is it harder to be a student athlete or a working student?
-Conclusion

Visual aids:
-pass out data from a poll I'm going to take of student athletes and non athlete students
-pass out a copy of a student athlete's daily schedule
-power point (?)

Sources: I am going to poll 25 students that are non athletes, 25 student athletes, talk with 3ish coaches.

Back to Blogging

Long time no blog...

Things have been pretty calm for me lately, which is nice. Over the weekend Shawn, the boyfriend, and I decided to start our Christmas shopping. Let me tell you, that was an experience! We got up fairly early Saturday to go shopping because the good football games were on later in the day and neither of us wanted to miss them. We ventured to the mall, which was oh so crowded. You would have thought it was either the day after Thanksgiving or the week before Christmas with how packed it was. Our list for the day consisted of my sister and grandparents and his mom and grandmother. It was bound to be an interesting day.

We started off looking for my sister because we figured she would be the hardest to shop for. I didn't realize how grouchy a guy could be when you take them Christmas shopping. Shawn was fine shopping for my sister but after that I could see his attention span dwindling. All he wanted to do was go over to the food court and eat. That's when the fun began. I guess you could call it a mini arguement, because neither of us was yelling or drawing attention to the scene, but there was some raised voices at times.

Shawn wanted to leave and was getting aggitated with me because I wouldn't let him until we finished shopping for his mom and grandma. He really didn't care to shop and when I asked him what they liked or needed to potentially speed up the process all he did was snap at me that he didn't know and that shopping was stupid.

That went over real well with me, Not! I became irritated at this point becuase it was actually his idea to go ahead and get some of our shopping out of the way. But, what did I know, I guess that just meant shop for one person and be done.

We got everything worked out and got what we needed for everyone on this short list, but I thnk in the future Shawn might not be allowed to go shopping with me. Or if he does, it won't be on a football day.

Oops!

So I'm a little confused right now. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be blogging on a specific topic, an open blog, or nothing at all. Well option three sounded a little too risky for me so I decided I would at least right something on here. I'm really not sure what I want to right about. There's really nothing going on right now except class and workouts...not very exciting! Game 1 of the World Series was tonght and I got to watch the beginning of it while I was at the gym; that's been the most exciting thing today.

I'm looking forward to the group presentations. I think my group is going to do very well, but I'm nervous about speaking. I know we have a great class to be infront of but I'm still nervous. I'm not a big fan of speaking infront of people. It just doesn't make sense. I can play ball infront of hundreds of people and be perfectly content, but you put me infront of a group of 10 and my stomach is in knots and I'm about ready to pass out from nerves. I'm ready to give the speach though, I think it'll be ok.

Well since I'm not sure about this blog or not I really have nothing more to say. I will end this blog with a verse that I heard in church this past Sunday. I thinks it's very good, especially for college students as we go through our daily lived and the temptations we endure.

"Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." -James 1:12

Fall Break and Flower Beds

Fall break couldn't have come any sooner for me. With all of the stress from school and softball I needed a break in the biggest way. For fall break I had the house to myself. My mom went to San Fransico for work and my dad and younger sister went to Plano, TX for a softball tournament leaving me and the two dogs to house sit.

Before my mom left for airport, she left me a list two weeks long of things she needed done around the house. Most of the things on her list were just little things that would only take a few minutes to complete. Her main task that she wanted me to do was pull up everything in the front flowerbeds and plant new fall flowers. That was fine with me because I like being outside and I like playing in the flower beds. I might not have a lick of artistic ability for art class, but when it comes to arranging flowers, I have a gift. I was able to con my boyfriend into coming over and and helping me plant the flowers. He wouldn't help me pull anything up, but at least he helped me plant.

When pulling up flowers we had this vine growing, that wasn't bad looking, I just didn't like it. Well when my mom told me she wanted me to do the flower beds she told me to do whatever I thought would look good and gave me free reign. Well as my dad and sister were leaving, my dad came over to see how progress was going and noticed I'd pulled up the ugly vine. He asked if my mom wanted the vine gone becasue for some reason she likes the thing. I told my dad two things. One, she told me I could do what I wanted with the flower beds and I didn't want it so it's gone. And two, it's too late if she wants it because it's in the trash.

Well, she's supposed to be coming home late tonight so I'll find out tomorrow morning if I'll ever be hired again or if I'm banned from the flower beds from now on. My thought on the whole situation is if she really wanted the ugly vine left then she should have told me. Oh well, it's gone now and I think the front looks much better now, if I must say.

MIScommunication

Today I learned how important communication is when it comes to grades. When I got to practice this morning my coach wanted to talk to me. When I went into her office she informed me that I was ineligble in one of my classes. As far as I had known I was in good standings with all of my classes, or getting back to good standings after being gone. When I learned of the class that I was ineligble for I was completely shocked. I had spoken to this professor last Thursday to make sure everything was ok with my grades and that I wasn't missing anything. After telling my coach what my professor and I had discussed the previous week she told me that I needed to go and talk to my professor and get things figured out.

So, I went over and talked to my professor. Different dialects can make communicating so hard. My professor speaks very choppy English and it made telling him what my situation was and what needed to be done about it extremely difficult. After a long conversation and much misunderstanding, mainly on his part about eligibility, my grade situation was gonna be fixed.

I learned several things and was reminded of several things today during this ordeal. The first is that you can't always rely on what someone tells you until you see the results. I.E. I was told my grade was just fine, but when it showed up in the computer for eligibility everyting wasn't fine. Secondly, I was reminded just how hard it is to communicate with people when you don't speak the same language or if one person speaks a limited amount of a language you're trying to communicate in. I.E. When I talked to my professor it was hard for both of us to communicate becuase I was trying to explain my situation and he wasn't fully understanding my problem and when he would ask a question or give a solution I had trouble understanding what he was saying and it made it diffucult for both of us. But, we didn't get fusterated with the situation, instead we understood each other's diffuculties and made the best of the situation. And lastly, I learned that when mistakes are made, instead of getting mad or frustrated, the best thing to do is stay calm and go and talk to the person, or professor in my case, that you're having conflict with. We were able to get the problem taken care of and I'm no longer on the ineligible list!!! Woo Hoo! All it took was some calming down and simple communication and the problem was fixed.

My weekend

This past weekend I went with my boyfriend back to see his family in Blair, Ok (it's near Altus, but don't blink you might miss it). We got there late friday night and from the minute we walked in the door, his mother was making a list of chores for us to do that needed to be done. We usually don't mind bacause she's a widow and needs help keeping all the land they have out there. We were up early Saturday morning to start on the chores because we wanted to watch the OU/Texas game. Well we ended up having to do chores through the game but it wasn't a big deal at first because we were DVRing the game so we could watch it later. The only proble with that was when his mom was mowing the yard she hit the satillite and knocked it out of place cause none of the game to be recorded. You talk about a blow up. Shawn (the boyfriend) was furious with his mom and they had a heated battle about her carelessness and man was he grouchy the rest of the afternoon. I learned quick to stay out of his way when he started snipping at me for no reason. He cooled off though which led to an amazing evening.

He planned a surprise for me Saturday night for my birthday present. While I was drying my hair he came in and blind-folded me and carried me out to his truck. He drove around for what seemed like forever and when we parked and he unblind-folded me we were out at the lake we had been to earlier in the summer. He knows that I love seeing the stars but growing up in the city I never really got to see them. He made a pallet out of blankets and we sat and looked at the stars while the waves of the water crashed up onto the beach and there was a light breeze in the air. He further surprised me by pulling out a bottle of wine. It was an amazing night; sweet and romantic.

Sunday, it was back to chores and then back home to the city and then to Shawnee.