Hi friends. It’s me. I’m back and very happy about it. It’s been such a crazy last couple of months with summer wrapping up, moving back to Columbia for my sophomore year, sorority recruitment and classes starting that I really haven’t had time to sit down and fill everyone in on how I’m doing.
Since I last talked with y’all a lot has happened. Highs and lows, good moments and not so good moments, so many new friends and new memories and I’m excited to be able to recap the last few months of my life for y’all in today’s post.
For the sake of organization and structure, I’ve broken down my updates into categories: summer, recruitment, sorority, classes, blogging & life in general.
S U M M E R
Summer 2018 was definitely one for the books. It was so nice to be back in Ohio for three months and get to spend some much needed time with my family and my best friends from high school. Surprisingly, I didn’t travel at all the summer which I was ok with because I do a lot of traveling here at school (perks of being two hours from Charleston, Savannah, Greenville & Charlotte).
I worked this summer at a program put on by my city called Safety Town, which teaches incoming Kindergartners and 1st graders the importance of various safety concepts such as fire safety, stranger danger, bike safety and so on. I worked as a classroom assistant which is basically like a student teacher. Being an Elementary Education major, I loved this job as it allowed me to be in a classroom environment with students and since this was a summer program, I got to work with them on concepts that aren’t typically part of normal classroom curriculums. The staff that I worked alongside are some of the sweetest and most caring individuals I’ve ever met and I loved being around people who shared the same passion for teaching children as I do. I still keep in touch with a couple of my co-workers and it makes my heart so incredibly happy.
Other uneventful happenings that occurred this summer include that I got contacts! I don’t know if y’all knew this but I have horrible vision and have worn glasses since my freshman year of high school. I wasn’t a huge fan of them so I always took them off in pictures which is why y’all rarely saw photos of me wearing them here on NP. I admittedly was terrified of contacts and the thought of touching my eyes everyday kind of creeped me out but my mom was somehow able to convince me to go to the eye doctor and try them and the rest is history. Not sure if that was relevant enough to share here on the blog but decided to share since it was a monumental moment for me this summer. RIP the days of not being able to wear cute sunglasses because of needing to wear my prescription ones :)
The rest of the summer consisted of lots of babysitting, ridiculous amounts of iced coffee consumed and nights spent with my best friends from high school. Although I was sad to leave home, I was so excited to come back to Carolina and see all of my sweet college pals.
R E C R U I T M E N T
Here at Carolina, our sorority recruitment takes place prior to classes starting. I know when I went through recruitment last year, I liked that we did it before the semester began because it gave me the chance to meet so many girls and make so many friends right off the bat after moving into college.
I moved back to Carolina on August 6th which was 10 days before Round 1 Day 1 of recruitment. We have Spirit Week where each day we dress up as different themes and we practice and make sure everything is fine-tuned and ready go for when we finally get to welcome the PNM’s into our home! Round 1 is Go Greek, Round 2 is Philanthropy, Round 3 is Sisterhood, Round 4 is Preference and then Bid Day! This year my chapter’s (I’m a Delta Zeta for those that don’t know!) Bid Day theme was “Lucky You, Lucky Me, Lucky to be a Dee Zee” which I loved as we got to get decked out in green & gold with fun rainbow accessories. I’ll include some photos from recruitment & bid day below!
S O R O R I T Y
I’m living in my sorority house this year and it’s honestly one of the best decisions I’ve made since being a member of this chapter! Living in the house with 35 other members of my chapter means that there’s always someone who’s willing to go to Dunkin’ for iced coffee and there’s always someone down to watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days with me even though I’ve seen that movie countless times. I’ve grown so close to so many girls in the house that I didn’t know very well last year and have even found the girls I’m going to be leasing an apartment with next year, too!
I think I mentioned this in a post a couple months back but I’m currently serving on my chapter’s New Member Team which means that I work alongside 11 other sisters to help our New Member Class get acclimated to life in Delta Zeta and make sure that they have a smooth transition into Greek Life and answer any questions they may have.
Also exciting news, I find out who is going to be my little tonight! I’ll be receiving a phone call sometime this evening with the name of my little & I’m SO excited to start crafting for her. Reveal is October 12th so stay tuned for a post on what I gave as my gifts & photos from the reveal.
C L A S S E S
This semester I’m taking 5 classes (4 in-person, 1 online) and they’re going really well so far! I’m finally taking classes that are related to my major which means that I’m starting to go out into local Elementary & Middle Schools for student observations and y’all I am GEEKED. I’ve known that I wanted to be a teacher since I was in third grade so the fact that I’m finally starting my fieldwork and that I’m less than 3 years away from having my own classroom makes me so happy (I wish y’all could see the big smile on my face as I’m typing this).
B L O G G I N G
I’m finally hoping to get into a weekly routine of blogging, fingers crossed. I’ve been more active on Instagram lately so here’s to hoping I can be more active online too. There are only 19 days until I go home for Fall Break and I’m planning to shoot a lot of new content for y’all then so get excited!
L I F E
In a nutshell, my life overall lately has been great. This is probably going to get deep but just roll with me here. I’ve never seen myself as happy as I am right now. I came into my sophomore year wanting to step more outside of my comfort zone, wanting to say yes to more spontaneous adventures and just overall not be so hard on myself. I can confidently say that I’ve found my solid group of friends here at Carolina and having them has made a world of difference.
Yes, I’ve had some hard days. I still deal with homesickness. I still get stressed out very easily. I’m growing apart from some people, I’ve been sick, I’ve had a mental and emotional breakdown, but having found my people, it makes going through all these things SO much easier. My life isn’t perfect and I’m not trying to make it that way, I’ve just shifted my mindset to roll with the punches and appreciate the little things and it’s made such a difference and I’m loving the person I’m becoming because of it.
Happy Friday friends, thanks for reading about my life update. Here's to being back to blogging!
xoxo,
