The fall semester has begun(but is not yet in full swing, for me at least)- I’m back on campus and managing my life while working and going to school full time. I’ve been incredibly busy, but I have 15 minutes to spare and I want desperately to write something and put it out there… so here I am.
So, here is a list of what’s been going on in my life recently.
Classes: I’m taking 15 credits this semester, which isn’t a ton, but it’s still a pretty full course load.
Work: 32-36 hours of work a week, depending on how my boss is feeling.
And that’s basically it. Nothing really new to report.
HOWEVER- there are some things coming up that I’m really excited for. Tonight, a few friends and I are going to do an escape room, so that’s going to be super fun. The semester retreat for my floor is happening on Saturday and we’re going to this beautiful outdoor sanctuary type of place called Point Of View- I’m really looking forward to it. And then, later in the month, the big event that I’m really excited for-
THE MOTHMAN FESTIVAL.
My suitemate and I are driving to Point Pleasant, WV, to go to the festival and enjoy the history and folklore of our favorite cryptid. How fun?!
Anyways. I think that’s about all for now, and my fifteen minutes are up. I’m going to try to start writing more here, so wish me luck, and hopefully stay tuned. As always, thank you for reading.
I figured instead of stressing myself out about writing “good” content, I’d just share some of the music I’m listening to in this transition period of summer into fall.
So, without further ado, here is my Ultimate Fall 2019 Playlist:
Slow Motion – PHOX
Cavetown – Boys Will Be Bugs
Severed – the Decemberists
Hurt – Oliver Tree
Sactuary – Joji
Killer Queen – Queen
Self Care – Mac Miller
Two Princes – Spin Doctors
Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl) – Looking Glass
Strangers – The Kinks
Dissolve – Absofacto
Amends – Active Bird Community
DR. WHOEVER – Amine
Myself – Bazzi
Agora – Bear Hands
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da – The Beatles
Vienna – Billy Joel
Snake Charmer – blink-182
Southern Sun – Boy & Bear
Lua – Bright Eyes
Cigarette Lighter Love Song – Butch Walker
Greyhound – Calpurnia
Do You Feel It? – Chaos Chaos
Idle Town – Conan Gray
Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
Anyways, I hope this fall, you find something good to listen to- and if you have any suggestions for me, please do not hesitate to share! I love all sorts of music and I promise I’ll check it out. As always, thanks for reading.
So, it’s been ten days since I’ve last written, which is the absolute opposite of what I wanted to happen.
So let me explain.
I’ve been managing a bunch of changes recently- my boyfriend is abroad for graduate school, my family is moving, my parents were out of town for a few days to house hunt(and my grandma was visiting to keep an eye on the children) so I’ve been packing my room and helping my grandmother watch my younger siblings, and I’ve been getting ready to move back on camps for the fall semester.
Almost every evening I’ve sat down and thought, “I should write a post for my blog”, and every evening I’ve decided that I didn’t have the energy for it and that I’d have nothing good to say anyways.
But here I am, writing. I still feel as though I have nothing good to say, or to write about, but I’m doing it anyways. Hopefully just getting one post up will help me to realize that maybe I do have something interesting or helpful to write about. I guess we’ll see.
More to follow, and as always, thank you for reading.
When your world moves too fast and you lose yourself in the chaos, introduce yourself to each color of the sunset.
Reacquaint yourself with the earth beneath your feet.
Thank the air that surrounds you with every breath you take.
Find yourself in the appreciation of life.
Christy Ann Martine
Recently, I’ve been having trouble trying to find the time to (effectively) practice mindfulness. Everything has been so busy, and life seems to be moving at hyper speed. The summer is coming to an end, and school starts in two weeks. The vast majority of my time since returning home has been consumed by helping my family pack up our house so we can move, and spending time with my boyfriend before he leaves for his master’s degree abroad.
A few days ago however, I decided to pick a time to practice mindfulness that goes along with my daily morning routine.
Every morning, I climb out of bed, and the first thing that I do is wash and moisturize my face. I’ve found that by attaching my mindfulness practices to an activity I do daily anyways, I worry less about “finding time” to have a few minutes to myself for being mindful. I’ve also noticed that practicing this in the mornings is really effective at putting me into a positive, open mindset for the entire day.
Here is the guided meditation I have been using recently for my morning routine. I hope you all enjoy, and find that it’s worth listening to.
On August 2nd, I flew home from to Richmond from Chicago. Here is my favorite picture that I took from the plane!
American Airlines flight from Chicago, IL to Richmond, VA!
The past day and a half I have just been readjusting to being home, and catching up on some sleep. Nothing too interesting happening around here, but I wanted to keep my readers updated! Expect at least one more post later this evening. I hope you all have had a wonderful week, and as always, thank you for reading.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about something that I learned in my Intro To Mindfulness course last semester. We were taught about self-compassion and self-appreciation, and there’s a really great guided meditation that I wanted to share here in case anybody was looking for some positive feelings this evening!
Hello! I wanted to very quickly share my favorite bullet journaling materials for anyone who is looking to start a bullet journal, or for someone who is looking to add to their collection of tools and materials for journaling.
It’s hard to find a journal that works for your needs. I’ve tried at least five different types of notebooks for my bullet journaling, and then my best friend Ellie introduced me to this absolute GEM.
Lemome Dotted Journal
This is the Lemome brand dotted journal. It is absolutely the number one journal for my bullet journaling purposes. The paper is sturdy, the leather on the outside is beautiful, and it has a pen loop on the spine, as well as a little pocket for loose papers in the back of the book. You can find it for $14.99 on Amazon at the link attached in the photo.
My favorite pens for bullet journaling have got to be the Pilot Precise V5 pens. They’re extra fine at 0.5mm thickness, they last for a very long time, and they come in various colors!
Pilot Precise V5 pens
These pens are great. I use them for taking notes in class as well as bullet journaling, and they’ve never steered me wrong. I love a good multipurpose pen, and these are the best! You can find them for $7.24 on Amazon at the link attached to the photo.
And lastly, my favorite markers. Not only for bullet journaling, but they are genuinely my most favorite markers of all time, for any purpose. They’re incredible, and I love them.
Zebra Mildliner Creative Markers
The Zebra Mildliner markers come in packs of 5, 10, or 15, and they are beautiful. The ink is “mild”, so they show up almost pastel on paper. Hands down some of my favorite journaling/note taking tools on the market right now. You can find them for $16.88 on Amazon at the link attached to the photo.
And there you have it, my favorite bullet journaling materials- truly staples in my collection. I use them for everything that I do in my bullet journal! As always, thank you for reading.
Hazel Jo
Disclaimer: None of these products are sponsored! These are just my favorite tools 🙂
Here is my August Calendar! On the side there is a place for notes, important dates, and goals for the month. Here is my habit tracker for the month of August. And here is my mood tracker!Lastly, here is what the weekly spread looks like- a to do list on the left hand side, and a place for notes on the right, plus a positive quote for the week!
Hopefully this inspires someone to start their own bullet journal, or even just make a fun spread for this month! As always, thank you for reading.
This is one of my favorite stories to tell from my freshman year of college. TLDR(too long, don’t read) will be summarized at the bottom! I hope you enjoy my antics, and as always, thank you for reading. – Hazel Jo
So. Let me explain. I go over to my friend Deanna’s dorm to hang out before dinner, and this is the Friday before classes start up. We’re painting our nails and talking about how excited we are for our classes and upcoming events. Her friend Meghan comes into the room and tells us that she got offered a ride to this frat party by her cousin who’s in the fraternity, and her cousin tells her that his girlfriend can come and pick us up. For background, our fraternity houses are off campus, we don’t have a frat row at George Mason. So, Meghan invites Deanna and I to come to this party with her. I’m not really into frat parties, but decided that I’d go with them and be the designated sober mom just to make sure they were alright, because I wanted my friends to be safe.
Flash forward to where Meghan’s cousin was supposed to have his girl pick us up at. Our ride is 15 minutes late and we get bored, so our friend Christine who’s already at the party sends me the address through find my friends. De orders an Uber and we go to that address. It’s 10 miles away from campus, literally a 15 minute drive. But, we weren’t rlly suspicious cause Meghan’s cousin had TOLD us that it was kind of far away from campus (there are some frat houses you can walk to that are like right around the corner as soon as you leave campus, and some are like a 10 minute drive).
So, we arrive at Donovan’s Hill Road, which is a little neighborhood. We assume that the frat house is in there somewhere. But NO. We walk from the front of the neighborhood to the address, cause of course we couldn’t just pull up in an Uber(you’re supposed to get a ride coordinated with one of the designated sober fraternity brothers). BUT THAT WAS THE WRONG ADDRESS. Somehow with apple’s find my friends app, Christine’s location hadn’t updated since(probably) the day she moved in. So there we were. Me, De, and Meghan, in this dark neighborhood (it was a nice neighborhood though, like the houses were big and pretty and well kept), and I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.
I text Christine, and I tell her we’re definitely in the wrong spot, and ask if she can reshare the address. We finally get the right address, and we’re like ok cool fine and I pay for the Uber to take us to the correct address. Our driver is about 10 minutes away. We sit for like 15 minutes and we’re like what’s going on, where is this dude?? So we check the map where we can watch his car drive around and he’s AT THE ADDRESS OF THE PARTY. So I’m freaking out because I thought I put in the wrong address for pickup, and if he’s waiting there to pick us up it’s charging me every minute that we’re late for pickup! This guy can basically just sit here however long he wants and say we were late.
Meghan helps me contact Uber support and I’m emailing a service representative and just say, “hey we had an issue with our pickup, we didn’t even get picked up and our dude is at the location we were trying to get to”. And, on tOP OF THAT the ride was only $7.99 but my bill came to $13.59! HOW DID IT SUDDENLY GO UP $5.50????? Anyways, a few minutes later I get a massage from Uber support and they said it looks like someone else TOOK OUR UBER. TO THE FRAT PARTY. So at this point I’m just frustrated and don’t know what to even do. We can’t walk, it’s like a 45 minute walk to the frat house or a 90 minute walk back to campus on the highway, and it’s DARK(its around 10:30 at this point). So, Deanna is(rightfully) LIVID because of the whole ‘Uber Thief’ situation and suggests we walk either to the party or back to campus, and I’m saying to her, “are you insane, we do not know this area. No. I am calling my upperclassman friend and she is gonna hopefully come get us.”
So. There we are. Sitting in this dark neighborhood on a curb, 10 miles away from campus, waiting for my friend Hunter to come get us. In the middle of the night. And of course looking back on it now it is literally hilarious. Wherever we were was like the Bermuda Triangle, because it kept messing up our find my friends apps and our maps apps(it was telling all three of us different distances from there to campus), it was WILD. But I ended up getting my $13.59 back and we made it back to campus safe so all was well, now it’s just a hysterical story to tell to my other friends.
[TLDR; My friends and I tried to Uber to a party, we went to the wrong place, then our second Uber got stolen by someone else so we were stuck in this dark neighborhood 15 minutes away from campus(by car) for over an hour, and my upperclassman friend ended up having to pick us up.]
This summer, I spent seven weeks in Culver, Indiana- 691 miles away from home. I’m not quite out of the woods yet… I fly home tomorrow evening. I have a pretty open schedule today, so I wanted to take a moment to share with you how I’ve spent my time this summer.
In April, I was hired by Culver Academies as the head rowing instructor for their summer school program. Many people know nothing of the academies; it’s a beautiful campus nestled on the shore of Lake Maxinkuckee in Marshall County, Indiana. It’s also a military backed preparatory acedemy. You heard me- military. Kids from all over the world come here, to experience all that the Culver Summer Schools and Camps has to offer, and we do offer quite a lot.
My Culver story begins in January of 2015. My parents tell my sister and I that for the upcoming summer, we will be shipped off to a six week long military academy. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed… until I realized that they weren’t joking. Now, as a fifteen year old, this was absolutely soul crushing to hear. A military academy? As a kid, I’d had the idea planted in me that if your parents were sending you away for the summer, that meant you were a “bad” kid- rebellious and troublesome. While that wasn’t the case for me, that was the reason they were sending my sister- she’d had a rough couple of months and was raising all kinds of hell for my parents, nearly constantly. They found Culver through a friend and signed us both up(they didn’t want to send their 10 year old to Indiana by herself), and by June 21, we were on the road, driving 12 hours from Virginia, across New England and the Midwest, to make our way to Culver.
My first two weeks were absolutely grueling. I was a 3rd classman, learning military commands and how to march in step with my unit(Deck One!), adjusting to the heat and living without air conditioning, rowing for my unit’s crew team, wearing a uniform 100% of the time, and going to classes every day. I also had no access to a cell phone or the internet. I hated it, and time was passing by so, so incredibly slowly. And then the Fourth of July rolled around.
I can’t really describe it in words, but it was as if a switch suddenly flipped in my brain. I was standing in the bleachers in front of the massive riding hall(we have 93 horses here) with my unit, clad in our matching yellow deck shirts, watching the fireworks show… and dancing to the music. And suddenly, like the universe itself had flicked me on the nose, I realized how lucky I was to be there. It became clear to me that I was a part of something much, much larger than myself, and that I should be proud of that.
My friend Lou and I in choir!
I spent the remaining four weeks bonding with my deckmates, and rising up the ranks in military activities. I went to crew practice 5 days a week, and I learned code flags and coastal navigation. My friends were learning to sail keelboat and pilot airplanes(seriously). There were socials that everyone actually went to, and all of our connections- to each other and to this incredible place- were genuine and so, so strong. Over the course of two summers, Culver changed me, and my whole perspective on life and the world.
And that’s why I decided to come back; I wanted to make that difference for someone else. This summer, I’ve taught almost 70 kids to row. I’ve watched them win crew races for their units. I’ve helped my previous deck’s new crew team become better rowers, and better teammates. I’ve spent my evenings walking the shores of Lake Max, enjoying this gorgeous view:
The lake I’ve spent my summer on!
This summer has been more incredible and life changing than I ever believed imaginable, and I already cannot wait to come back.
College Couch 