Monday, February 29, 2016

Step Into My Week

HAPPY LEAP DAY!

It's been a relatively lucky Monday on my side so far. I just completed my last test before spring break (it starts Friday!) and my second class for today was canceled! I feel like I don't know what to do with a little bit of fee time but I'm sure I'll find ways to fill it (including with blog posts)! I gave y'all a tiny bit of a sneak peak of a blog post coming your way soon with this picture. Any guesses as to what might be included? I am very excited to get it posted for y'all next week! 


This past week was busy and coincidentally relatively picture less. If you do want a mental image of what I've been up to think hanging out in the library surrounded by work, my planner, and a whole bunch of granola bars and now it's like you were there! 

This weekend however was our first function of the semester. Kappa Delta has three date functions in the fall and two in the spring. The one this weekend was called Crush and each year the seniors choose the theme. This year the theme was "When I Grow Up" which was harder to be clever with than I would have imagined. As president I am in charge of a lot of risk management that goes along with the function and this time more so than some other times. My date and I didn't even choose our costumes until the night before but I thought that it turned out relatively well. I went as a baker (a real dream of mine) and he went as a gingerbread man. There were lots of superheros, athletes, and service officers so I thought that even though ours was VERY last minute it was relatively creative. 


This week I'll aim to take a few more photos so that my recap can be a bit more exciting!
I hope y'all had a great week and weekend and are just as excited for March and the warmer weather we've been having as I am! 

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Midterm Study Tips

As much as midterms stink in reality they are a great way to make sure you have your ducks in a row and are successful come finals. I always think back to freshman year when I thought midterm just signaled the middle of the term since none of my professors scheduled tests during this time. Wow was I wrong! Every semester since I've always had a lot of assignments and tests during midterm. A positive about spring semester midterms? It always seems to happen a week or two before Spring Break so at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel!


I have included some tips that I try to keep in mind when studying for midterms with hopes that they will assist some of you at the same point in the semester! 

FIND A FOCUSED ATMOSPHERE
If you ask any of my friends they will make fun of me for how much I love the library and how picky I am about where I sit in there. I tend to focus best when my space is clean, quiet, and structured so the library is a no brainer for me! If I try to study in my room I am bound to get distracted so going ahead and setting myself up to study in a place where I know I'll be focused is crucial.

TAKE BREAKS
Sometimes when you think about studying you think about doing as much as you can in the most efficient amount of time. Personally that never works out as well as I'd like for it to! Taking breaks to get up and move around are important so be sure that you're stopping at least once an hour and hopefully you'll come back more focused than before!

TEST YOURSELF
Midterms for me are almost always tests (you paper people are lucky ducks). The best way to ensure that I actually know the information I am trying to learn is by testing myself. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with the content in a similar way that it will be presented to you. I swear by testing myself on quiz let by creating flashcards and am notorious for using their app on my phone when walking to class. Come finals you'll thank yourself because you'll already have half of the information ready to be studied in this way. 

READ ALL OF YOUR NOTES
While yes textbooks are important the notes you take in class are a great way to see which information your teacher is prioritizing and what you may need to study more! 

STAY POSITIVE
It is so easy to get bogged down in the stress of testing and grades. I am definitely guilty of this more frequently than I would care to admit. I always try to remind myself that no matter how much I may have to do I always find a way to get it done which usually puts things into a more positive perspective for me! 

AVOID DISTRACTIONS
Friends, your phone, and ever what the squirrels are doing outside of the library window can be distracting depending on how boring or uninteresting the material you are studying is. If you find yourself easily distracted by your computer and the wealth of knowledge waiting to be explored on the internet then try out the Self Control app. The same thing goes for your phone, give it to a friend or promise yourself to only check it during breaks! 

GET SOME SLEEP
I am not always the best about this one either… Sleeping enough before an exam or any test will have you more alert come time to actually take the assessment. While 8 hours is more than ideal I tend to settle for six. I'll work on that too!

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH MOTIVATED PEOPLE
If your friends have no midterms or homework and are bored and decide to come with you to the library I can nearly guarantee that they will be a distraction for you. Instead, choose to sit and surround yourself with friends who are there to get stuff done and are determined to be productive that way you will hopefully be eager to do the same!

What are your best midterm study tips? Good luck to all of you taking tests in the coming weeks!
One down today and two to go tomorrow! 

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Day In My Life (Tuesday / Thursday) Spring 2016

Although I do weekly "Step Into My Week" posts I feel like you miss seeing some of what day to day life is like. I've done these posts in past semesters and like having them to look back to when I think about what I've been up to in the past. My days vary greatly however Tuesdays and Thursdays definitely seem to be most consistent. I have included below my daily schedule of what other things I generally do on other days of the week too! And in other exciting news you'll be able to see how I organize my commitments and to-dos in my Day Designer later this week!

all of the fun illustrations in this image can be found here


Mondays
I like to dedicate a lot of my Mondays to Kappa Delta "work." I force myself to take a break from my email over the weekend so those tend to pile up and need to be responded to on Mondays after class (8:30-10:30 and then I am done for the day!). I also have bi-monthly phone calls with KD so those take up a chunk of my morning as well. I usually eat lunch around 11:40 and then stay in the library working on various assignments and stuff that needs to be done until 4:15 or 4:30 when I go back to my apartment to change to go workout. Nell and I go to Barre 3 off campus for the 5:45 class and usually are back around 7:15 and grab a meal from our dining hall before I head to the library. When I don't have too much to do (aka don't have a test the next day) I try to leaver the library around 10:30 and head back to my apartment to shower and work on any other work I may need to get done. 

Tuesdays
Y'all saw a pretty typical Tuesday for me in the image so there isn't really anything to elaborate on for these days. 

Wednesdays
Wednesdays are definitely one of my longer days. I go to class in the morning and then it is straight off to student teaching! I go at about 11:30 and head back to campus around 3:00. Once I am back I usually have some homework to accomplish and will go to the library for a bit until I get ready to go workout which makes the rest of the afternoon pretty similar to Mondays unless I have some sort of meeting. 

Thursdays
Super similar to Tuesday but the nights go a bit differently. On Thursday nights I have Panhellenic Council at 6:00 and then I usually get dinner after that. Depending on what else I have going on I either go back to the library or to my apartment. Thursdays kind of serve as the end of my week since I only have one class on Friday and I've usually already completed the homework for it so I finally get to relax a bit! 

Fridays
I get to sleep in! My first class starts at 9:30 and then after that I am done for the day. If I am feeling productive then I go to the library afterwards otherwise I'll spend the afternoon doing laundry before hanging out with friends and enjoying the weekend! 

Also as you can probably see sometimes my goal of getting more sleep isn't always achieved but I promise I am working on it!

Which days do you prefer, MWF or Tuesdays and Thursdays?

Monday, February 22, 2016

Step Into My Week

Want to know my goal for the week? Get more than two blog posts up this week! I can not tell y'all how frustrating it has been lately to have so many ideas for blog posts to do with no time to execute them. With it being midterms week I am not sure why I suddenly feel like this is when that will change but I am making an attempt because I miss having posts go up daily! With spring break on the horizon (two school weeks left) hopefully the minimal posting will be a thing of the past! 

This past week was very academically heavy with a plethora of assignments to be turned in including lesson plans (which take me HOURS to complete). But as per usual I survived and made it to the weekend regardless of all of the work that had to be turned in. 

This weekend was a fun one since I went to friends function and even had a friend in town visiting! On Friday night I went to Nell's (my freshman roommate) Tri Delta function. Each sorority has a more casual function and this one was theirs. The theme was "dynamic duos" so as much as we wanted to go as ourselves we figured that sounded a little full of it so we settled on Mike Wazowski and Boo from Monsters Inc. I had the Mike costume from high school so it was pretty easy to put together and it didn't take people long to guess our costumes. Word to the wise: If you want to look your age don't wear pig tails because I looked a solid 6 years old the whole night! 



Once we got back my friend Bowen arrived at Furman! She goes to W&L and was headed home for their February break (so jealous) and decided to make Greenville her pit stop. It's always so fun to show friends around Furman and Greenville so I did just that! Saturday morning we wanted to bike downtown for brunch but because it was sprinkling we resorted to driving instead. We went to Tupelo Honey which was delicious as usual and then we shopped around downtown for a little while. Once we arrived back on campus we decided to go for a bike ride even though it was still pretty cloudy and biked down the Swamp Rabbit Trail through Travelers Rest and stopped on our way back to get a smoothie. Our last adventurous part of the afternoon was hiking in Paris Mountain State Park. We found an awesome trail that lead to a man made dam which was so cool and I definitely want to take other friends to hike there when it warms up this semester! 

 

 

As adventurous as it was the weekend was also super restful since I tried to for the most part avoid homework until Sunday. With midterms this week school takes a precedence but we have our first function of the semester this Saturday which will hopefully be really fun and acts as a light at the end of the tunnel! 

I hope your Monday is off to a great start! 

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Start Somewhere

In general I'd like to think that I am a pretty motivated person. I'm not much of a procrastinator and have forced myself to become a pro at tackling a to-do list (especially this school year). With a busy week ahead and what seems like an endless amount of projects to complete sometimes being overwhelmed makes it feel like there is no way to get everything done. But, I've come to realize that oftentimes the hardest part about finishing something is getting started! I stumbled across this post on Pinterest recently and felt that it was very applicable for school work and life in general. 


With school work especially I try to avoid the difficulty of starting an assignment by jumping straight into the middle of it by answering the questions or addressing the issues that I already know. I'm not sure if y'all have ever had the moment when trying to start writing a paper and not knowing how to make your introduction sound just right but I feel like that always happens to me. The same thing happened last night when I could not figure out how on earth to start a lesson plan I was working on. Instead of becoming discouraged I decided to jump into the part that I was confident about which helped me to better determine how I wanted to start it. Sometimes starting somewhere doesn't have to mean tackling something from the beginning but instead going ahead from where you feel comfortable! 

Monday, February 15, 2016

Step Into My Week

Happy Monday! Since for the most part y'all didn't seem to care which day Step Into My Week posts went up for the time being I think I will be posting them on Monday as opposed to Friday. That's not to say that they won't go back to Friday at some point but for now I like the idea of posting them on Monday! 

I am also REALLY going to try to have five posts go up. I have hated that my blogging has been so inconsistent as of late! I miss sitting and writing posts and coming up with creative content for y'all and am trying to remind myself that it is ok to prioritize this along with school work. If y'all ever have any posts requests please leave them in the comments, tweet me, or email them to me! I love posting content that I know y'all are eager to see so never hesitate to send ideas my way!

As for this past week it served as a time to regain footing after a weekend away and get ahead for a busy couple of weeks to come! Monday's are typically pretty busy as I set the mornings aside to get all sorts of KD stuff done after taking a break from emails over the weekend. That night Nell and I went to Barre 3 and I had homework to get done after that. 


Tuesday I woke up with an awful sore throat and ended up accidentally taking drowsy cold medicine which made for a long and tired morning. I felt very out of it due to the medicine in addition to overall not feeling so great. I recovered however and will forever advise all college students to triple check to make sure that they are taking non-drowsy medicine before class otherwise it makes for a long day. That night I went to dinner downtown with a friend which was fun way to get off campus for a bit after traveling the weekend before and being on campus aside from driving to the airport. An early bedtime was in store that night as an attempt to combat my cold but I am not so sure it worked that well since today is the first day I really feel back to normal. It also got exceptionally cold last week so warm clothes were in order despite the groundhogs optimism that Spring is on its way.


You can find this hat for under $20 here! The socks are really old but were originally from Gap!

On Wednesday's I go to student teach the whole afternoon and had a big project to work on once I got back to Furman that afternoon. Thursday was an exciting day however because my little, Martha Ann, got a little of her own making me a grand big! All week she had been giving gifts to her little (see what I gave MA here) and that morning we got to reveal since the newest member of our KD family, Ellen, was going out of town that evening when everyone else would be revealing. We tried to make it just as fun and exciting for her so we had her come to the bell tower to meet us! Afterwards I made a yummy breakfast for us in my apartment complete with donuts, cinnamon rolls, pigs in a blanket, fruit, and bacon. Sadly my big, Caroline, had a meeting so she wasn't able to join us but we have weekly family dinners so we will all be getting a meal together soon!






That night I had a couple of different meetings and then hung out with my little before going to bed relatively early. Friday morning my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin were passing through town and I was able to grab breakfast with them before class which was so fun! It also snowed a decent bit on Friday morning which was a pleasant surprise! As for the rest of this weekend I wish I could say that I did me exciting things but for the most part it was spent recovering and working on a lot of school work.



Friday night I ran errands with my big to prepare for a Valentine's Day party that she hosted and then came back and watched a movie before calling it a night. Saturday was filled with a lot of homework and research for a project I had due today. With it being so cold out it was kind of nice to sit in my apartment with a cup of coffee and get a lot accomplished! That night I went to my big's Valentine's Day party which was so cute and thoughtful. She made so many delicious treats and I think I had enough sweets for all of us while there. 

 

Sunday included more homework and no big Valentine's Day plans unless you count leading chapter as big plans! After chapter I realized that I had been on campus pretty much all week and weekend and went for a short drive. This school year as weird as it sounds I've discovered how therapeutic it is to just go on a drive. While I don't go very far it provides a nice change of scenery and a guaranteed time for me to be by myself and reflect. Although I really didn't do that much this weekend it was really nice to enter into this week with more order and tasks accomplished than I had coming back from traveling last weekend. 


With a busy couple of weeks school wise and lots of fun things planned in the weekends to come hopefully this week will prove to be really productive and relatively stress free! 

I'd love to know what y'all did this weekend! Hope your week is off to a great start!

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

How To Design Your Perfect Resume + Template

Even though we've just gotten back into a routine after a relaxing Christmas break I feel like everyone is already thinking about the next thing. Nope, not this weekend or spring break but instead this summer. In college especially I feel like everyone knows what they are doing the following summer so early on. Whether it is a job or some amazing internship or even traveling abroad to get into all of these things or programs you need one thing, a resume. 

Resumes in high school are a bit different than the ones you are likely to send out in college. I think back to the one I sent in to work at camp and attached when applying to colleges and cringe a little bit. In most cases you would think that it is good for a document like this to be lengthy since it is highlighting your experiences, endeavors, and accomplishments but the true value actually comes with the concise clarity a person can provide when highlighting these same things on a single page. A bullet point for each award is excessive and I'll be the first to tell you that I think the one page rule is silly although I am coming to understand its importance.

I am certainly no expert when it comes to designing the perfect resume and mine has experienced many tweaks but after making your first one the process gets a whole lot easier. There are times when being the younger sibling to a superstar student are useful and nice and while I was creating my resume was undoubtedly one of those times. A couple of weeks ago I decided to finally put together a more official version of my resume and after hearing from my brother how great his was (so humble, I know) I decided to use that to my advantage. I had him send me a copy of his and decided to use it as my very own template. Since not everyone may have this convenience I thought it would be nice to act as your older sibling for a moment and create a template of sorts to aid you for when you decide to create your own.


I know that there are a lot of different formats and styles of resumes but this is just I chose to use. Also, if my brother can make his one page I have faith that you can too! I struggled with how to do this and have done a lot less than him so used that as my motivation to consolidate it. I would recommend having a few friends proofread it before you send it off to a company or college but by creating your base you are already off to a great start.

Here is a template and general overview of what to include in yours!


As for other formatting tips I would definitely recommend using Times New Roman font size 12 for the majority of the document. Making your name at the top 16 point font is a good idea but other than that consistency is a good thing. Also, in the image above GPA and Time Frame bumped down to their own rows (and it isn't letting me fix them) but I would recommend putting those on the same line as the Name of University (in the education section) and Experience One and Experience Two lines.

I hope this helps some of you out when it comes to creating your own resume! 

Monday, February 8, 2016

Step Into My Week

Another week has come and passed. I want to know how y'all feel about Step Into Your Week posts being posted on Monday instead of Friday so that they can contain the weekend all in one week. Let me know if y'all have any sort of preference! I feel like it would make more sense this way but am happy to accommodate if you happen to have a preference! 

I just realized that aside from this weekend I didn't take any photos this week. It wasn't that it was uneventful but instead tended to follow a routine. I went to a number of Barre 3 classes, went to class, and spent a lot of time in the library working on KD stuff and studying for tests. I had my first day of field work this semester and I was placed into a fourth grade classroom where I get to spend three hours on Wednesday with the students helping them with reading, writing, and science. They are such an awesome class even though they are a bit older than I am looking to teach. 

The end of this week was pretty hectic as Kappa Delta nationally hosted all executive officers from every KD chapter around in Orlando, Florida from Friday until Sunday at our National Collegiate Training Academy. Although we had a very early flight to hear to Orlando from Greenville I absolutely adored my time there. I learned so much and can't verbalize how generous and inspiring it is that our national organization pays for and invests in all of us as leaders to bring us all to one place to learn to become the best leaders we can be.  I met so many awesome leaders (including some blog readers!!) and left yesterday with so many ideas of how to continue to strive for excellence and lead our chapter to be the best we can be. While there were so many sessions and an insane amount of girls in one hotel (2000 of us) nationals made sure that we had plenty of fun too. They unveiled their new brand to us, had Brooke Anderson speak to us about building our personal brand, and allowed us to understand how the world sees us as leaders. 


Nationals shared  code with us that allows anyone to take the same quiz and find out how the world sees them as leaders as well. If you're interested in seeing this (it was so cool and pretty accurate) you can use the code KDSHARE at this website. I have already had a lot of my friends take it and am hoping to have our whole chapter take it as well. My archetype is "the anchor" which makes my advantages trust and mystique so if you do end up taking it let me know which one you get!


I also got to hang out with my friend Holly who was in my KD pledge class at Furman before she transferred to Vanderbilt and became chapter president there. It was so great to have a friend at our sessions and catch up with her. 

Now I am back and attempting to settle back into routine and focus academically as the coming weeks have a lot going on! How was your weekend and what do you think of Monday Step Into My Weeks? 

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

January Favorites

February has begun so you know what that means… my January favorites deserve one last look in the spotlight! With the hustle and bustle of Christmas I just realized that my December ones never got to be shared but the products I used that month were so well loved that they are still favorites this month as well meaning you're not missing out on any rave worthy products! The more the merrier, right? 

With colder weather and more events that require dressing up (holiday parties, new years, recruitment, etc) I have quite a few skin care and makeup favorites that I'm really excited about! Hopefully I'll be able to get this up for y'all in video form soon too however my camera battery stopped working so a new one is on its way and that will need to arrive first before I can do that for you! 

Before we get into the products though I thought it would be fun to add in some other information about my month in general. Overall January has been a really really good month. If you've been following along for a while you may remember that January of last year was not my month. Because of that I was kind of dreading coming back to school and all of the work I had to do during recruitment. I'm so glad that all of those worries were for nothing and that instead this month has been of the most fun and well balanced month I've had in college yet. While I wish I had had more blog posts go live I am realizing the importance of also ensuring that I get enough sleep since that is something that in the past has been sacrificed. Looking back at my Goals for 2016 I am doing well to work towards accomplishing those while not stressing myself out during the process. Let's hope that the rest of 2016 is just as good as this month has been!


taste foundation // first aid beauty ultra repair cream // rose lip salve // sephora face mask // dior eyeshadow // burts bees lip crayon // day designer // fitbit // legal pads // barre 3 // ID holder //  herringbone scarf // the Skimm

What have been some of your favorite things to use this month? 

Monday, February 1, 2016

Step Into My Week

Somehow, Step Into My Week posts have been the hardest for me to write lately. I don't know if that's because I am the one doing these different things and because of that they seem semi uneventful or I don't know where to begin but lately they've been the hardest to come up with concise thoughts about. 

Y'all seem to love them just the way they are though so I definitely don't want to stop doing those as I love being a bit more transparent with things that Ive been up to in these posts. This one is a round up of the past few weeks which have surprisingly contained more fun than I would have expected at the start of the semester! 

Our first real week of school (excluding syllabus week) started with Monday off due to MLK day but that evening we had first degree of our initiation for our New Members which was really exciting! Then Tuesday night everyone went out to celebrate which was actually really fun! I am not usually someone to go out on a week night but I wanted to hang out with all of our New Members and ended up having a blast. 

Then at the end of that first week of classes we had a snow day. Thursday night I had my typical meetings and went off campus to grab dinner with a friend while everyone waited awkwardly in limbo to see if we would in fact get that Friday off. Furman tries to wait until a little bit later at night before announcing and you could hear the excitement when the email was finally sent out. That night I hung out with my roommate watching Gilmore Girls and falling asleep on the couch of our living room. 

We decided that it would be really fun to have a pledge class snow day brunch on Friday morning and lots of our friends came over to eat any and all breakfast foods we could pull together. It was such a fun way for us to all hang out and reconnect in a non recruitment setting after so many of the girls had been abroad the past semester. I think I stayed in my pajamas until 2:00 that day before some of us decided to go on a walk and see more of Furman covered by snow.

 

  


That night was surprisingly eventful and fun considering the weather. We watched a lot of movies that afternoon and then had a surprise birthday celebration for a friend. In the midst of that some other friends came in and told us to put on warm clothes and come outside quickly. We were a bit thrown off but after quickly putting on layer after layer we went outside to see a mass majority of Furman's upperclassmen hanging out between some of the apartment buildings hanging out and talking with friends while avoiding the snow balls that were being thrown in all directions. While I admit that it was super bizarre it was so fun to have so many people enjoying the weather and each other when we all otherwise would have been hanging out inside. The snowball fight escalated and there was a lot of laughing and dancing. All of what was going on reminded me of how much I love Furman and all of the quirky things the students here do to have some fun! 

The next day it was still snowing and we woke up to 4 more inches of snow. My big and I went on a walk around the lake and since there wasn't much else to do so many students went to the basketball game on campus. I'll admit that I had never been to a Furman basketball game before but I definitely started with a good one considering we beat our rival by 1 point on a buzzer shot. Everyone stormed the court and it was so cool! On the way back to our apartments the sunset made it look like the ice on the trees were on fire which was so cool. 

 

That night a bunch of us watched The Intern (which I really liked) and stayed up far too late talking and hanging out. Sunday morning it was still snowy out and I finally attempted some homework and studying prior to chapter that evening and preparing for a five day week after a relaxing three day one. While a full week isn't quite as relaxing it was nice to finally get into a better routine and get a feel of how to best manage my time and obligations this semester. I was also really excited to finally get back into some sort of workout routine as that was difficult to do with recruitment going on. At the end of last semester my friend Nell introduced me to Barre 3 and I ended up going four different times last week (including 6 am on Friday with Nell). I really love the atmosphere and people there and am hoping to continue to go to classes their. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Barre 3 combines yoga, pilates, and ballet barre into one 60 minute workout. Usually I am a big cardio person as I really enjoy running but the combination of the atmosphere, people who work there, and opportunity it gives me to get off campus (so necessary sometimes) I am a big fan! 

The rest of this week included lots of meetings, reading, and emails. I am really working hard to better balance activities with fun and sleep but there was a point last week when I realized I kind of have three "jobs" this semester: being a good student, blogger, and Kappa Delta president. There is a lot of different territory to cover in those realms and I wouldn't want it any other way but it is an adjustment! All I have to say is thank goodness for a good class schedule this semester and the weekends! 

Speaking of weekends this weekend was filled with lots of activities as well. Friday night some friends and I went to a fraternity party that was 90s themed after a delicious late birthday celebration with my big. If you've been here a while then you will know that I love it when parties have themes. One of my friends, Ellison, and I dressed up as Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. 


There is no rest for the busy as I had an 8:30 leadership seminar on campus until 1:00 on Saturday. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the speaker and getting to know other leaders on campus. I am so glad that Furman values us working collaboratively and the speaker provided unique insight about how to better Greek life. 

Then that night a friend asked me to his fraternities date function so I went to that but first all of the girls attending went out to dinner together. I liked having the opportunity to spend time with groups of girls that I may not see or hang out with as frequently otherwise so that night was a lot of fun. Then it was up early again so that I could take breakfast to all of our new members at their new member retreat. Some of them are afraid of me (I'm assuming since I am president) so this was a great way for them to see me in a different light and see that I am the least intimidating person ever. Yesterday afternoon I took the longest nap and worked to get some homework and laundry done to prepare for the week ahead! 

So now you're up to date and in the loop after too long out of it! 
I hope y'all had a great weekend and February is off to a great start for each of you!

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