Week 14

I do not have much to say this week. The semester is winding down and I am just trying to make sure I get everything done and preparing for my finals. I always hate taking finals, especially if they are cumulative. I always go into them feeling like I have not studied nearly enough. That being said I normally do ok on them I just stress out about them until the grades are in and I know exactly how I did. I guess that is really no different than how I feel about any other test, but it always just feels so much more stressful knowing that it is the last test.

Week 13

The end is near! We only have about three weeks left in this semester and I can not wait for it to be over. This is the last semester before I get into my program and I am excited to start learning everything I need to know for my career. I feel like I have been in school forever and I am just ready to be finished. I am ready to get out of my retail job and start using my degrees.

Week 12

I don't know about you guys but I can not wait for next week. I need a break from all my school work to allow my brain to recharge. I am even trying to get all my online stuff done early so I can start the break a little early. I wish I could say I was going somewhere fun for spring break but I am not. I will be staying home and working all week. On the days I do not have to work I plan on catching up on some sleep. There is so much I want to try to get done over the break but I know there is no way I can get to all of it.

Week 11

This week we had to take some personality quizzes, which I found to be interesting. I sometimes take personality quizzes just for fun so I was a little excited when I saw we were taking them. I found that some of the things the quizzes said sounded just like me and then there were other things I felt were not even close to me. I find it fascinating to see how close a personality quiz can get to your actual personality. I like to do those quizzes online that tell you which Disney character you are or who you would play in a television show.

Week 10

My little sister is getting married in October and I am her maid of honor. She is completely stressing out about it. Her bridesmaid are the cause for most of the stress. We are going to try on dresses this weekend and it has been scheduled for about a month now. Three of the bridesmaids keep trying to back out of going because they say they do not have the money to pay for a dress but they still want to be in the wedding.
This has caused my sister to become "bridezilla." I thought it was a little early for her to be acting this way but I guess I would be upset too if half my bridesmaids said they could not afford a dress. Some how she has talked all but one of her bridesmaids into going this weekend, and the one that is not going has a funeral. I hope this trip ends up being fun but so far it has been really stressful to try to get everyone together.

Week 9

Spring daylight savings gets me every year. I know that I should go to bed early because I am going to be losing an hour, but that is not what I do. I stay up late just like I would do on any other night and I regret it the next morning when my alarm goes off. You would think after years of doing this I would learn and actually go to sleep early so I would not be so tired the next day. It is amazing the difference that hour makes when it comes to sleep.
On the other hand I always love getting that extra hour in the fall. I do not always use it for sleep like I probably should, but I still like having the option of getting an extra hour of sleep. I like the fact that cell phones now reset on their own because I would probably forget to reset it on my own. I do wonder why they change over around two in the morning though.

Week 8

I have done really good not procrastinating the past two weeks. I decided that I did not want to spend my weekends just working and doing homework. I have even been working ahead when possible. This is new for me and I wish I was like this all the time. I love not having to tell people I can't do something because I have homework. I have also been a lot less stressed by doing my homework early. I hope I can keep this up for the rest of the semester.
Having all the snow days has really helped me with being able to do my homework early. It seems like everyone is being more proactive this year when it comes to the snow. Last year I was at work and I was not able to leave until it was already dangerous to drive and this year they let us close the store two hours before the snow even started to fall. Also all the schools in my area have been closed for the past two days in anticipation of the snow. I guess they did not want to have kids stuck on buses and brought back to the school this time.

Week 7

I strongly dislike referees. My cousin played her last basketball game ever this week and it only deepened my hatred for referees. The first half of the game was fine. The refs were calling a fair game and at halftime the score was tied. After halftime though was a completely different story. In the third quarter my cousin's team started to pull ahead and that is when the bogus calls started to happen. The refs would call a foul on someone who wasn't even close to the person they said they fouled and by the fourth quarter the score was evened out again.
The fourth quarter was where the refs were obviously fans of the other team. We could hear the other team slapping the arms of my cousin's teammates in the stands and nothing was being called. The foul count ended up being 13 to 3 in the favor of the other team. The bad calls and all the free throws that the other team should have never gotten to shoot caused my cousin's team to lose by 12 points. It would have been fine if the other team hadn't been fouling but that wasn't the case.

Week 6

This week I discovered just how competitive everyone I work with is. We made poster boards to keep up with how everyone is doing in certain areas of their job and we change the leader board everyday so the associates can see exactly where they are. There are no prizes but no one wants to be in last place. Just in the past three days the leader board has changed drastically. The person in last place has changed every single day. This is because the person who is last sees that and they go out and make sure at the end of the day they are no longer last.
I already knew that a few people were just as competitive as I am and I have used that to drive their performance. Now that I know all the associates, with the exception of maybe one or two, are competitive I may have to start coming up with some competitions to try to improve our performance in a few areas. We may even need to start doing prizes to motivate them even more.

Week 5

I love to watch tv shows. They help me escape from my life. Not that my life is horrible or anything. My life is actually pretty good. I just don't have a lot of free time because I work and go to school all the time. When I do get free time I like to do things that help me not think about work or school like read or watch a tv show like Once Upon A Time. This past week was one of those weeks where I wish I had time to do something to take my mind off of all the things I have to get done.

Week 4

This is my little cousin, Haley's, senior year in high school and watching her play what could be her final season of basketball takes me back to when I was in high school. I recently went back to my high school to see Haley play against my alma mater and I thought about how much smaller it looked than it did when I went there. I also felt strange sitting on the visitor's side of the gym. When I was in high school I never would have thought I would be sitting on those bleachers rooting for the opposing team.
Friday night is going to be Haley's senior night and we are going to go all out. When she had her senior night for volleyball we made shirts and posters and probably embarrassed her and she can expect nothing less from us this time. I can remember playing basketball and having to learn to tune my family out while I was playing because they were yelling so much but I wouldn't trade them for anything. Now I have joined my family in the stands and I can understand why they were yelling so much.

Week 3

In English last semester I took the Fascinate Profile Quiz, which was suppose to help me understand myself better. This quiz said that I am an avant-garde, which I still don't fully understand. It said that an avant-garde's mind works quickly to develop solutions and bring new ideas to the table. The profile also said that I get bored when forced to follow the same routine. This particular quiz also gave suggestions of things I might need to work on. One thing it suggested was that I need to stay a little more grounded and focus on the here and now.
This quiz did make me stop and think about who I am and what I need to work on. I took this over six months ago and think about the things it said I should work on. When I was first told I was going to have to take this quiz I was less than thrilled about it. While some of the things it said about me weren't accurate, it has still been helping me better understand my strengths and weaknesses.

Week 1

Today we had my niece's first birthday party. It is so hard to believe she is one already. It seems like just yesterday I was going to the hospital to meet her. I get the pleasure of watching her every Monday while her parents work and it is the highlight of my week. I love watching her grow up and learn new things. She is developing her own little personality and from what I can tell it is going to be a good one.
My favorite part of all kid's first birthday parties is the smash cake. It is always interesting to see if they are going to just stare at it or do what my niece did today and demolish it. It is so cute watching them stick their little hands in the cake and see how excited they get when no one tries to stop them. I heard some of the kids at the party telling their parents that it looked like fun. I kept waiting for one of them to start doing the same thing with their cake.