How Long Should I Wait?

Such a common question in everyday life, no? How long should I wait until the cookies are done, how long should I wait for the water to boil, how long should I wait for mom to get home, how long should I wait to drink this coffee so I don't burn my face off?

Inevitably, waiting sucks. Whether it's for food to be ready, for a parent to return your phone call (because you could be dead at this very moment, but they'll just get back to you when they can), for the apocalypse to happen, or even for ice cream to fall from the sky. Patience is just too dang hard. Even just typing out that word takes forever. P. a. t. i. e. n. c. e. (That was even worse cause I had to put in all those spaces and periods and everything. Yuck.)

So if waiting sucks, why do we do it?
In my eyes, I see it like this: The longer you wait for something, the better it will be.
*cue the twinkly lights and sparkles drifting off in the wind*

Seems pretty reasonable, right? The longer you wait for your pizza rolls to be done, the better they'll taste in the long run. The longer you wait for the coffee to cool down, the better experience your taste buds will have, rather than a burning to their death. The longer you wait for the dye in your groovy new tie-dye shirt to soak, the better the colors will look.

So if the longer you wait for something, the better it will be, how does that pertain to falling in love? And yes, I am talking about the cheesy movies about how the giggly girl and her high school crush reconnect at a ten year reunion and decide to get married, because they knew they were meant to be. And also the ones about strange coincidences that magically happen but in no way could happen in real life (like running into each other at a weird location and figuring out that each other already has a significant other but now that they see each other with each of their significant others they want to be with each other rather than their significant others...right?).

To be point blank, I think it's worth it to wait for love. Because the longer I wait (which hopefully won't be insanely long), the better it will be, and the better it will be, the more worthwhile I'll feel  after playing the waiting game.

I have almost a sixth sense about love, which is weird because I've never experienced it with a male being at all. I've only been in one relationship before, so you wouldn't say I'm experienced, but I do have an eye for what I'm getting myself into. Many of my friends have poo-pooed my standards for the perfect guy since my list seems to go on forever. But I think it's good to have standards because you won't look for something less. I want values and morals, confidence and dedication, humor and consideration, and trust and understanding. Doesn't seem like such a bad list, eh? Well they all have underlying parts to 'em, so HA. (Also, perfectly straight teeth would put it at the top of the top. But hey, looks aren't everything, right?)

But basically, I think things are always worth the wait. I've been so patient for so many things and I'm even still in the process of some waiting games. Making friends, finishing college, having a career that I love, making ravioli from scratch someday (it's on my bucket list), and even living on my own with a cat (yes, that's a goal, don't judge).

So moral of the story: Wait. Wait as long as you can, but maybe not as long as you want. Because there's a life to live and you should just freaking live it, since being tied down by worries in the back of your head is just plain dumb. We all do it but we all have a choice on how to deal with it.

Be patient, guys. It'll be worth it. I promise.

How College Life Consumes Your Inner Self

Now I know you're looking at that title like, 'Um, wow. Sounds like a pretty dangerous place.' And it is, but don't let that get you carried away with thinking that all I'm planning on talking about is you being eaten by a big school. Cause I'm not.

You see, I've only been in college for a little over two months. That, to me, is almost enough time to make a judgment on life here and what kind of bumpy rollercoaster it really is. It's not that I'm poo-poo-ing college and all that it offers, cause it really is a nice place. All I'm saying is that when you get here, you're not ready. You might think you're ready, feel you're ready, and even make posters saying you're ready, but newsflash: You're not. Nobody is. You can't be ready for everything in life. That's why people get thrown under the bus (figuratively, not literally) right off the bat cause they don't understand unless they're THROWN.

I remember the day, let alone the week, before I was shipped off to Collegeland. It almost felt like I was ignoring the fact that I would have to live on my own with a giant, three-wing building full of strangers. As I spent short minute after short hour with my family, I felt like there was a little monster in the back of my head screaming, "This won't last, Maddy! Your family life will never be the same! You can't be this happy ever again because college will make you a different person! You better let this soak in! Don't be crabby and sad now, don't be crabby and sad!" As much as I wanted to ignore the stupid monster, I obviously couldn't. And that was proven when I bawled the last of my frustrations out the night before going on my adventure of a lifetime. (Or is it FOR a lifetime...?)

As annoyed as I was, I knew that although change isn't my favorite thing in the world, I had to take the leap someday. So emerging into the university lifestyle for at least the first week or so was about the most dreadful time for my anxiety levels. New living space, new school, new room arrangement, new room size, new people, new non-familiar faces... All I saw flashing in my face was NEWNEWNEW YOU DON'T KNOW ANYONE NEWNEWNEW YOU ARE IN A PRISON. Which obviously sucks as a first impression, let me tell ya. But again: Being thrown in.

Once school finally started, things got much easier. I knew even beforehand that it would be the thing to calm my worrisome self down. And I know you're reading that sentence again saying to yourself, 'Waaait... Whaaat? School? Calming her down? Is she crazy?' Well, mostly, yes. It's just that school has always been such a structured, familiar environment for me. I love school. I've always loved school. And it actually took me until this present year to figure that out entirely. Wanting to be a teacher for such a long time in my life has been a big contributor to this affection, and I owe a lot of that to the schools I grew up going to. Dedicated teachers, people who made me feel like learning wasn't such a burden, and students that strived harder than the average fifth grader to write the best summary about the most boring book in the history of the universe. Those were the people that brought me here. Those were the people I wanted to be.

Since being here, I've noticed that if I'm not spending time on homework or hanging out with my best friend, I'm absolutely lost. Like, I lose all sight of everything that's ahead of me. For some reason the college life has just done such a good job of masking the sadness and confusion I still feel about learning and about the course of life, and it's starting to uncover itself again. I really do want a lot out of life. But the sad part is, I'm realizing that what I'm wanting out of my life is becoming what I'm expecting out of my life.
I have like a mental picture that I keep seeing with me happily dressed in a pencil skirt with a button-down shirt, babbling away to a classroom of children about the different ways to do long division. I have another of me walking into my house and hanging my jacket up on the coat hanger, only to be embraced by my foreseen husband. I have a third of me hugging little children like I want to squish the little love and dreams out of their ears (in a good way). I also see me walking down a long aisle of pews toward the man of my dreams, waiting anxiously for me, ready to profess his love for me and mine for him in the loving arms of God.

I see all these visions, I make up all these stories, I picture all these events, but should I be allowed to expect things like that? To have a happy life that's so shining and bright that even I can't comprehend its glory? Is that really all I want out of life? A family in communion with the Lord? Because that's really all I need, right? Because without God, I am nothing.

I am absolutely nothing without Him. Even if I don't feel Him here always.

But hey, just be free. Have visions, have predictions, have hopes and dreams. Just don't expect them. Cause as time goes on, you lose sight. Of life. Of love. Of the future. You won't see anything at some points. Just an empty jar.

You see, college life may consume your inner self, but your inner self doesn't have to let it.

College: The Dangerous Land of Mistakes

As you may or may not have already learned, college is the land of mistakes. This magical land is where you forget your clicker for the quiz on the FIRST DAY OF CLASS, realize that your writing book was needed the one day you didn't bring it to class, and your physics book is the heaviest textbook in the history of the world, especially when you have to walk up a heavily inclined cement road. As any adult would inform you in an overly-sweetened tone of voice, "You learn from your mistakes! That is how you get better!" Puke. We still have to be mortified in the presence of our peers. To my horror, I did in fact experience many, many mistakes my first few weeks as a college freshman.

Notes to self:
1. You can pretend that wearing a lanyard with your student ID card is cool for a while, but you will eventually be shot down by wandering eyes of the upperclassman.
2. Asking your professor questions in class is especially hard when you don't actually know what you're confused about (*cough, physics, cough cough*).
3. Being unproductive is easy, fun, and extremely common. "I should do my physics homework. Oh, hey. They're serving spaghetti in the cafeteria for lunch? I'm gonna spend all this time thinking about pasta and marinara sauce instead!"
4. Pretending you know what you're doing in a lab class is the key to success. Literally. If you just sit there and act like you understand how the velocity of this affects the acceleration of this, nobody will ask you for answers and bother you. They'll just continue to sit and wallow in sadness and confusion and you'll be doing the same, but confidently.
5. The bagels at Einstein Bros Bagels in the new academic building here are the greatest gift to mankind. If you haven't had one, you're missing out on the experience of a lifetime. And strawberry cream cheese.
6. The lower campus meal building is chaos every weekday at exactly noon. If you don't know exactly what you're getting at exactly what food place when you walk into that building, you will be wondering around and blocking everybody's way like a flipping dweebus. And no one wants to run into a dweebus with their food. Cause that will result in a dweebus with ketchup and freshly made chicken tenders in various places of their UW-Madison sweatshirt which SHOULDN'T BE WORN HERE ANYWAYS.
7. Nobody should talk to me when I'm studying. No talking, no loud music, no crinkling wrappers, no ordering pizza, no page flipping, no frantic running in and out of the room, no coughing, no sneezing, no breathing. Whatsoever. Okay, I may have gotten carried away with that one. Maybe.
8. If there is someone walking very closely behind you for a very long period of time they are either a) A total freak who needs to get the frickers away or b) Someone who is texting. In which you would respond by slowing down at a nice rate so that they almost run into you and hurt themselves cause you're so strong. Just kidding. I slow down really fast.

Now that those notes are taken, you can fly by school without ever making a mistake again, right? NO. WRONG. WRONG, WRONG. You will still forget to pay attention to your randomly-smiley Spanish professor, you will still forget to write your name on your research paper, you will still forget shoes, and you will STILL never learn how important it is to put wintergreen Lifesaver mints in your pencil bag.

But hey, college is he land of mistakes. And the center of it is YOU.

The Art of Education

For as long as I can remember, I've loved the idea of being a teacher. I've admired how they transition lesson plans, have knowledge of multiple different subjects, and continue to find pleasure in teaching the exact same curriculum year after year. Not only do they get to experience new kids every fall, but they also receive new materials to help get the message across to the students.

Next to my interest in teaching, I also found an interest in education and learning. Although the assignments and projects piled on year after year took the toll on my anxiety level, I still found myself loving the process. Teacher teaches students a lesson, students do an assignment at home on the lesson, teacher helps students further understand the lesson with classroom activities and examples, and then the students are tested on the material, only to forget everything the following week.

As much as I've loved the idea of education, I've never really felt...gifted at it. Yes, I valued A's and B's as much as the student sitting next to me in class, but I never seemed to feel enough. For whatever reason, I've always felt slightly behind the level of education compared to a good chunk of my classmates.

Many of my friends in elementary and middle school did exceptionally well in the class, making everything seem like a walk in the park. This both discouraged me and encouraged me at the exact same time. Each time I did horrible on a test or an assignment, I felt like I had to hide my mistake from my friends and not let them know I'm a typical imperfect human being. Cause showing my imperfections to my friends seemed like social suicide, even though I knew they'd always be my friends no matter what. In the encouragement sense, I really did value the fact that I could have intelligent friends to rely on and not people who would make terrible decisions or act dumb around me.

This ended up continuing in high school to my overwhelming horror and pleasure. I found an incredibly wonderful and intelligent group of friends who made me feel hilarious and charming, but stupid and boring at the same time. Like my previous years of schooling, many of my friends scored abnormally high on exams, assignments, and projects than I typically did. This ended up dissolving some of my passion for learning because I never felt that I was worthy of being their friend.

Compared to the average human being at my school, I've been an above average student for all my life. To me, that's just never seemed to be enough. Not good enough, not smart enough, not cool enough, not intelligent enough, not correct enough. I've always felt behind the times and didn't connect to and understand as easily as many of my friends did in school. I found myself struggling time after time to memorize things that happened during everyday life that I didn't know about. My memory seems to me like an unworthy symbol of my life. I've always felt there had to be a limit on how many memories I can hold, because I've become too forgetful to be considered normal.

"How can you not know that?"
"Wait, you didn't know this? I learned that in like 4th grade!"
"Were you born in a barn?"
"Yeah, my dad told me that when I was like seven."

And now that I'm being transitioned into the life of a college student as an eighteen-year-old, I'm wondering if it's ever going to stop. To me, adults have always seemed so much more knowledgeable and more in tuned to the world and what's happening. Will I ever get there? Will I be able to know things that other people don't know? Will I be able to teach my kids life lessons someday? Will they know more than me at some point?

My annoying anxiety monster likes to whisper these questions of concern in my ear as much as possible, paralyzing me with much deeper worry than what's normally on the surface.

It's strange to think that my level of concern for this doesn't surpass my passion for learning and education. Even though I struggle to remember things and know more things than an average person my age, I still feel a deep yearning to teach kids.

I want that part of their life to matter.
I want school to be something loved and not hated.
I want students to get something out of my class that they'll be able to take with them for the rest of their life.
I don't want this to feel like a burden kids need to jump through.
I want kids to be excited to come everyday and to have an education.


But most of all, I just want to make a difference.


 

The Beginning of the Ruling of Cats

Indeed, this is the beginning of the blog of a girl who enjoys cats enough to want them to rule the world.

A girl who might believe that cats really can rule the world.

But can cats really rule the world? Are they capable? Are they smart enough? Strong enough?

Can anyone really rule the world? Anyone or anything? What are the qualifications to rule the world and what really does one need to do to be the ruler of the world?

Could you do it? No? Then maybe a cat could.

Maybe cats have all the knowledge in the world deep down inside themselves, but they just don't express to us that they are in fact smarter than the average human being.

I mean, wouldn't you want to be a cat anyways? Having people feed you, sleeping as long and as often as you'd like, never having to change clothes, never having to deal with family drama, and you just do your business in a box and have humans clean it up later. All you have to do is float through life.

So by comparison to the human life, wouldn't you think a cat taking the reins in this world would lead to better outcomes? Demanding that people sleep more and work less. Take time to pet cats and not mope around the house feeling sorry for yourself because you didn't do well in that job interview.

Sounds to me like a lot of people would like this sort of life right off the bat.

So why not let cats rule the world?

You certainly wouldn't want to, would ya?