Life of a University Student

November is almost over and I am now really feeling like a university student. With all the homework and assignments due at the end of the semester it is a pretty crazy time. I am trying to stay on top of my work and not stress about things but it is a little bit tough. I have a new found getaway from all of the stress…..decorating for Christmas! Every time I need a little break from my homework I just find a new way to decorate our apartment. We started off with a Christmas tree. Then we got garland and ribbon and hung it from the ceiling. After that we got bows and wrapping paper and wrapped all of our bedroom doors. And tonight I decorated our front door with the Christmas stickers you put on your window! The place looks great and it makes me feel so much more relaxed and at home. This is the ‘good’ in my life as Dean Shareski was talking about in our ECMP 355 class a couple weeks ago.

I Love Winter!!!

So, in the last week we FINALLY got snow! I am one of those few people who actually enjoy the snow in winter. I know that it can be crappy for travelling and it is really annoying when it gets cold but I just love having snow! I like going outside and it may be a bit dorky but I still like making snowmen and snow angels and snow forts. I am also a big fan of snow fights! The first night it snowed I went outside with some of my friends and had a really awesome snow fight. I lost (which isn’t surprising) but it was still so much fun! It is also a great way to relieve some of the stress from school.

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Another reason why I love winter is because I absolutely love Christmas time! I am crazy about pretty much everything about except for the shopping. I love the atmosphere, the songs, the baking, the movies. Just everything! Every year my dad and I put up the Christmas lights which is so much fun and surprisely a lot of exercise and so much fun. I also really enjoy when my whole family gets together for supper. We go to church on Christmas Eve, have supper and usually end up playing some sort of cards. It is so much fun and I love it. This year Christmas is going to be a bit different…I’ll be spending it on a beach in Hawaii! I am super excited yet slightly sad as well. It is just not going to be the same atmosphere when there isn’t any snow. It will be a new experience which I hope will be great!

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VS.

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Halloween

This year Halloween has been a week long experience. My roommates and I have definitely got into the spirit! It took us all a very long time to figure out what we wanted to be but fortunately for us we have a friend who’s parents own a Halloween store, so he helped us out. My one roommate and I decided to be the ghosts from Pacman and our friend Pacman. They were some really great costumes and everyone loved them! It also went well with our room which has Pacman and ghosts on our windows made from sticky notes. My other roommates were a sailor and Lady Gaga. My roommate who was Lady Gaga bought yellow hair spray paint and got me to spray her hair. It was so great because the yellow with her brown hair turned out green and it glowed in the dark!!! We have been watching scary movies all week to get into the Halloween spirit. This is new for me cause I have never been very big on scary movies. I am really enjoying them even though they scare me because it is so much fun to watch them with my roommates! Halloween was a great time!

School is Stressing Me!

This week I have been slightly stressed! All of the work I have to do really is making my mind go insane. I start to think about all the projects and exams that I have coming up soon and I tend to freak out a bit. So I decided that I need to find someways to help me relax and be less stressed. This was a little bit harder then I thought it would be. Normally I would just go to the gym and exercise my stress away but because my knee is still recovering that is out of the question. One thing I found that really helped me was just watching a movie and talking with my roommates. It was nice to just take a little bit of time away from my work and focus on other things. I also found that having a chat with my mom and/or dad worked as well. Catching up on what was going on at home took my mind off my work and my parents always have a few kind words of encouragement that make me feel better too. One last thing that I found made me relax was music. Certain songs just make me feel better. When I have a really bad day I always like to listen to this song which I know is kinda cheesy because it’s called “Bad Day” but I find it really helps!

Thanksgiving

This past week was quite busy for me. I wrote my first university midterm on Wednesday and handed in my second English essay on Thursday. Along with all of the homework from my other classes I was a pretty stressed out girl. It was very nice to get to relax for Thanksgiving after the crazy week.

My roommates and I decided we wanted to have a pre-thanksgiving feast together in our apartment in residence on Thursday. We bought a pre-cooked chicken and made all of the fixings including stuffing, biscuits, salad, vegetables, and we even had pumpkin pie. A group of our friends came over the celebrate with us and we all had a great time!

Another great thing about Thursday was that it was the first day of the NHL regular season. Since I am a huge hockey fan I was super excited for this. I watched hockey pretty much all night! Even though my favourite team wasn’t playing it was still a good night of hockey. I especially love it when games go to shoot-outs and I was lucky enough to see one on Thursday. Pittsburgh was playing Vancouver and they went to a shoot-out where Kris Letang had a really nice goal!

On Friday I went back home for Thanksgiving. It was awesome to get to see all of my family. I really wish I could have seen more of my friends but being on crutches limits the amount of mobility you have. Overall the weekend was very enjoyable. It was a nice retreat from the stress of university!

Conquering Crutches

This week I realized that the world is a whole different place when you aren’t able to walk. Since my surgery on my knee I have been on crutches which has been pretty tough. I take a lot of things for granted in life and walking is one of them! Everything is so much more difficult when you aren’t able to walk, especially at university.

Before I had my surgery it took me no time at all to get to my classes and I occasionally took different routes just for the fun of it. Now I have to leave early for all of my classes and thats with taking the shortest route possible. I have also realized how many different sets of doors there are at the university. There are TONS!! And almost every exit has two sets of doors which if you are just walking through you don’t even think about but when you have to stop, move your crutches, open the door, hop through the door, then repeat for the next set of doors it is pretty time consuming!

There are some good things about being on crutches though. One of them is that it is a great conversation starter. I went to a party in residence on Friday with my crutches and I met a lot of different people because everyone comes to talk to you to find out what happened when you’re on crutches. It was really fun which was something I didn’t really expect. You also get to see how kind people can be. I was walking back from one of my classes and there were three guys ahead of me and they were nice enough to hold all of the doors open for me which made my life so much easier.

My roommates have been so great this past week! I am very grateful for the the help they have given me. From getting me stuff so I don’t have to walk to walking me to class so I don’t have to open doors, even cleaning up butter spills because I can’t (long story) they are always willing to help me out! They are amazing and I am so lucky to have them!

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“Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead.
Walk beside me and be my friend.”
- Albert Camus

Being on crutches has also made me really think about how hard life is for people who are physically handicap. You never  realize things like this till you are put in their shoes. It is a lot harder to do the simplest activities like washing dishes or cooking for yourself and I have a lot of respect for the people who do it all the time.

All in all I am slowly adjusting and my knee is healing. Not as fast as I would like it to but it is getting there. Eventually I know I will be able to overcome my problems with my crutches and be a pro at using them!

Hello world!

So I realize that this post has been too long coming but life has been a little bit hectic lately! My first few weeks at university have been pretty crazy. I’m living in residence and my roommates are awesome! We have a lot of fun together but there is always something to do or people coming to visit which is very distracting from my school work. Plus all of my classes have a lot of work for them so I have been a little bit stressed trying to organize everything. On top of that over a year ago I tore the ACL in my right knee so I had to have surgery as well as do all of the pre-operation stuff for it. I am glad to say that today I finally had my surgery! It went very well (thank goodness) and I think I will recover well.

Now I’m going to tell you about my roommates! I have three of them and we live in a four bedroom apartment in the towers at the university. One of them is my really good friend from home, Olivia, who I requested to live with. The second is a girl I danced with for many years, Rikell, who we randomly got put with which was great and really funny since we alrady knew her. My last roommate is Chelsey who I only met when we moved in but we are already super close and she is an amazing person! Our room is sort of the ‘meeting’ room. All of our friends from off residence and on residence come to our room to hang out. I believe the main reason for this is because we are the very proud owners of a nintendo 64. I know some people may laugh at this but it is the greatest thing ever. We have so much fun playing with all our friends, even though I am quite terrible at almost every game.

So that is part of my university life so far….check out my blog next week to learn more!