Farewell to Summer

Well summer, it's been great spending time with you, and now it's time to get ready for the new school year. I'm going to start off by saying how shocked I am that I am no longer a first-year student and am starting my second year of college. It scares me, and I wonder if I am spending my time here on Earth purposefully. It really is making me reevaluate my life and how I approach my friends and school.

I am so glad I stayed here on campus for the summer. I really strengthened good friendships, made new friends, and just this past week, got to meet all the incoming first-year international students that come a week early for orientation. It has been so cool getting to know them, and I know for sure next year that I will be a mentor for the new students in 2016. I thought I wasn't extroverted enough to do it this year, but I think that I didn't give myself enough credit. I'm just hanging out with all of them anyway, so I might as well be a mentor, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but I am somewhat of a good leader because leadership skills come with being the first born of a household of 7.

I'm actually a terrible leader, probably

I really feel like God has given me a passion for international students, and I really enjoy being around them, for some reason I can relate more to them than I can to the other American students on campus. They are more friendly, kind, caring for one another, and more seriously about the important stuff, a characteristic I really admire because I like to take school seriously and be diligent.

The fact that I am friends with the international students is sort of funny to me when I compare who I am now to who I was when I first started college. I remember filling out the online housing form before coming to college and selecting that I did not want to room with an international student, thinking that I would not be able to communicate clearly with them and that I wouldn't be helpful to someone from a different country. Little did I know that all of my really close friends would be international and that I was going to feel called to be friends with these awesome people.

God moves in mysterious ways. I know that God wanted me to be at college over the summer, and I have grown in so many ways and have learned to see a lot of things differently for the better. I cannot wait to see what He has in store for me next year and I am so excited to see how His plan unfolds.

War and Peace: A Review of Sorts

I finally finished War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy this past week while I was on vacation. I had been reading it since the end of June, and as a result felt very depressed when I read the last line of the book, and finished what I had been reading for about two months. In short, this book was amazing and you should definitely read it, if you are reading this.

There is so much to be learned from this book, about life, about love, about the purpose of being, and most simple, about the human mind and its ways. It is, obviously, the deepest and most thought-provoking novel I have ever read, and I recommend it to anyone. It is well worth your time, despite the 1200+ pages of the vast novel.

The main characters are phenomenally crafted and created, you get a special feeling for them, you become attached to them as if they are indeed real and living right before your eyes. Even though I did not understand the strategies of battle (the book is set during the Napoleon war), I was able to clearly understand what was going on and why is was important from Tolstoy's descriptive writing.

I am not writing a plot summary here. I believe that would spoil the book, which is massively long. However, you will fall in love with the characters stories and themselves, and I will say this; my favorite character is Prince Andrei for his brilliant and final understanding of life and love. This quote pretty much sums up what I love about him:

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

This struck me as being quite profound, as well as this quote spoken by Pierre, the main character:

"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering."

There are not enough words to describe how much I loved this book. Just read it, it is quite the accomplishment, and it will teach you many things.

I'm also quite excited for the new BBC miniseries coming out late this year, starring James Norton as Prince Andrei:

I Choose You! Choosing Your Friendships for Life

Friendships define us, and they help us discover who we are, and our purpose in life. I am the kind of person that likes to make friendships for life, a lot of the friends I have now at college I hope to be friends with long term, and I invest more time in my college friends due to distance and the amount of time we spend together.When I started college, I came in with the mindset that I needed to be friends with everyone, and that I needed to be friends with anyone. Coming from a home-schooled household, I was not used to being around a lot of people, and did not realize that I do not need to and should not attempt to befriend everyone. I have come to realize this now. The fact is, that you need to choose your friends because they will influence you for life, either positively or negatively. I have learned that I cannot be friends with just anyone.

Unfortunately this is the case. Not everyone likes everyone.

I have encountered a person, (I am referring to as K) that I choose not to encounter, but run in to a lot because they are on campus for the summer, that I do not want to be friends with anymore. After some drama spring semester and in May when K confronted me and told me that he knew that I didn't like him, (asking why I didn't) I have sought to avoid this person, and began to notice a lot of things about him that I did not like and found ways in which K annoyed me constantly. So much so, that I began to obsess over him, constantly thinking about him and why he annoyed me. I felt the need to excuse myself all the time for not liking K, thinking that I didn't "not like" him for the right reasons, such as looks, manners, etc. I now avoid him, because the more I am around him the more I think about him, and I need to move on from this situation, because he does NOT control my life, and I am letting K do that.

No one is the boss of me      expect God

I talked with my mom about this situation on Thursday of last week. She made me realize that I do have to choose my friends and that I had misplaced K in my "friends spectrum". She drew on the back of her napkin a little dot, which was me, and then drew rings around me. "This ring," (referring to the one closest to me), "is your close friends, this outer ring is your other friends, and this largest outer ring is your acquaintances. When you found out K liked you, you tried thinking about him in this circle", (pointing to the one closest to me), when in reality he is in your acquaintance circle. You need to put him back out here", she said, pointing to the outermost circle.

What I want to say to K, but instead I'm passive aggressive about it

I quickly realized that she was right, and I needed to put K in perspective. I came to see from this experience that I wasn't careful in building friendships, and as a result, had put myself into a difficult and extremely annoying situation. Last semester I thought I needed to try to make new friends outside of the ones I had, and failed to understand that I should value the relationship that I already had. I neglected the relationships that really mattered the most to me, and tried to form closer relationships with people I realize now were not making me a better person. I did not feel edified from being in their company, they did not make me understand myself or help me become a better person. And I knew that I didn't "click" with them, there was no initial attraction or desire to personally be their friends.

Like, I've found myself quite bored with them, frankly

It was after spring semester that I realized that it is necessary to a certain degree, that you choose your friends. You need friends who are going to make you a better person and help you in your walk with the Lord. Your friends should be encouraging your to do the right thing, and to glorify God in your life, and you should, to a certain degree, be able to set good examples for eachother and help eachother to make good choices.

"Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals."" - 1 Corinthians 15:33

 "Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man" - Proverbs 22:24

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another."  - Proverbs 27:17

Aside from the Christian standpoint, Forbes actually published an article on reasons why you should choose your friends, and I thought that they were good guidelines. They are as follows:

1. Strong willed friends can help you increase your self-control
2. Having fewer friends increases the likelihood that you will take financial risks. (studies show that people that don't get adequate social interaction tend to unnecessarily spend money)
3. Too many connections on social media can increase your stress level
4. Close friends may be the secret to long life (personally I thought this one was a little silly, but apparently studies show that people with really good close friends live longer)
5. Friends greatly influence your choices

(If you want to read the full article click here)

Basically, your friendships and relationships with people matter a lot. So we should take precautions and be aware of who we are spending most of our time with, and who we confide in the most.

Have an awesome day! And appreciate your good friends.