In the Interest of Full Disclosure

Okay so I have a confession to make. Many of you already know this but some of you don't. It's a little embarrassing, but obviously I'm not TOO embarrassed, otherwise I wouldn't be telling you. So here it is (for those of you who don't already know, and an update for those of you who do).

Technically I didn't graduate in April.

I walked, obviously, since there are a ton of pictures and hundreds of people watched me walk, but I wasn't actually graduating. See the thing is, I didn't quite have room in my schedule for my last GE, History 202, so I decided to take it online through BYU Independent Study. I started it last June and then basically did nothing about it until oh, about the next February. It wasn't a very hard class (except we had to do these one page writing assignments based on a primary source, 11 pt font, single spaced, and we were supposed to fill the entire page...let me just tell you, it was practically impossible to fill that whole page based on the questions the professor gave...but I digress). I just didn't want to do it, and I suffer from this condition called procrastination. If you are a procrastinator, online classes are the WORST. Avoid online classes like the plague. I would have rather shoved that history class in my last semester and taken 18 credit hours than do it online. If you're not a procrastinator, then online classes are fine, and you are awesome.

So anyway, the deadline for getting my online class done if I wanted to graduate in April was April 5th, and April 5th came around and my class was not even close to finished. I talked to my academic advisor, and he said if I had the class done and the grade was in by the time grades were due (which usually isn't until a week or two after the semester ends), then I would still graduate in April, otherwise I'd be technically graduating in June. He said I could still walk though, since my name was already on the program (Nice.). Well guess what? I didn't finish my class by the time grades were due. There were two weeks after graduation before we moved to Oklahoma and we all figured it would be best if I got my class done in that time. Well guess what? I didn't finish before we moved. All I had left was a few of those cursed primary source analyses, a 750 word book analysis (for a book that was on Spark Notes...see Spark Notes isn't just for lazy high schoolers), and the final. Fortunately,  I got the writing assignments done pretty quickly. Also, if you don't know how BYU online classes work, you have to request the midterm/final, then they print it and you come in and take it if you're in Provo, or they mail it to the nearest university if you're outside of Provo, because it has to be proctored. You can't request the final until you have all the other assignments turned in, so once I finally got those writing assignments turned in (which by the way, is difficult when you don't have internet in your new apartment) I requested the final.  And then I waited and waited and waited for it to get here. Seriously, it took more than a week. It only took us like 20 hours to drive here, but it took that stinking test like 8 days to get here in the mail. Fortunately for me, Lawton has its very own university called Cameron University so I didn't have to go far to take my final. I had to have an appointment to take it, and after waiting a few more days I finally got  to take it. It was so easy, it only took me like 20 minutes and the proctor was super surprised when I came back in. She was like, "Wow, that didn't take you very long at all!" And in my sarcastic (and as my parents would say, sassy) brain I'm thinking, "Uh yeah, that's what happens when tests are easy." But anyway, I'M DONE! WOOHOO!! By the way, all the students I saw at Cameron University looked like they were 12 years old. Did I look that young when I was at BYU? I don't believe it.

So now I can officially say that I'm a graduate and I can thank people who congratulate me without lying (it's just easier to say thanks than it is to say, "well I actually didn't graduate because I had this online class and because blah blah blah..." you get it). Anyway, the moral of this story is get your online classes done in time. Or don't even take them at all. Your life would be so much easier.

And the award for world's worst (or should I say best?) procrastinator goes to me.

Welcome to the Army

Alright so I'm resurrecting my blog. My mom has asked me a couple of times about it, and now that we're out in the real world I'm sure most of you will want to know what's going on with us and this will be the easiest way. Let me just let that sink in for a moment. We're out in the real world! This is so weird to me. It doesn't really even feel like we're out in the real world yet. Of course, we're kind of in limbo right now so that's probably why and I'm sure it will feel more real as soon as real life actually starts, but whatever.

So as you all should know, Andrew and I just moved to Lawton, Oklahoma. Here's where it is, if you were wondering.

Now I know many of you are worried about us because of the tornadoes in Oklahoma, but there's no need to worry yet, the tornadoes weren't near us. I'm sure future tornadoes might be, but no need to worry now.

We left Utah yesterday around 8 am, and since we moved ourselves, we were driving a Uhaul and had our car on a trailer. We originally planned to drive through Albuquerque, but according to the GPS the shortest route went through Colorado so we decided to go that way instead. It was a gorgeous drive (at least through Colorado), but it ended up taking us forever because the speed limits ranged from 35 to 65 for most of the way, and you can't really drive that fast in a Uhaul pulling a car anyway. What we thought would be a 16ish hour drive ended up being a 20ish hour drive. It felt like it would never end. Fortunately it did end, and we got into our hotel around 530 am. As we were coming in, there were actually tons of guys leaving for PT.

Everyone who told us about what Lawton was like would tell us how ghetto it was, so I was expecting a shantytown or something. It is pretty ghetto, but I was expecting a lot worse. If given a choice, I wouldn't choose to live here, but I'm sure there are lots and lots of worse places to live.

We didn't know where we were going to live when we got here, so today we went apartment hunting. They have a housing office here on post, and the nice lady there recommended several places for us to check out. The offices of the first two we went and looked at were closed (perhaps it was a sign...they didn't look that great anyway), but the third place, called Summit Ridge, was open, and it looked like a really nice place. When the lady in the office (her name was Brianna) asked where we were from and Andrew said we just graduated from BYU she said that she and her husband had graduated from BYU as well. Her husband was even in ROTC and Andrew actually knew him. He was in his third year of ROTC when Andrew was in his first though, so he was a bit older. Small world huh? Anyway, the apartments there were all either 2 bedroom 1 bath or 2 bedroom 2 bath, and they had two townhome options (which means it has stairs, which I didn't know before she told us), and one flat. The townhomes were cheaper, and they were both really nice. We pretty much knew right away that this was the place, although we did have a couple more we were planning to look at. Brianna offered to give us the skinny on all the places we were looking at, and her advice was actually really helpful. She may have been a little biased, and she was of course most complimentary of Summit Ridge, but it really did seem like one of the nicest places we'd probably find for a decent price. Even though we pretty much knew we were gonna rent at Summit Ridge, we decided to go look at one more place anyway, but we just ended up going right back to Summit Ridge. So anyway, we have a place to live! We went with the 2 bedroom 1 bath cause it was a little bit cheaper, and I think we're going to like it. We move in tomorrow.

Well that's pretty much it for now. Tomorrow Andrew reports and on the 31st he starts his training. It's called BOLC (pronounced bullock), which stands for Basic Officer Leadership Course, in case you were wondering. Andrew's training ends in mid October, but we don't know where we're going after that. So yeah, that's all I can think of for now. There might be more, but I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night and I think I have a cold so my brain's not working too well. So that's all folks!

Lately

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while and I think it's high time for an update. So as I'm sure most of you know, Andrew was gone for a month Armying it up in Washington. It totally sucked for me, but it would have sucked way worse if I didn't have awesome friends and family. I just wanted to say thanks to Lisa and Stephen and Em and Shawn for inviting me to hang out with them, as well as to all my amazing aunties and cousins, especially Auntie Nani for letting me sleep over at my house. My family also came up for a week (the first week in July) and I got to hang out with them a lot (though not as much as I would have liked because I got a job at Vivint, but more on that later) which was awesome. So anyway, lots of good times, mostly just hanging out with all our various family that lives up here, though we did go the 4th of July Rodeo in Oakley (not on the 4th though, on the 6th), and that was a lot of fun. I've never been to a rodeo, at least not that I can remember, and it was actually way cool. I quite enjoyed having my family here, though I kinda skipped class a lot. It was just for one week though, so whatevs ;). And, just so you think I didn't fall way behind in school from skipping class, I'm taking a statistics class and an organic chemistry class, and I skipped the statistics class three times, and then had a test earlier this week. I didn't study that much, and I missed like five homework assignments from that same week (we have an assignment like every other day), so you'd think I wouldn't have done very well on the test, but you'd be wrong. I got a 94. I only got a 91 on the first test, and I actually felt more prepared for that one. How did that happen? Beats me. I was quite proud of myself though.

Anyway, okay so I got a job at Vivint at the end of the first week that Andrew was gone, and I started the three week training you have to do for Customer Care (they combined their customer support and tech support departments a few months ago and now call on customer care) Monday of the second week. It kinda worked out perfect, cause my last day of training would have been the day Andrew got back. The training wasn't so bad, at least until they put us on the phones. At the end of the first week they let us listen in on real calls, but then the third week they basically just threw us to the wolves and had us taking calls all by ourselves for four hours. I wasn't too excited about that. On my very first call that I took by myself, I got cussed out by a lady who was super mad because her panel had frozen. Needless to say, I was traumatized. I will admit that I sat there and cried a little bit after that call. I'm a little sensitive. Most of the calls weren't actually that bad, but I just always worried that I would get an angry customer, or that I wouldn't know how to help them, which happened a lot, because I feel like the training didn't teach us anything useful. I mean I know it's best to learn by doing, but seriously, they could have at least taught us how to use the computer program we have to use. Well, they taught us a little bit, but not enough. So anyway, I learned that I am not cut out for a call center job. Don't get me wrong, Vivint is a pretty sweet place to work and they have super awesome perks, but it takes a certain kind of person to work there (at least in Customer Care), and I am not that kind of person. So I quit earlier this week. I know, I'm lame. I couldn't hack it. Andrew was pretty understanding about it. I think he was even more understanding because hopefully I'm gonna take over his job in a couple of weeks (fingers crossed that I get it). He has to quit cause he'll just be too busy this next school year for a job. This job would be perfect for me I think, cause I won't have to deal with people and my social skills are a bit lacking, thanks to me being painfully shy as a child. I never really got over that shyness, but at least I'm not painfully shy anymore. So yeah, that's the job situation.

Okay so I said in an earlier post that Andrew and I are moving to an awesome house on Center Street, and we got the keys for it on Monday. Let me just say first that it is TINY. The listing on Craigslist said it was 600 square feet, but that was absolutely an exaggeration. I actually took some crude measurements of the apartment cause I was curious, and it's maybe 450 square feet. 450! And it's a studio apartment. It'll be okay though, I mean we don't really need a lot of space, and we'll make it work just fine, I just felt a little bit gypped. I had the brilliant idea to get a loft bed though, to give ourselves a bit more room, and because I didn't really want the focus of the apartment to be the bed. I found one on ksl.com for $60, which was awesome because that same bed was $169 at Ikea. We found a kitchen table also on ksl.com, and my aunt gave us a love seat and a dresser, so really all we need now are chairs. We also bought a little bookshelf at Wal-Mart. The apartment is pretty cool, it has a bay window with a windowsill wide enough to sit on, and it has wooden beams along the ceiling and wood paneling on some of the walls, which I think looks cool, but Andrew thinks it's ugly. Oh well. I took some pictures of it, but I'll probably just post those on Facebook. So yeah, that's our apartment situation. We don't have to leave the apartment we're in now until the 1st, so we've just slowly been getting furniture for the new place. We haven't even started packing up this place yet. So yeah, that's mostly what's been going on with us lately. 
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Not Homeless

Sometimes husbands can be really annoying, even when they're gone. Now let me preface that statement a little bit. Actually, that statement requires two prefaces, so here's the first. If you haven't heard, which most of you probably have, Andrew is at an Army camp for a month up in Washington. He left this last Friday and will be back July 13th. It is rather depressing, especially since I can't talk to him (no texts, no calls, no skype, though I can write him letters) but at least I have Chem 352 and Stat 121 to keep me company now that summer term has started. This camp Andrew is at is a leadership evaluation thing, and will basically determine if he gets to do what he wants in the army (and if you were wondering, he decided a little while ago that he wanted to do military intelligence with an infantry detail as his first choice (and if you're wondering how I could let him go infantry, it's because I'm not going to stand in the way of him doing something that he wants to do), and his second choice is field artillery, but then a couple of weeks ago he told me he actually wants to go field artillery cause there's a demand for field artillery officers so he thinks he'd get that easy, but he's still gonna put MI with an infantry detail as his first choice...go figure). So there's that preface. The second preface is that Andrew and I have been a little behind in finding a place to live when our lease here is up. We actually wanted to move earlier the summer, cause this place isn't worth what we pay for it, but it's not as easy as I thought it was to get out of our contract and nobody wanted to take over our contract anyway. So we procrastinated finding someplace for August because we were hoping to get out earlier, but we finally faced the truth and looked for someplace for August. Of course, the downside to this was that there were some seriously slim pickings-and by slim I mean almost non-existent. We checked the BYU housing listings, Craigslist, and KSL but there wasn't really anything we liked. We looked into two other places and I seriously considered signing a contract at this place called Lookout Pointe (yes, it is spelled with an "e" at the end), but then we saw a listing for this house on center street (in Provo) that we really wanted to live in. There had been a listing for it in April, but we couldn't get it then. The listing said that we had to move in in mid-July but we went for it anyway, because we can actually get out of our contract here as early as August 1, even though it technically goes until August 26. We already paid the last month's rent, so as soon as someone else signs a contract here, they'll prorate our rent money (I'm actually not really sure what that means, but I guess it means they'll give us back whatever we don't pay for, days-wise), and the office people told me there are some people who want to get in on August 1. So anyway, we decided to try and get the listing for the house on center street, called the Knight-Mangum Mansion (how cool is that?) and just pay July's rent here and basically take 2 weeks to move in there. We'll lose some money now, but the Knight-Mangum Mansion is cheaper than this place, so we'll end up saving money in the long run. So anyway, that preface was really long, but now on to why husbands can be really annoying. Since Andrew's gone, I had to go by myself to sign the contract today and pay the deposit (which was $600...kind of outrageous, but oh well), and I got home from class about five minutes before I wanted to go. I probably should have thought of this sooner,  but when I stated looking for the checkbook, I could not find it. And yes, Andrew had it last. When it was time to pay June's rent, I couldn't find the checkbook, but it took Andrew all of two seconds to find it, and he was the one who ended up paying rent. And I have absolutely no idea where he left it, and I couldn't call him to ask because he doesn't have his phone. I ended up having to pay with cash, but we bank with USAA, and they're an online only bank, so when you need cash, you have to get it from other banks'  ATMs (and yes, they reimburse you for the ATM fees). And since the deposit was $600 and ATMs have limits, I had to get the cash from three different ATMs. Luckily there are like six different ATMs outside the Wilk on campus. So yeah, that's why I'm annoyed with Andrew right now. The checkbook is probably in some super obvious place and I'm just incapable of finding things, but I really did look for like 15 minutes. But I was able to sign the contract and we don't have to worry about being homeless and we get to live in a cool house. It's actually a studio apartment, and the listing said it was 600 square feet, but when we went to look at it, it looked way smaller than that. It could have just been cause of the people who live there now's stuff though.

Oh and in case you were wondering why I haven't posted in a while, it's because before Alex went into the MTC  he said that when he gets home and gets married he will not start a blog and implied that it was cliche and everyone does it, so then I felt lame. I still kinda feel lame about it cause it is kinda cliche but it is a good way to let people know what's going on with us. And anyway, it seems like it's usually the wife who wants to start the blog, so if his future wife wants to do it, he could just not post on it. So yeah, that's that.
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Things Work Out

It's funny how things have a way of not working out the way you want them to. For example, Andrew and I found this amazing apartment that we wanted to move to, like right now. Well, we hadn't actually seen it on the inside, so it could have been a total crap hole, but the description sounded amazing, and it looked pretty cool when we drove past it, and we would have saved about $100 a month on rent. I read through the contract we have on our current apartment, which is up at the end of August, and I thought it said we could terminate our contract with a $50 fee if we didn't find someone to take it over. Well, I guess I don't know what "prorated" means, because in actuality, if we moved, we'd still have to pay rent until the end of the contract or until the landlord finds someone else, and there's no guarantee that they would. So there went our amazing apartment, because by now it's surely rented to someone else. And to continue with the trend of things not working out the way I want them to, I've been trying to find a job lately and I have had zero luck so far. I applied to work at Macy's at the mall, and they interviewed me, but turns out they didn't actually have any positions to fill, so no job for me. I'm currently in the process of applying for another job at Special Collections in the library (and since Andrew works there now he'd have to quit, because spouses can't work together, even though we'd be doing two totally different things; he's actually totally fine with quitting cause he doesn't like his job  anymore and he'd have to quit anyway since he's now Battalion Commander for ROTC and that's gonna take up a crap load of his time) which sounds like an awesome job and something I'd be totally into cause it has to do with history, and now you all know how much I love history. But I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it doesn't work out, because like I said, things have a way of not working out the way you want them to. I'm sure I have countless other examples of things not working out, and I'm also sure that you do too.

But you know what? It's okay, because things work out they way they're supposed to, and I am a firm believer in that. A lot of times the way we want them to work out and the way they're supposed to work out aren't the same (but sometimes they are), and that's okay, because what's supposed to happen usually ends up being better for us that what we want to happen. It's supposed to happen that way for a reason, though we may not see why at first, and it may take us a long time to see why it happened that way. We may never see why, but I really think that whatever happens to us was supposed to happen, even if what happens is really, really awful. Everything will make sense eventually, and it may not even be in this life. So it's okay that Andrew and I didn't  get that apartment, and it's okay that I didn't get a job at Macy's, and it will be okay if I don't get that job at Special Collections. Things will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. Things work out.
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Uncertainty

When I came to college, I thought I wanted to major in psychology. I definitely find it interesting, and I feel like I have a knack for reading people, so I figured it was something I would be good at. The first semester of my freshman year, I took a general psychology class, and when we came to the neuroscience portion of the class it didn't interest me that much, until I decided to make a flowchart of all of the portions of the nervous system to study for an exam. It wasn't super detailed, but it was enough to make me realize that I wanted to study neuroscience. It's pretty much the same as psychology, but much more brain/nervous system oriented, and I kind of liked that it was a more concrete science than psychology. I still loved psychology though, so I realized that what I really liked was cognitive neuroscience, which is more like, "the hippocampus plays a role in the consolidation of memories," or basically what area of the brain controls a specific aspect of our psyche, rather than other fields of neuroscience, which might be something more like, "the presynaptic neuron releases a chemical called a neurotransmitter that binds to receptors located in the postsynaptic cell, usually embedded in the plasma membrane. The neurotransmitter may initiate an electrical response or a secondary messenger pathway that may either excite or inhibit the postsynaptic neuron." I mean that's interesting and all, but not that interesting. Unfortunately for me, almost everything I've studied so far has been the latter, and I've realized that I'm not cut out for the latter. Maybe if I went on to graduate school I could study exclusively cognitive neuroscience, but I can barely muddle my way through my undergraduate courses. I used to think I was smart, but I've realized I'm not as smart as I thought I was, and that's hard to admit. Plus it doesn't help that in high school, I was smart enough to ace most of my classes without putting forth much effort, so I never learned to work hard when it comes to schoolwork, and that has screwed me over time and time again in college. I just can't handle the neuroscience major like I initially thought I could.


I've always had a passion for history. There's not much more that interests me than learning about the past (except maybe comic books, but that's a story for another blog post, when I'm ready to admit how extremely nerdy I truly am). I don't know why I find it so interesting, but I do. Now some aspects of history are more interesting than others; I mean, I'll take learning about World War II over learning about ancient China any day. And I've always know that I loved history, I just don't know why I didn't realize I really wanted to major in it until now, the summer before my senior year of college. Technically I realized it last fall semester, and I tried to see if I could change my major without having to spend extra time here at BYU, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to. History is an pretty short major, but it might be a little hard to get done in 3 semesters plus spring and summer terms, if I needed them. I've been kicking myself that I didn't decide sooner that I should have majored in history. Then I could have gone on to graduate school and written books, or tried anyway. Maybe nobody would read them, or they wouldn't even get published, but then at least I would be doing something I truly loved. I don't even know what I want to do with neuroscience anymore. I'm still toying with the idea of switching to history;  I could take independent study classes but I still just don't know if I can finish in time. I don't want to have to spend the extra money to stay longer, and with Andrew commissioning as soon as he graduates that's not really a viable option anyway. And it would kind of suck for all of the neuroscience classes I've taken so far to go to waste,  but then again they're not really going to waste, because I learned from them, and I think what you learn from a class is much more important than the credits you got for it. I'm gonna take a long hard look to see if I can still switch to history but I might not be so lucky. I did decide to minor in history if I have to stick with neuroscience, but I'd still much rather major in it. 


So anyway, it kind of totally sucks that I didn't realize what I wanted to do with my life sooner.  Perhaps you can learn from me though, that you should figure out what you REALLY want to do before it's too late. And trust me, too late is going to creep up on you faster than you think. Stick with what you're really passionate about, not what you're kind of passionate about.  If only I had realized that sooner...oh well. Life's a you-know-what.
*Wrap*

The Quest For A Second Car (That I Can Actually Drive) Part 2

Okay so, here's the second half of our car story. It would have been a lot more exciting if I had written it a week ago, but now I just want to get it over with, so it's condensed. So we saw some cars we liked, but we decided to go home and do a little bit of research before we bought anything. We came back a few days later and Randy had a Subaru Forester that he didn't have before, and we ended up liking it, so we decided to get it. We had the money to pay for the car in full, but Randy suggested we get a loan so that we could build up credit. Well we tried to get a loan, but no one would give us one, which was super obnoxious. Getting the car was actually a lot of trouble and it seemed it wasn't meant to be, but everything worked out eventually. We ended up just writing a check for most of the money that would go through then, and one for the rest that will go through the first week of April. So the car's totally paid for (well as soon as he cashes that check), which is nice, and it's been a great car so far. I've decided to name it Olivia, because that is my favorite girl name, but Andrew's oldest brother and sister in law named their daughter Olivia, so I'm not sure if we're allowed to name our daughter Olivia too. If I can't have a daughter named Olivia, I'll just name my car Olivia. And here she is! Since I posted pictures on Facebook I'll just post one picture here.

This one ended up being really short. Oh well. 

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