20 Before 20: The Other 19

A while back I was inspired to create a list of 20 things I would like to do before I turn 20 years old in June. I attended a music festival and had the greatest time with the greatest people. I realized that what makes for the best memories are not material things, but experiences and who we share them with. #1 on my list was to go to a music festival, and I was able to check that off when I went to Music Midtown in Atlanta. The rest of the list includes both big and small things that I have always wanted to do, and I am going to attempt to do them all within the next 6 months (no pressure)! So without further ado, here are the other 19 (in no specific order):

2. Visit childhood friends

3. Visit my grandmother in Miami

4. Go somewhere I've never been before

• I really want to visit New York or California

5. Change eating and exercise habits

• I'm taking a spin class every Tuesday and Thursday next semester. Wish me luck!

6. Throw a party

7. Study abroad

• I am a French minor, and my school offers the opportunity to study in Tours, France over the summer for college credit! And it's so much cheaper than if I were to go for vacation.

8. Get a spontaneous tattoo or piercing

• Because why not?

9. Become a morning person

• I am the worst when it comes to mornings! I refuse to take any classes that start before 11:00 a.m. and on weekends it's rare to find me awake before noon! I know that I could get so much more done in one day if I just woke up earlier. 

10. Vote

• ...for anyone but Donald Trump

11. Keep my room clean/ get organized

• I am SUCH a messy and unorganized person! My roommates probably hate me lol.

12. Take up a new hobby

13. Go camping with friends

14. Read more

• As a kid, I loved to read. Now that I'm older, there are so many more distractions and things going on that I rarely have time to pick up a book. I want to put distractions aside for at least an hour a night so I can read more. I really do miss it! 

15. Dye my hair

• I've had the same hair color for my whole life. I really want to try something different!  

16. Earn my red jacket (in Mary Kay)

• In Mary Kay terms, this means getting 3 personal recruits. This would be such a huge obstacle for me to overcome because I have always considered myself to be on the shy side. Earning my red jacket would mean overcoming my shyness.

17.  Volunteer

18. Get refrigerator-worthy grades

• School has always been a struggle for me. I am starting my major classes next semester, and I could not be more excited! My goal is to not get all Bs and higher.

19. Start a YouTube channel

• I love all things beauty and DIY. YouTube helped me discover my love of makeup, and I want to share that love with other people.

20. Go to more concerts!

• Demi, Nick, and Justin all have concerts coming up and you KNOW that yo girl can't miss them!

Bonus Jonas:

21. See Hamilton the Musical on Broadway

• Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but my roommate and I are OBSESSED with this musical (I am listening to it as I am writing this)! It combines my love of history and musical theatre. We go to college about 4 hours from home and we always carpool. Recently, our road trips have consisted of dissecting the entire 3 hour long Hamilton soundtrack. We are always picking up on new things each time! Lin-Manuel Miranda is currently my favorite person on the planet. He also wrote another one of my favorite musicals called In The Heights. 

College: A Fresh Start

Around this time two years ago, I was applying to colleges and it was such a terrifying experience for me. I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I didn't know if I wanted to be close to home or far away. I was so afraid of the possibility of leaving behind all of my friends and family. After touring several college campuses, I came to my top two. One of them was about 45 minutes away from home, and the other was 4 hours away from home. I ended up applying to three colleges and I got into two of them. Neither of them were the one that was close to home.

When I originally toured my university's campus, I fell in love with it immediately. It is the type of college that I had always imagined myself going to. It's in a small southern town. The campus is not too big, and not too small. To me it was perfect. However, it was four hours away from home and I was the only one out of all of my friends who was going to that school, as well as the only one who went to a school so far away from home! After debating with myself for a while, I finally decided that I was going to give it a shot, step outside of my comfort zone, and try living on my own.

I started my classes that summer. Because of my SAT score, I was required to take a summer program before I could be admitted for the fall. So not only was I the only one to be going to college far away, I was also the FIRST one out of everyone to go to college. I was terrified. I was so scared that I wouldn't make any friends or like school. However, when I actually dived into it, every fear that I had eventually went away.

Upon starting college I realized that I was not alone in the way that I was feeling. Everyone was worried about the same things! Whether it was getting lost on campus or making new friends, I was not the only one! And I realized that people really are friendly. We tell ourselves that people won't like us or won't want to be friends with us, but that is so not true! I have met some of the most amazing people since starting in college, and I could not be more grateful.

A lot of people may think that it had to have been hard to have been that far away from home, but with technology nowadays it's so easy to stay connected! I am still in the same group message with my high school friends that we started three years ago, and we still talk all the time! I get to see them whenever I go home during school breaks. That just makes that time that I get to spend with them so much more special. And as far as being away from my family, we FaceTime all the time. Technology is really so amazing. However, being away from home and people who knew me in high school has been such a fresh start! No one has these preconceived ideas of you that you feel like you have to sustain. You can truly be whoever you have always wanted to be! 

As far as being in college, I could not have imagined myself being where I am right now back then. I have declared my major in public relations and my minor in French and I now have a better idea of the direction where I want my life to go. I have also found Mary Kay, which is a such a blessing that I could write a whole other article on. Although there have been plenty of bumps in the road along the way, that is a part of growing up and I can truly say that I am so happy with where my life is right now, and I am so excited for my future! 

DIY: curtain light headboard

I recently made a "headboard" for my bedroom in the apartment that two of my friends and I share. When I posted this picture on social media, I had so many people ask me how I did it! I actually took the idea from a picture I saw on Pinterest. Anyone who knows me knows that I am so crazy about lighting (am I the only one who can't stand fluorescent lighting?!), so when I saw this I just HAD to try it. This is such an easy and inexpensive way to add that certain magical je ne sais quoi that your room may be missing!

Materials:

• 3 packs of 150 string lights
• These are SUPER cheep (I think I paid around $8 per box at BigLots)! 3 packs are PERFECT for a full size bed.
• I hung these lights with clear thumb tacks spaced about 3 inches apart. I wanted A LOT of lights! 
• 4 sheer white 84" curtains
• I decided to do 4 curtains because I wanted to achieve a full look. I got mine for about $5 per sheer at Walmart.
• 48-86 in curtain rod
• Again, PERFECT for a full size bed!
• To hang this I used the hardware included with the rod and a screwdriver (I don't have a power drill, but it turned out fine)
• I don't remember exactly how much this costs, but it wasn't any more than $5. I just got one of those super inexpensive expandable curtain rods. 

And it's that simple! The monogram was something that I had already had for about a year now. I got it from a shop called Elle B Gifts, but unfortunately I don't think you can order these monograms online. If you are in the Atlanta area, I would definitely recommend stopping by! I hung it with the curtain rod support that I didn't end up needing for its intended purpose. If you need to use yours for your rod, I would recommend using a long screw. If you would like to watch a video tutorial, LagunaBeachLove10 has a really great one on YouTube.

Grand total: Less than $50! Definitely not bad for a custom headboard!

Bonus tip! I would recommend plugging your lights into a dimmer! It makes it easier to turn them on and off without unplugging the lights, plus you can turn down the brightness to add to the "mood lighting" effect. 

Starting to find myself

Coming into college, I was an undeclared student. I graduated high school with mediocre grades at best and I did not even know if going to college was something that I really wanted to do. In our society, there is this stigma that is placed around higher education that tells us that if we don't go to college, we won't amount to anything. I, for one have never been the best student. I somehow managed to fail at least one math class per year for the first three years of my high school career, which I later had to make up online before I could graduate. I had myself convinced that school was not for me.

You know the old saying. The one that says the definition of crazy is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Well that crazy person was me. I was making the same mistakes over and over again and I was expecting a different result. I thought that maybe college would be different and come easily to me (lol). I soon found out that this was obviously not the case. I quickly started to fall behind in all of my classes. I swore that the mistakes were in the classes that I was taking. Maybe I just wasn't taking the right classes, or maybe it was my professors.

After the end of my fall semester, I received a letter from the university saying that my GPA had dropped below good academic standing and that I had two semesters to bring it up or else I would essentially be kicked out of the university. I was shocked. I knew that things had gotten bad, but I had no idea that they had gotten this bad. But again, I made the same mistakes and found myself in the same position at the end of the next semester. This is probably the point where you would want to slap me and tell me to get my sh*t together, and honestly I want to slap myself too! But the reality of the situation is that my grades had nothing to do with how easy or hard my classes were or how smart or dumb I was. The truth is that my freshman year of college, I was not happy.

Your freshman year of college is supposed to be the best year of your life! You're supposed to make all of these new friends and party and have the time of your life! Although I had made some amazing new friends, this was not the case for me. I was lost and depressed. I did not care about my grades and I did not want to be there. I remember one night when I was registering for classes and I just broke down. I called my mom crying and told her that I don't want to take any of these classes and I hated school. I was so close to giving up. I felt like all I was doing in college was wasting everyone's time and money, and that made me feel so guilty. I was taking the opportunity of being able to go to college for granted, and I knew it.

That summer I did a lot of "soul searching". My dad gave me a book called Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath a while back, and I decided to open it back up to remind myself of what my strengths are. Each copy comes with an access code to an online quiz that will tell you what your top 5 strengths are, and then you can open up to those sections in the book and read more about them. This gave me something that I could relate to. It's a really comforting feeling to know that there are more people out there who are like you. I think that something that is so flawed in our education system is that we spend so much time focusing on what our weaknesses are that we forget to own our strengths.

Another thing that has helped me this semester is getting involved in organizations. Finding people who are interested in things that I am interested in has really helped me gain a sense of belonging. I don't care how much of a loner you think you are, everyone needs people. It's so important to have positive people in our lives who inspire us and lift us up.

Lastly, be open to new experiences and opportunities. Although it can be tough to make yourself get out of your dorm room, I promise you that you are going to regret staying in way more than you would regret saying yes and stepping outside of your comfort zone.

At the end of the day, we are all people. We all have insecurities and we all just get into a funk sometimes! Just remember that you are never alone. If you feel lost, things will get better if you just give them time. I obviously do not have all of the answers, but the beauty of life is that we get to make up the questions as we go, and we figure out the answers ourselves.

20 Before 20. #1: Go to a music festival!

Last weekend I went to a music festival called Music Midtown in Atlanta. I went with two of my friends from college and my younger brother. We saw some of our favorite artists such as Drake, Sam Smith, Tove Lo, Allesia Cara, and Hozier among many others, and I had not had that much fun in such a long time. There were times when we were taking breaks and sitting under the shade of the trees in the parks, and I would just think to myself, "life should be like this all the time." That was when I asked myself, "well why not?"

Why can't life be like this all the time? WE came to this music festival. WE made this happen. Life really can be amazing all the time. We have to look at the opportunities that we are given and take them! The only person getting in the way of us doing what we really want to do is ourselves. Sometimes we get so caught up in the monotony of our daily routines that we forget to do the things that we really love. My biggest fear in life is coming to the end of it and realizing that I never did all of the things that I wanted to do. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we want to do things and we put them off for so long that we lose track of time, and before we know it years have gone by. We are only given one life, and I don't intend on wasting mine. 

I have given myself a challenge. I have decided to make a list of twenty things that I want to do before my twentieth birthday. I want to look back on my nineteenth year and have nothing but good memories.

#1: Go to a music festival

This is a photo that I took at Music Midtown on September 18, 2015. We waited in this spot for two and a half hours to see Drake. SO worth it! He closed out the night with a firework show!