Updates & Observations

Since being home for break, I've had a lot of time to reflect on this past year and think about what's to come. This year has probably been one of the hardest of my life, and most definitely the weirdest. From experiencing a pandemic, getting laid off (not once, but twice!), and having to navigate my first semester of college online, I've learned a lot about myself and life in general. Most importantly, life never stops. No matter what's going on in the world, we still have to keep pushing forward. I think a few too many times I forgot how important assignments and classes were as I struggled to work with an online curriculum. Most of my classes felt so boring and insignificant, which made it hard to care about my work. I've also realized that maybe I don't know exactly what I want for myself, and my life might not follow the plan I had in mind. My dad always loves to tell me this quote from his grandmother: "Make a plan and God laughs." And man was she right. Going into college, I thought I had everything planned out—what I wanted to be, where I wanted to work, when I would pay off my loans—but now I'm beginning to question all of those plans that I made, and that's okay! Right now, I'm just trying to focus on doing what makes me happy, and hopefully the rest will fall into place.

One thing I hate to do is make excuses for myself. So instead, I've decided to work on giving myself grace. This has been a hard year with a lot of new obstacles, and sometimes I need to remind myself that I'm doing okay just taking things day by day. Success is so objective, and silly things like grades don't define me as a person. That was something my high school self never would've accepted. But as I get a little older and wiser, I think it's really important to focus on the good things I've done this year rather than the bad. First of all, I made it through my first semester of college. Regardless of how I did in all of my classes, I'm proud of myself just for that. I also went out into a brand new environment nine and a half hours away from home and started to plant my roots. I'm really proud of the connections I've made so far, as well as the ones I've maintained back home. And that's enough for me to mark this semester as a success.

I hope you guys reading this are able to give yourself a little bit of grace too. No matter what this year has looked like for you, I'm proud of you for making it through, and you should be too. Now let's all kick 2021's ass!!

xoxo,

Morgan :)