I feel pretty fortunate every day to live in a country where I am granted so many freedoms. Although we have a long way to go toward freedom and equality for all, I have faith we will get there eventually.
I hope everyone has a great Fourth of July weekend! I am back at home and will be working on getting stuff together for a giant pre-move yard sale next weekend. I’ll be back Monday!
I was less than one flight away from A-list frequent flyer status last year, which I’m pretty sure is a title which almost exclusively applies to businesspeople. Being in a long distance relationship and going to school far from home has led to an abnormal number of plane ticket purchases in the past two years, and as I get ready for a month of weekly flights, I realized I’ve gained some wisdom and it might be worth sharing.
1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Literally. I gauge my stress levels in an airport based on whether or not I am sweating. I’ve actually started using meditation techniques while going through security at an airport and boarding planes. I focus on breathing, try to stay in the zone and avoid letting external factors get to me, and work to prevent myself from thinking of everything that could go wrong. A few little tricks can help avoid stress, such as making sure you arrive at the airport with an hour or so to spare, but I think most of travel stress comes from how you react to a situation.
2. Check your bags or pack very, very lightly. I absolutely despise having to hoist my carry on bag up into the overhead compartment. I try to keep the bag as lightweight as possible if I must bring it on with me, but if it’s an option, I always check the bag. Having to lug any extra equipment around an airport makes me much more stressed and sometimes miserable. I frequently overhear people on planes talking about how they never check bags because they don’t trust it, and I’ve had bags lost before, but on domestic flights the bags can typically make it to your destination by later that day or the next morning. That combined with the travel voucher for late or lost luggage makes the extra hassle of a possible missing bag worth it to me.
3. Invest in lightweight luggage. These suitcases have saved. my. life. I am an over-packer for sure, but these have come in handy primarily because when I go home, I’m usually traveling with a lot more than clothes (at holiday break, I usually bring back a suitcase full of food because it’s so much less expensive in Louisville). The suitcases are incredibly lightweight and easy to transport and most importantly, if you’re looking to stay under 50lbs. and pack a lot more than clothes, these make the job a breeze.
4. Pick a customer-friendly airline when possible. Have you ever flown Spirit airlines before? If the answer is no, don’t. I’m typically flying from Boston -> Louisville or Boston -> Houston, and fortunately Southwest or JetBlue is almost always the cheapest airline. I don’t have to worry about paying for checked bags or printing my boarding pass or paying an arm and a leg for airport snacks or choosing my seat before the flight (Southwest only). I find that it’s a good idea to check amenities when flights are somewhat close in price, especially if you have to check bags. Many times, the price for checked bags makes Southwest or JetBlue a cheaper option even if the base price is higher.
5. Always log your miles. Last year I decided to go back and log all of my flights from my first year at school, and much to my surprise, I had enough points to cover an entire semester’s worth of trips to Houston. I never thought I would fly enough to earn the number of miles it takes to pay for flights, and even if you don’t fly frequently, miles on many airlines don’t expire as long as you log them. Don’t let it go to waste!
I definitely haven’t perfected all of my tips myself, and these are geared more toward a college-aged crowd (How do people fly with young children???), but I hope at least some of these tips are helpful! Until next time!
Hello! Posting a bit late today because last night I was ex-hau-sted and I spent the entire morning packing all of my things into fewer boxes than I would have liked.
Since my summer break officially begins tomorrow, I thought I’d share some of my plans for my time off.
Getting SRA-ready for the school year. I’m going to have to go from above average RA this past year to super RA next year, and I’m taking the summer to work on prepping myself. I plan to study all of the paperwork rules, put together some awesome door decorations and bulletin boards, and draft roommate contracts for all of my residents to use. For the first time in a while, being an RA will be my only job and I’m planning to invest as much time as possible into it.
Read a bunch o’ books. I’ll probably post about this alone later on, but I’m going to have ample time to get some reading done this summer, particularly when my family heads to the beach. I’m working on putting together a list with a variety of reads–I picked up an organizational psychology book from my boyfriend’s sister last night, I need to finish the Gillian Flynn novel I started on a few months ago, and I’ll probably add in another informational book as well as a couple of light, girly reads. I wish I had more time to read during the school year and perhaps next year I will work to cut out more time for it, but I always find myself feeling like I don’t have time. I went through a phase during my internship this past winter where I was reading consistently for about a month, and it was glorious.
Learn HTML/CSS. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m really excited to give this blog a little TLC. I started blogging because I thought it would be a great creative outlet and because I already wanted to gain a lot of skills that can come with blogging, I was just having trouble finding a motivator. I have a little experience with HTML, but I’m starting from scratch with the Khan Academy HTML/CSS tutorials and going from there. I’m also hoping to use some of my experience with graphic design to give this blog a makeover at some point this summer.
Get my digital life organized. The summer before college, I scrounged up a good chunk of the money in my savings account and combined it with all of my graduation money to buy myself a Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, I could only afford the lowest end Macbook and while I don’t regret my decision at all, my computer is starting to slow down considerably and I need to find a more effective way of sorting my files. I was inspired by this blog post on digital organization. I need to expand past my basic Dropbox usage and actually use the external hard drive my dad gave me last year.
Whew. That already feels like a lot, but I know I’ll have even more on my plate as my break gets into gear. Until next time!
Boston was making it so hard to say goodbye.
Until it wasn’t. Sunday and early Monday were freezing cold and rainy. Fortunately, the sun peeked out today and today is supposed to be gorgeous, but I’ve just about had it with this city and its everlasting chill.
I’ve probably said it before, but I’ll say it again: this past winter was the worst winter of my life. I know, I know. Boston had a record-setting winter and I shouldn’t base my judgment on that. But when I told friends I was struggling this winter, they reminded me that I struggled last winter too.
The snow and painful cold kept Boston completely miserable for a couple of months, but I left the city in May last year to go to India. In Louisville, May is the month I can always count on to have my favorite weather with averages in the seventies. Louisville has been having colder winters of late, and so I slipped into the habit of assuming it maintained similar temperatures to Boston.
I was wrong. While it got considerably warmer during May, in the first week or so of June we had a couple of days dip down into the forties. I need my winter to wrap up in March.
People (and by people, I mean “I”) underestimate the effect that the winter has on me every single year, and Boston does a lovely job of bringing gorgeous weather from July – November, which makes me forget just in time for it to come ’round again.
I’ve had to force myself to repeat over and over again how much I dislike the cold and winter so that I won’t forget and will feel motivated to do some things next year to make it better. I need one of those happy lamps with extra strong lights or, better yet, I need to find an internship outside of the Northeast.
All I know for sure is that post-graduation, I need to move somewhere without a winter for a little while to recover.
What. A. Weekend.
Just kidding. I didn’t do anything incredibly crazy or spectacular. I caught up with a couple friends from high school who will be attending my college next year (so excited!!) and spent some time with my fellow RA staffers, but overall the weekend was relatively dreary and boring.
Friday night I celebrated the end of co-op (and marriage equality!) with an ice cream cone. It was nearly impossible to muster up any more energy to work on studying for my accounting final, so I made hardly any progress Saturday; however, I did have another huge accomplishment.
Wait for it…
I RAN 13 MILES!!! I convinced John to register for the Houston half marathon with me in January a few weeks ago, and while I know you technically don’t have to and/or aren’t supposed to run the full distance in training, I wouldn’t be able to believe I could do it unless I did it. From here, I’m going to work on improving my time somewhat since I have six months to practice. I’ll make a full-fledged post about my relationship with running sometime soon, but the tl;dr version is that this is a huge accomplishment because a year ago, I was barely able to run a mile at the pace I ran 13 yesterday.
It’s safe to assume I celebrated that little victory with an even larger ice cream cone.
Fortunately, I chose the right day to run because Sunday’s weather here was incredibly miserable. Boston is not doing a good job right now of making me want to stay. I spent all day studying in the dining hall and pretty much burned myself out before I had office hours for move-out (another RA responsibility). Fortunately, after I got out of the office, I had some high quality human interaction. I thought I was an introvert for like 6 months last year. I am not an introvert. I have low to no energy until I hang out with people (in person, mind you), and after quality interaction I’m bouncing off the walls.
Anyway, I took my final this morning and did a lot better than expected. It feels incredible to be done. With everything. Sort of. Almost. Until next time!
Lie. I haven’t started packing. I technically won’t have all of my stuff together to go until next week, but at about this time every year I start thinking about how I’m going to decorate the next space I’m moving to. (P.S. Apologies in advance for the shoddy pictures. I’ll start doing a better job of documenting my decor in the future)
Since I’m movin’ on up to being an SRA rather than an RA next year, I’m also movin’ on out and trekking to the other side of campus to move back into freshman style dorms. My building next year will be much older than my own freshman dorm, and while I’m not sure what it’ll look like, I am very excited. I’m one of those crazy people who loves the thought of living in an older building that has more charm and who chooses the big room on the side with no elevator at the risk of trekking up four flights of stairs to get to my room.
Even though I’m living in freshman housing next year, I want to keep some of the more mature elements of my room this year, though I might bring some of the decor from my freshman dorm back. I missed the Instagram wall.
This past year as an RA, I was placed in apartment style housing. I have a single bedroom, shared living room, and a kitchen. My building is relatively new and looks more like a “real” apartment than almost any other apartment style hall on campus. My choice of decor matched, but I might try to cutesy things up a little bit for next year.
I’d really like to keep the white bedding, but I’m thinking about doing something different with the walls. I also desperately need to purge so much of my stuff.
I’ll go into full-fledged planning mode when I get home next week. Expect to see some room decor inspiration posts throughout the summer, and I promise to share the result! Decorating is one of the things I love most about moving from room to room every year. I’m definitely not a pro or as sophisticated as I’d like to become, but if you saw other college dorm rooms I swear you would think I’m impressive.
I told myself last semester that Spring semester while I was working a full-time job, I would take a break from the stress of college. Then I started training to be a group fitness instructor and scheduled all of my RA duty together at the same time and was leading a volunteer project and was having a horrifying time during the winter and my relaxing semester turned out to be my most stressful to date.
Fortunately, school ended and so did my extracurriculars and the beginning of May brought a little bit of a vacation and it was finally time to start that relaxation I told myself I would have in the Spring…until I had a mid-college crisis and decided to switcheroo my major a little bit and that it would probably be a good idea to take this online accounting class since I had nothing else on my plate except for being an RA and keeping up with my friends and kick starting a service project with Boston Public Schools.
I’m finally about week away from an actual, real, nothing is happening break. I’ll be spending the rest of the summer between next week and mid-August RA training either at home, visiting John, or on vacation of some sort.
It took six months forcing myself to turn down every offer to stay in Boston and or work in any form because I knew it wouldn’t happen any other way, and I am so, so looking forward to it…
except that I’m starting to get a little bit maybe bored already. (Allison: You. Are. Not. Allowed. To. Plan. Anything. For. This. Break.)
Welcome to the life of a Type A personality.
The worst part of every single birthday party throughout my childhood was having to write thank you notes afterward. Year after year, I pondered the thought of giving up the whole gift-getting thing and year after year, I remembered that I actually love receiving presents. Thank you notes were a must.
Sometime around junior or senior year of high school, I started writing thank you notes as a result of intrinsic motivation. No one had to tell me I needed to write any notes before I hung out with my friends or that I had a choice between writing thank you notes and cleaning my room as my activity for the day. I finally realized the value in what my mom had been making me do all of those years. (My dad would most definitely credit this to my turning 20 last month. I beg to differ, but I figured I’d tell you as a Father’s Day aside.)
I don’t know how many people my age send thank you notes—my guess is a small fraction. We’re required to send emailed thank you notes to employers who interview us for internships, but other than that I’ve hardly heard it mentioned since I’ve been in college.
I’m on a mission to change that. College students (and anyone who wants to listen): I’m here to tell you that thank you notes can really get you places in the world. My intention is never to build a network or to make people like me more—I do it as a gesture to reinforce that I am thankful because I sometimes feel I don’t adequately thank people enough in the day-to-day (and so should you). But those other positive consequences are basically inevitable.
My few paragraphs up there may not be particularly persuasive, but if they were, I challenge you to write a thank you note to someone for something sometime soon. It could be to your grandma for the $20 bill she sent you for your birthday; to a professor whose class changed your outlook on college; or to your roommate’s mom who sent some extra cookies so you could enjoy the treat, too. If I have you convinced, here are my guidelines:
1. Write it. With a pen. On some sort of stationery. Emails don’t count as real thank you notes.
2. The basic format I learned in third grade still works for me:
Dear _____,
Thank you for ______. I love it because _______. I enjoyed seeing you and look forward to seeing you again soon!
Love,
Allison
(This can obviously be altered–try to avoid signing “Allison” unless it’s your real name–but it’s a great starting point.)
3. Expect nothing in return.
You won’t regret it. Promise.
Until next time!
two L allison 