Getting Serious

      Happy Saturday! This week I got a major wake-up call: this time next year, I'll be getting ready for college. College was always kind of that thing that seemed so far away, and that even though I knew it would eventually happen, it would be a long time before I actually had to start worrying about it. Well, that "someday" magically turned into right now.
      It's so crazy to think that for the first time ever that I can remember, I won't be living in this house with my parents. Also, I won't be attending the only school I've ever gone to. I know I still have another year left, and I know I'm not always the biggest fan of my school, but it's where I've grown up. My entire life (almost) has happened while I've been at this school, and I can't imagine not going there. Ever. Even though my school has made me miserable at times, it has ultimately prepared me for living my life to its full potential, and I know that I owe all future successes to it. Who knew I could get so sentimental about this school?! But really, it will always represent home to me.
      Anyway, I've been researching scholarships and essay-writing and everything in between in order to be as prepared as possible for college before my senior year has even begun! It's kind of annoying to worry about this stuff during the summer, but it means I'll be able to focus on school work once school starts while most of my other classmates will be trying to figure out where they want to go. Wish me luck in this whole "getting serious about college" process!

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

Harry Potter Marathon!

      Happy Monday! So you all know how obsessed I am with Harry Potter, and I've decided to devote this week to watching all eight of the films! I usually have a Harry Potter marathon bi-annually, and they're what I live for. All eight of the movies adds up to a total of about 20 hours, which is insane to think that eight movies could be almost as long as a whole day, but that's why I split them up into 8 nights! Tonight I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and I just love watching the earlier ones because Harry, Ron, and Hermione are so young and nothing's all that serious yet. Do you have a movie/series of movies that are comforting for you to watch?

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

A Social Weekend

      Happy Sunday! It may be hard to believe, but I actually spent this weekend with friends! Yesterday I went with a group of friends to Worlds of Fun (an amusement park) where we ate dippin' dots, rode roller coasters, and I even did the rip cord, which pulls you up in a harness about a hundred feet (it's so high!) and then you pull the rip cord and you drop so quickly you're scared your hearts going to fly out of your mouth! Talk about an adrenaline rush! Today my friends and I went to lunch and saw The Bling Ring, a movie with Emma Watson (my biggest girl crush) about teenagers who rob the homes of celebrities. I absolutely loved it; the acting was amazing. Then we went to the pool to work on our tans! It was a great weekend. Hopefully we'll all have even better weeks ahead of us!

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

I Might Know Where I'm Going to College...?

      Happy Tuesday! I definitely don't want you to get the impression that I know where I'm going to college, but I didn't know how else to title this post. Yesterday, I visited Washburn in Topeka, KS, where my mom went to school and I thought I was going there for a long time. It's a wonderful school, and I'm sure I would be happy there, but today I went to the University of Kansas and things finally became much clearer. Right now, I want to become a special education teacher. I say "right now" because I know it may be subject to change. I've also thought about becoming an occupational therapist, which Washburn doesn't offer. I'm not saying anything's final (I haven't even applied), but right now KU is at the top of my list because: a) its special education program is #1 in the nation, b) I would be able to study abroad while getting credit hours at KU, and c) I'm not gonna lie, KU basketball has been one of my passions for as long as I can remember, and it would be really exciting to be in the student section at Allen Fieldhouse :)

What do you think? Where did you go/where are you looking at for college?

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

Happy Father's Day!

      Happy Father's Day, everyone! Be sure to thank your father and grandfather (and maybe even your great-grandfather!) for everything they do for you. You may not always see it, but they've done a lot. Today we had brunch and then my dad and I went shopping and he bought his first pair of Sperry's. I'm so proud of him. I hope everyone had a great day!

I duckfaced before it was cool :)

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

New Goal

      Happy Friday! I feel like I say this every Friday, but it's finally the weekend! It's been such a long week, and I'm so glad I finally get to do something just for me! This week I've been trying to work out more by running at the park by my house. On Monday I started out with a light, short run, and I've progressively increased distance and speed over the course of the week! Today I ran with my best friend and we ran a 5k! I was quite proud of myself for running, since it's super hard for me to find the motivation to exercise.
      My friend and I ran pretty slowly, but by the end of our run we felt like we were on top of the world. Here we were, on a Friday evening in 90 degree weather, running over three miles. That may not sound like much to you, but we felt very accomplished by the end of it. In fact, we loved how we felt so much that we decided to set a goal: we're going to run a 5k once every week for the rest of the summer in preparation for a real 5k race at the end of the summer. Hopefully this goal will help motivate us to run and live healthier! I definitely need to cut down on the ice cream. What about you? Do you have any fitness-related goals for the summer?

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

The Pool

     Happy Wednesday! I hope the first half of your week has gone well! Although this week has definitely been better than last week for me, there's one major misfortune that occurred this week: the air conditioning in my house is broken. And it's 100 degrees. And I'm miserable. My house feels like an oven and I'm sweating just lying here in bed! We have all of our fans running and our windows open, but I still feel like I'm sitting in a sauna. Today I decided I couldn't sit in the house any longer, so I went outside (in the 100 degree weather) to cool off. I know. It's ridiculous. So I went to the pool (admittedly, it was a kiddy pool but it was the closest one to my house). I just lay on a chair and read a book and worked on my tan. It felt great with the breeze!
      The pool is actually kind of a cool place, and somewhat underrated. I went by myself, and I'm so glad I did. When I go to the pool with a friend, I feel the need to make small talk. But when it was just me, I really felt like I was having quality "me time," which is extremely important, yet, I fear, loses value all the time. Being alone with a good book is a great way to leave yourself to your thoughts and become completely absorbed in the plot of the book. I hope I'm not forced to go outside tomorrow because it's too hot in my house, though! Hopefully our new air conditioner will be installed tomorrow, or else I'm going to go crazy.

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

TGIF

      Happy Friday (finally)!! This has been the longest week ever, and I'm so glad it's the weekend! Tonight my family and I went out to eat and went to our town's carnival and we had a great time! Unfortunately, tomorrow morning I have to wake up bright and early to take the ACT. Not so fun. I really need to do well, so wish me luck! After I've finished the test, we're going to Topeka for family photos with my dad's side of the family...which will be interesting. I'm not sure what I'll do on Sunday yet, hopefully it's sunny so I can try to get a tan! What are your weekend plans?

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

Can I Just Rant?

      Happy Wednesday! My week so far has been less than perfect. My job as a camp assistant has been super stressful, I've barely studied for the ACT which is on Saturday, and I just learned that my family can't go on a vacation this year because my mom can't get time off. For the class I'm assisting this week, it's a drama class and the kids are doing a play for their parents on Friday. The teacher is making me participate in the play, which means I have to memorize nineteen lines. Um, I have to study for the ACT. I don't have time to memorize lines. I shouldn't even have to have homework for my job! When I'm home, I need to be studying for the ACT, preparing for college visits, or doing whatever else I want to. Not doing extra work for a stupid play. If I don't do well on this ACT I'm going to be in so much trouble because I've had "so much time" to study.
      All of my friends are doing really fun stuff this summer -- some are even going to Europe. Once again, though, I will be working all summer. Shouldn't my mom have looked into vacation time earlier so we could have gone somewhere as a family? Not Europe by any means, just somewhere in the good ol' Midwest. But we can't even do that. I thought I was going to get two weeks off work because I'm doing two college visits in a couple weeks, then one in July. The summer program supervisor told me after work today that I would still be working the other days of those weeks though, so I'm worried I'm going to be working every single week all summer. Twelve whole weeks at my job will actually kill me. It's only been a week and a half, and I already can't do it anymore. I'm just so done.
      So thanks for letting me rant, I really needed to get that off my chest. :)

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

College Search Tension

      Happy Monday! Today was a typical Monday for me: I had to go to work, which was a long six-and-half hours, then my parents gave me this talk about how I need to be doing more for my college search process. I'm usually never the kid who needs to be told to get off their butt and do stuff, because I always do it on my own. So that was really weird. I keep telling myself that I can wait to start seriously thinking about college, that I have time. And for most kids my age, that's probably the case. But since I'm looking at some state schools, I have to apply by July 1st for housing stuff. I honestly don't really understand anything about college or the application process. No one has really told me what to do yet since my school won't seriously advise us until the fall, and my parents are just expecting me to simply apply to all these schools.
      If you're new to My Life as a Wallflower, let me fill you in: I go to a private school where almost everyone except me is very wealthy. They're looking at very prestigious schools all over the country and it's embarrassing enough when I have to tell them I have to stay in-state. Even worse, my parents are suggesting schools that I feel fall short of my expectations and the expectations of my peers. I appreciate the fact that I'm very lucky to go to college and some people won't ever be able to attend, but some of these colleges, I feel, aren't worth sixteen years of private school education.
      Maybe I'm so lacking in motivation and drive for the college search because my parents have repeatedly made it clear that my options are so limited. I hate when people at school talk about college at all because they get to choose wherever they want, when I've only got about three colleges to apply to. If money weren't an issue, I feel like I could also get into the schools my friends talk about, and I would be happy there. I'm just so scared that I'm going to end up in a school I'm embarrassed to go to and I'm going to carry that bitterness and resentment with me for the rest of my life because I could have done better. I'm certainly not the smartest in my class, but I'm just as smart or smarter than a lot of them, yet they're going to do more with their lives because of how much money their parents have. It's so hard for me to care about where I go when I've been told by all of my friends that the schools I'm looking at aren't good schools; that we're better than those schools. So why try? If wherever I end up isn't "good enough" for me, should I even care? Why should I try so hard for a school where most of the students don't know how to write a 3-5 paged essay? I wanted my college search to be so fun, like it is for most other seniors. I'll probably just be disappointed wherever I go.

Carpe Diem,
Brooke

First Time Camping for the Season

      Happy Sunday! Yesterday right after I took the SAT Subject Tests for Literature and U.S. History (yuck), we hooked up the trailer to our truck and went to Pomona Lake to go camping for the first time this year! Camping is absolutely one of my favorite things to do during the summer, and I miss it so much during the school year. Although it was a little chilly for me and it wasn't the lake we usually go to, I had fun painting, eating junk food, and watching movies. I usually like to ride my bike, take my dogs on walks, make s'mores, play croquet, and spend more time outside, but the weather didn't permit that stuff this time. Hopefully I'll get to do those things next time we go camping!
      So last time I talked about how I wanted to do some more crafty things at the lake, and I painted a picture of the lake last night! I just used cheap paints, paintbrushes, and a canvas, and I thought everything I used worked pretty well. It was so relaxing to just paint while gazing into the sunset. Last night was a little cloudier than I would have liked, and I was facing the complete opposite direction of the sun, unfortunately, so it looks pretty dark.

(Ignore me) Can you kind of see a resemblance?

Close-up!

I wish the sky had turned out a little lighter, and the water doesn't really look like water, but I'm proud of myself for doing something artistic! I'll have to do another craft soon!

Carpe Diem,
Brooke