"Limitless is your potential. Magnificent is your future, if you will take control of it."

i recently thought of the 100 facts list i made before i went off to college (exactly 2 weeks shy of 4 years ago!) and wondered how many things have changed. many things are the same (i still don't remember moving to or from miami, and surprising people [either way it can be interpreted - i don't remember which was intended] is still my favorite), but a lot of things are different. i haven't bought a new picture frame in years, and i didn't really care when half of my frames broke while packing up my room. i never tried out for drum corps, but i didn't keep my chops up so i didn't even consider it. i save any email from someone i know or that is even a little funny, but gmail was invented and solved all of my email problems. i took the movie stubs from my dresser and put them in a binder which i added to up through this year. senior fall i collected my stubs to put them in, but didn't keep up with it. it's a weird feeling for important things to stop being important to me. i have never thought more about my eating habits than i have this past month and a half, spending so much time with my health nut work friends. i tease them, but i am thankful for their influence. my study habits finally caught up with me, multiple times. it's a tough habit to break, and although i'm trying to improve my work ethic still suffers. it's funny to see that i once wanted to live alone - after living with amazing roommates for 4 years i completely changed my mind. on the nights when i was alone in the quint i would get so scared, i didn't think that i should ever live alone. i'm really liking it now. not loving it, but liking it. i love not caring about clothes (wearing the same ones over and over, or not wearing any at all), and i love trying new things out and the opportunity to experiment with things like cooking and closets. i sleep with the light on half the time, though, and i'm talking to myself out loud about each olympic race.

after a whole year studying blindness and deafness, i still believe i would rather be blind than deaf, but the dilemma is a little worse. the clincher is personality - a blind person can convey their personality, their sense of humor, and their feelings through their voice, while it seems to me that often a deaf person's personality gets lost to most people they meet. while in DC we played matt's "Conversation Game" (real title), which posed the question: if you were blind or deaf but could see (hear) for one hour each week, what would you look at (listen to)? for some reason we only discussed being deaf. i believe i would keep a running list of sounds i read about or am told about, and every week go listen to one or two. the 1812 overature, for example, or ocean waves, my grandparents' voices, the beatles. some weeks would likely be spent listening to quiet noises (i would want to know what sounds one hears when taking the path less traveled by), but i hope i wouldn't view those as a waste.

i'd like to say i've cleansed myself of jealousy, but just this year i spent many nights on my knees praying for help letting go of selfish hurt feelings and to be truly happy for my friends. i've always wanted too much attention, and it's been interesting growing up trying to remain childlike without being childish. i still am not tolerant enough of people who grate my nerves, but i've had some wonderful examples to give me an idea what i'd like to be like. i've had it beat into me from so many extremely different sources that there's never any reason to be mean or unpleasant or disinterested in someone just because of who they are. living in cambridge got me over my fear of homeless people, but i'm still not very good at deciding when to give and when to walk by.

still don't think i've told a boy outloud i like him, in those words exactly. have i? i've definitely made it clear, if not with words, haha.

now instead of being freaked out when people refer to my peers as "men" and "women", i am getting freaked out when my friends and their fiances don't look like men and women, but definitely boys and girls. i love the moment when i realize one of my friends has reached their adult look. it's noticeable and real and awesome.

i still worry about annoying the people around me - i've been able to catch it (i think) with practice, but it's hitting me again now, being around my ifp friends who are very different from the people who i have loved and who have loved me for the past 1, 4, 8, forever years. hearing my friends cuss has lost its shock value (there are small sacrifices one makes by not going to byu), but it always made me smile when kristen would interrupt her angry rants to apologize to me.

cool runnings still makes me cry. oregon trail didn't go away when i went to college.

now that i have my own money i finally bought the only video game i've actually ever wanted (guitar hero!), and i am very happy. melissa said once that she was really going to miss the perfect sense of humor that so many harvard kids have, and i realize now this is something i have always loved. i've only kissed one boy since i wrote my last list. i imagine myself as a "only love" girl rather than a "first love" girl, but i suppose we'll see. you don't have to kiss many boys, as long as one of the few turns out to be the right one. still in love with clean teeth!

i wasn't ready to move away this time, not from harvard and then not from home. i really had set myself up for an awesome summer, and while i am not idiotic enough to turn away a great job landing right in my lap, i went through a period of mourning for the summer that never was. while of course i would love to have been friends with my current friends years and years ago i can't imagine having enough hours in the day to handle being very close to my college, high school, middle school, and forever friends simultaneously. it's taken me a long time, but i've come to accept that maybe some (most?) people are in your life for only a few years or a few months or a few weeks, and that is ok. it hit me first when i had to say goodbye to the wonderful freshmen serving their missions after my sophomore year. these were guys i was "supposed" to spend time with for 3 years, but instead our lives intersected for only 8 months. i was really surprised though, when i had 3 good friends from nerd camp come to harvard my sophomore year - even though two of them were among my 3 best friends in the the program, i almost NEVER saw them at school. i didn't try and they didn't try, and neither of us was sad about it. it was a different world - we were best friends at davis, but not at harvard, and that felt right.

after watching the movie, i believe the narnia quote i was looking for is in prince caspian. need to reread and find out.

i've heard much more *about* boys' emotions since 2004, but they still haven't convinced me 100%. still love cut and paste! brought my colored paper to work today and cut and pasted some ultracentrifuge ideas, explaining to my cubicle buddies that this is the medium in which i work best.

funny, i would love to move back to boston now, even though i might just try to live my college life, and even though there's a real possibility it would not be as fun. sometimes i try to remember what facebook was like back when neha helped me sign up, and it's just amazing. remember when the wall was introduced? and how everyone hated it when the wall format was changed? i still go exclusively to "thefacebook.com", because "facebook.com" used to belong to someone else. i cannot comprehend that zuckerburg left harvard as a sophomore to go change the internet forever.

i still hope that someday after we are dead we have the opportunity to find out exactly how we have affected every person we have met, but i am more scared now of what i will hear than i was before. i get headaches now, but not very often, and i never think to take painkillers for them. i love church more than ever, but it's hard to transition to life without my amazing boston ward. i've had many jobs since 2004 - best one was the mail room!!

i can be serious now without being grumpy! success. getting better at sharing feelings, but not quite there yet. still need to learn how to drum - still on the list!

i had my chance to drink - i was taking out the recycling while alone in my host family's house last summer and noticed that there was a good 3 inches of vodka left in one of the bottles (um, can you recycle vodka?). i felt that this was my now or never moment, and when i left the bottles all on the side of the road i knew i'd never drink alcohol, and i do not believe that i am missing out.

i sleep facing away from my window precisely because i still think the scariest thing in the world is looking out your window and seeing a pair of eye staring in. i still wish i had a brother, although i've had more boy-friends in my life now, and while they aren't quite brothers, i'm a little happier now than i was back then.

harrys 6 & 7 completely made up for #5!! i'm so happy i lived through that. it's strange i didn't really see the appeal of jello in august 04, because starting in september i had red jello with every dinner for 9 straight months. i would go crazy if i didn't have a cell phone now, although the random weeks where i break mine are always well appreciated and pleasant break. there's something wonderful about being unreachable every now and then.




i'm doing well here in indy, although my very best moments have been when i was visiting mormons in dc and spending last weekend with amy and nikki (and PHANTOM!). i've appreciated living alone for the time it allows for thinking, which sounds pretty emo, but i've decided that i want to be able to trust myself much more than i do right now, physically - if for some reason i need to run a mile to get help for someone i want to trust myself to make it there and back no problem, emotionally - i want to trust myself to keep promises i make to myself and to others, if i tell myself something will get done i want to be able to believe that is true (because i don't believe it why should anyone else?), and spiritually - i want to be at a point where if i was to meet my future husband i would be ready for him. how tragic would it be to meet the man of your dreams and to realize you still need 2 years before you're ready to be your adult self? one would hope he would wait, but regardless it's time to grow up.

one of the best things i remember from sacrament meeting in the past few years was one boy who was going to art school for drawing. he said he had lots of people - friends - who would come to his apartment, see his work, and say something like "i wish i could draw!" he said this always makes him mad (what? the congregation snaps their heads up), because he wishes he could draw. he wishes it so bad that he draws every day, hours a day, until does it well. i think about this a lot when i imagine what i want to be like in the future. i wish i could cook, i wish i kept my word, i wish i didn't lose things that are important, i wish i was healthier. i wish these things so badly that there's nothing else to do but get out there and get started.


"you judge one's character by the company you keep, and i'm happy to keep company with you." -mark spitz to michael phelps