Birthday Celebrations

April was a crazy month for birthdays! I have several friends and family members who were born in April, and we all took part in our fair share of birthday festivities. I turned 22 on April 25th, and my sweet friends and family were so creative and generous when it came to celebrating!

Day of birth with Mama and big brother!

My birthday was on a Saturday, so I was able to go home and celebrate with my parents and my brother. We have a tradition in our house of decorating the dining room table for the birthday person, so it was fun to wake up to the birthday hat/ sign/ balloons and gifts. Birthdays are lots of fun at our house!  My mom always buys a Princess cake for my birthday, and this year was no different... except she forgot to take it out of the fridge and I was already back at school by the time she remembered. Too funny!

That Saturday also happened to be the Saturday that one of my best friends was celebrating her daughter's1st birthday. I was so happy to spend time with my friends from home and to celebrate Paityn's 1st!

Leigh and I at Paityn's party

After the party I picked up my roommate in Berkeley and we headed back to school. We met up with Annie for dinner at Hula's Island Grill, a Hawaiian bar and restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz. I had shrimp tacos which were delicious and then they surprised me with a piece of macadamia nut ice cream cake. Linnea and I shared it (poor Annie is allergic to nuts), and we both loved it.

At Hula's (I promise, I'll get a camera at some point!)

We headed back to our apartment afterwards for some champagne, flourless chocolate cake and movie watching. Miss Congeniality is one of my favorite movies, and it was totally appropriate because the perfect date is"...April 25th because it's not too hot and not too cold. All you need is a light jacket!" :)

Pure chocolate heaven. Thank you Linnea!

The following weekend we went out to Rosie's Irish Pub, also downtown, to celebrate with some of our other friends who were out of town the weekend before. We had some tasty appetizers before Annie's boyfriend, Christian, insisted that we take a spin on this crazy bike cab. It was hilarious and we were all dying of laughter when we got off. We felt bad for the poor guy who had to lug us around, but he insisted that it was no big deal because apparently he used to ride it around the hills of San Francisco. Impressive!

I don't think you can tell, but this thing had bubbles streaming out the back.

I am so grateful to have such loving and generous people in my life. I don't know about you but... I'm feeling twenty twoooo! Couldn't end without the obligatory TSwift reference!

Extended Spring Break: 2015 Edition

After the intensity of last quarter, this one feels like an extended vacation. School has been much more manageable and I am truly enjoying my last few weeks in Santa Cruz. Graduation is exactly one month from today! 

As a part of my Winter Quarter finals week delusions,  I spontaneously decided to buy round trip tickets to Las Vegas. I finished my thesis, completed my last GE and was more than ready for a break! I wanted to get the cheapest tickets, which just happened to be for the week after spring break, but luckily it fit around my class schedule. 

My saint of a father drove me to the airport at 4am (thanks Dad!) and I arrived in Las Vegas bright and early. I love going to Vegas because I have quite a few friends who live there, so I am always able to stay with them instead of paying for hotels. I get to spend time with people I love and save money: win win! 

We did some pretty touristy things including a visit to The Linq, a couple trips to The Strip and of course we ate lots of fantastic food.  

View of the Linq during the day!

 We also went to Fat Tuesday's, because what Vegas trip is complete without it?!

Don't worry, this was shared between several people

Drinks with friends! 

We also got to visit the restaurant where our friend works at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. They had some delicious food, and these awesome drinks. There were actual flecks of gold and silver in them!

Drinks at Mozen. 

The Mandarin Oriental is seriously impressive.

Philly cheese"steak" made with mushrooms at Skinny Fats

 Sushi (pardon the dark iPhone photos)

I had my first all-you-can-eat sushi experience which I was a tad nervous about since I'm not a huge fish/ seafood fan. The amount of sushi some of my friends can put down is impressive. Luckily my experience was more about trying new things, and it wound up being delicious!

Elated! 

Last but not least, we had to do the obligatory gambling excursion. I am not big on gambling and I'm a firm believer in the $5 limit. I've never had much luck with gambling, but this time I got lucky. I put $1 in a quarter slot and I was so shocked when the machine started dinging that I thought I broke it... But no! My friend took a Snap of my first "big win" :) 

Shifting Gears

After returning from Vegas, I went and picked up my favorite pups, Tujague and Cricket so they could come spend the week with me in Santa Cruz while their owners were on a work trip. We had a great time exploring the trails and visiting the dog beach. Cricket was such a ham! He kept swimming out and trying to fit multiple tennis balls in his mouth. He could only figure out how to make it work with two at a time. Tujague, who's 11 now, had a good time wandering around too, but he's not much of a runner these days. He's much more content to lay by my feet while I work. 

That nose! 

Unexpected Connections

I know my posts have been few and far between these days, and totally focused on school, but I'm hoping to get into a more regular blogging routine starting in April. Sometimes it's hard to sit down and write, even if it's enjoyable, after reading and writing for school all day. I'd love to start posting more recipes, glimpses at my weekly meal planning and more about transitioning from college life to working life. I'm getting so excited about my post college plans, which I will share more of once they are solidified!

Anyway, this quarter I am taking a European intellectual history class with my favorite professor. It's different from most of the Euro classes I've taken in that we are focused more on great thinkers and the works they produced. It almost feels more like a Lit or Philosophy class. Regardless, I am really enjoying it! Last week, we were talking about John Stuart Mill, an English author and modern thinker. He spent the first 20 years of his life in an environment in which rational thought was obsessively pounded into him by his father. He had a mental break down when he was 20, and it completely changed the way he thought about life. Essentially, he realized that his happiness is derived from a mixture of both rational and emotional thinking, a combination of romantic and enlightenment principles. His cross discipline thinking was what made him unique.

Our professor posed one of Mill's thoughts and it immediately stood out to me because of my own personal experience. He said, "Will doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people truly make me happy?" It has been almost exactly a year since I felt as though I had hit rock bottom. My 2nd and 3rd years in college were incredibly challenging and I struggled with severe depression and disordered eating. I was solely focused on the needs of others and it was detrimental to my own well being. While I did derive a certain sense of gratification from being able to help others through their own difficulties, it took a massive toll. Without getting too deep into it (we'll save that for another time), I had a breakdown where I basically asked myself the same question that Mill did. After a lot of tears, sleepless nights, anxiety and a panicky phone call to my dad at 5am, I decided that I needed to take a step back. I needed to relinquish my constant need to feel in control of everything, and let others take the reigns. It's odd to think about it now because even at that point, I was constantly preaching task delegation, asking for help etc, but it was so hard for me to take my own advice! 

This post got to be a little heavier than I intended, but I couldn't believe how accurately Mill's breakthrough mirrored my own. I am not perfect and I still have moments where I try to take on too much, but overall the past year has been tremendously freeing. School still proves to be one of my greatest challenges. The way in which our education system is structured often makes me feel inadequate, and I am constantly reminding myself that there are immensely valuable lessons that lie beyond the walls of the classroom. I am so grateful for the opportunity to pursue a higher education, but I think the lessons I learned from university education do not fit the mold of a classic academic. Nonetheless, they are extremely valuable to me as I have learned to trust myself and recognize that what everyone else wants for me is not always what I want for myself. 

And that is your Friday Brain Dump! Can you tell that I am more than a little bit ready to be done with college in less than 5 months? :) 

How to Write a Thesis in 60 Days

JUST KIDDING! This is NOT going to be a "how- to" post because quite frankly, I'm terrified that I won't be able to do it (the post, or the project!). You would think, or at least my department thinks, that after a solid three years of taking multiple writing based history classes per quarter, I'd have some idea as to how to write a thesis--> with run on sentences like these, I should be there in no time...

Back to the point: I am taking my senior exit requirement this quarter, in addition to my last GE requirement (Intro to Logic), and an Upper Div on European Intellectual History. The theme of my Seminar revolves around Jewish History in Eastern Europe. In addition to reading a book a week for discussion, we are supposed to be doing our own research on a topic that falls within the confines of the class. Welp... It's week 3 and I have yet to nail down a research project. I wake up everyday thinking, "Man I really need to get started on this. I'll get right to it after I workout, shower, throw in the laundry, finish that one book, turn in that homework assignment, go to class, get home from work... blah, blah, blah... Facebook!" Unfortunately, that's actually how most days go.

From the beginning I kept thinking, if I can just write 5 pages a week, then I'll have plenty of time to edit and revise. But that means I'd be having to do a enough research every week to produce 5 pages of original material, and that seems hard to manage in addition to all the other stuff I've got going on. Every single day feels like one step closer to Dooms Day, yet I still haven't made much progress... Okay, any progress. There is an incessant devil v. angel banter going on in my head ranging from "Yes, I can totally do this, it's only 25 pages, like a short chapter in a book" to "HOLY S*#T, I CAN'T WRITE 25 PAGES, THAT'S LIKE A CHAPTER IN A BOOK!" <-- insert 10x as much profanity.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is this: Tonight I was washing dishes and a thought came to me. What if I approach the writing as if I would approach running a marathon (not that that's happening anytime soon, we're still in Couch to 5K land over here.) Here's the idea: I have 63 days until my (minimum) 25 page paper is due. If I can alternate between researching one day and writing 1 page the next day regarding said research, I could definitely write 25 pages and still have about 2 weeks at the end to revise and edit. Two weeks might not sound like much, but to this "crank-out-a-12-pager-24-hours-before-it's-due" girl, 2 weeks is like a blissful eternity. I'll see you on the other side!

In other news, I've started volunteering at the hospital and it seems like it's going to be an awesome gig. I spend a couple hours in the ER a few times a week, helping to register patients and accommodate visitors. I also deliver specimens to the lab, push wheelchairs and make sure people are comfortable in the waiting room. It can be a little intense at times, especially when it's busy, but the staff seems to really appreciate the extra help.