Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Family Ties
Today I enjoyed a genealogy presentation and the saint louis county library with a good friend of mine tonight. I decided that I am going to start to find my roots and I'm excited for what I may find! I think its important to know where you come from. If you think about how far you know your ancestors, by name and or any personal fact, it is pretty scary to think that in that same matter of yrs you may be forgotten/unknown by those who follow you. I don't know anyone past my great-grandparents which means if I am lucky, if the pattern continues, I can only expect to be remembered 3 generations out. To think that my life and all its experiences will die with me is pretty sad, so I look forward to digging in and discovering my origins on both sides and eventually in my husbands family as well and I encourage anyone even slightly interested to do the same. You'd be surprised all of the resources and information out there that is available to us. There are entire libraries and archives and more dedicated to the different facets of ancestral findings. You can look people up by military records, deeds, birth and death records as well as marriage licences and education records. I wonder if I have any Native American Ancestors, or any European decent. I know a common finding in many African Americans when they research their roots is that they come to find that many AA's take on the last names of their slave owners which can end their findings unless they can somehow find a last name prior to their capture and where they lived before. We also have access to many immigration records which can come in handy for those whose family members came from other countries. If you know the year or a time period in which they came there is a pretty good chance you can find records on them. And then of course the Census is an excellent aid to find out information as far as where they live, their occupation and household information. It is going to be a long, but interesting journey that will benefit not just me, but all of us. The speaker said something that rang very true to me, that every piece of personal history that people discover is a small piece of american history and can help us all in some way. I just hope to create a new standard for those who follow me to start to pay more attention to our history and its documentation. I would also like to make a memoir of my life in my elder years as well as trying to journal more like I used to. I know I may not do it on a daily basis, but more often than not, because even when I look back on the pages I've written and evaluate the emotional state I was in when writing it, or the age and place in my life it seems interesting to me even now. My main issue is that I get caught up in wanting it to be perfect. I am afraid to document the imperfections of my life, or when I go too long without writing in my journal, I'll "scrap" it and start over, not realizing that though it may not be perfect, though it may not be ideal, its how I felt, its my life, its my story and it is important. So I am excited for the journey that awaits me and as always, will keep you posted!
Friday, May 4, 2012
Thin Ice
Its the end of the school year and the time has come around again where everything just seems be on the line. Its crunch time. I have one week left of classes in which I have four lab write ups to do, a test to make up, finals to study for for and it is all riding on this. How I do this semester will determine what I will be doing this summer and if I will be able to apply to the nursing program Im striving for and how long of a wait I'll have between now and my start date.
Every now and then life seems to have those moments, or the accumulation of moments where it all seems to count on that one thing. Well I'd like to say that the majority of those happenings in my life ended in the results I was hoping for but I can't. My life isn't like the movies where you know the underdog team, will win the championship or cinderella will find her prince, if they didn't then no one would watch them. I do have those times that no matter how hard I try, I just fall short. And yes, it sucks. But its that very dose of reality that keeps me diligent, and faithful, and on my knees, rather than arrogantly and pridefully assuming of my successes. I have had two very different examples of this in the past week, pertaining to school; Recently I wrote a paper for my Human Growth and Development class and I wanted an A. I thought I did pretty well on the paper personally and thought at worse I would get a B on it, however I had waited til the day before and morning of to write it. I knew that I needed and A in the course to get the GPA I needed, and I knew the weight of the assignment in comparison to others in the semester, but I still chose to wait until the last minutes to do the assignment, assuming that I could do so and still get the grade I wanted partially because I underestimated the paper in itself and also because I overestimated my writing skills, pridefully weighing it over adequate research and time management. To my dismay, I got a C on the paper. A 70% which to me is basically a D save for the one point. I earned my C and I took responsibility for my lack of prioritizing the assignment but the full weight of my choice hadn't fully hit me yet, until I looked at how it had affected me overall. Consequently, in the class that I had at first aimed to get an A in, I can only realistically hope for a B at best and even then, that will be hard earned. (Oh don't mind that noise, its just the sound of reality smacking me in the face!) On the bright side, (of course there is a bright side, there always is!) I have been working pretty hard in my Stats class to get an A so I don't have to take the final and it has paid off for me so far. I studied vey hard for my test last week and got a 100% which proves that handwork does reap good rewards! Although it feels like I'm skating on "thin ice" right now and am enduring an enormous amount of stress, in a matter of weeks I will be wishing I was back in school and would give anything for an assignment, so I am looking for the joy in it now. I always tell myself that I will work on my procrastination and that next year I won't get lax and I will stay dedicated and diligent and a whole list of things that I never end up doing. I think there will be always be a small part of me that will have that procrastinating bone and desire to get lazy, but I hope that over time I do get the strength to withstand it longer. But honestly, if I let myself think about it for a moment, living life completely responsible and never procrastinating, always having things done on time it would be boring! I mean a little stress isn't so bad, especially after you have learned how to manage it. Now I am in now way a stress-seeking junkie but realistically speaking I will never reach a point where I do away with my procrastinating ways altogether, and that's okay. But for right now, while I still have room to grow, I will make goals and plans, and continue to do my best and hopefully the results I get aren't too far from the ones I was hoping for.
Since it took me longer to come back and finish this posting than I had expected, I decided to go ahead and tell you the end results of my semester:
Human Growth and Development: B
Anatomy and Physiology lecture: A
Anatomy and Physiology lab: B
Probability and Statistics: A
Microbiology lecture: A
Microbiology lab: A
GPA: 3.74
So yes, hard work does pay off and though I was just a bit shy of my 4.0 goal, I still did pretty well and put myself that much closer to goal, yay me!!!
Every now and then life seems to have those moments, or the accumulation of moments where it all seems to count on that one thing. Well I'd like to say that the majority of those happenings in my life ended in the results I was hoping for but I can't. My life isn't like the movies where you know the underdog team, will win the championship or cinderella will find her prince, if they didn't then no one would watch them. I do have those times that no matter how hard I try, I just fall short. And yes, it sucks. But its that very dose of reality that keeps me diligent, and faithful, and on my knees, rather than arrogantly and pridefully assuming of my successes. I have had two very different examples of this in the past week, pertaining to school; Recently I wrote a paper for my Human Growth and Development class and I wanted an A. I thought I did pretty well on the paper personally and thought at worse I would get a B on it, however I had waited til the day before and morning of to write it. I knew that I needed and A in the course to get the GPA I needed, and I knew the weight of the assignment in comparison to others in the semester, but I still chose to wait until the last minutes to do the assignment, assuming that I could do so and still get the grade I wanted partially because I underestimated the paper in itself and also because I overestimated my writing skills, pridefully weighing it over adequate research and time management. To my dismay, I got a C on the paper. A 70% which to me is basically a D save for the one point. I earned my C and I took responsibility for my lack of prioritizing the assignment but the full weight of my choice hadn't fully hit me yet, until I looked at how it had affected me overall. Consequently, in the class that I had at first aimed to get an A in, I can only realistically hope for a B at best and even then, that will be hard earned. (Oh don't mind that noise, its just the sound of reality smacking me in the face!) On the bright side, (of course there is a bright side, there always is!) I have been working pretty hard in my Stats class to get an A so I don't have to take the final and it has paid off for me so far. I studied vey hard for my test last week and got a 100% which proves that handwork does reap good rewards! Although it feels like I'm skating on "thin ice" right now and am enduring an enormous amount of stress, in a matter of weeks I will be wishing I was back in school and would give anything for an assignment, so I am looking for the joy in it now. I always tell myself that I will work on my procrastination and that next year I won't get lax and I will stay dedicated and diligent and a whole list of things that I never end up doing. I think there will be always be a small part of me that will have that procrastinating bone and desire to get lazy, but I hope that over time I do get the strength to withstand it longer. But honestly, if I let myself think about it for a moment, living life completely responsible and never procrastinating, always having things done on time it would be boring! I mean a little stress isn't so bad, especially after you have learned how to manage it. Now I am in now way a stress-seeking junkie but realistically speaking I will never reach a point where I do away with my procrastinating ways altogether, and that's okay. But for right now, while I still have room to grow, I will make goals and plans, and continue to do my best and hopefully the results I get aren't too far from the ones I was hoping for.
Since it took me longer to come back and finish this posting than I had expected, I decided to go ahead and tell you the end results of my semester:
Human Growth and Development: B
Anatomy and Physiology lecture: A
Anatomy and Physiology lab: B
Probability and Statistics: A
Microbiology lecture: A
Microbiology lab: A
GPA: 3.74
So yes, hard work does pay off and though I was just a bit shy of my 4.0 goal, I still did pretty well and put myself that much closer to goal, yay me!!!
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