Strawberries in the Dorm

For the longest time, I was always stuck in the past. I would always wish for things be like how the used to be; it took up most of my thoughts. Now, sometimes I still wish I lived in one of the famous decades, but now my focus has shifted, and I\’m constantly thinking about the future. I worried about my future in high school, but never like how I\’ve been worrying about it now. After some introspection, I\’ve decided that a lot of this probably has to do with my classes constantly reminding me of an end-goal: getting a job in the working world. I feel like so much of my life has been consumed with questions about studying abroad and internships and resumes and degree roadmaps and where I want to live and what I want to do and… and… and it\’s exhausting. It almost freaks me out more the current work that I have. With all of this being said, I have a couple of goals this week that I thought I\’d share.

The first goal is to be more present. This is kind of one of those forever goals that can work a couple of ways. Firstly, I can achieve this goal by not being on my phone while talking to people or having human interactions, which I feel is so important with sorority recruitment coming up this weekend! The second way I can do this is by trying to focus on the now, not really the past or present. This week, I\’ve been really working on the latter, by not putting things off. In an effort to use as many day-time hours as possible, I\’ve also been making lists of things I need to do and ranking them by importance. While I try to get all of these done before I allow myself to do anything else, I\’ve found lately that it\’s often easier just to make sure that I get them done before bed… I mean I have to start somewhere!

The next goal is be proactive about my worrying. A lot of the things that people keep bringing up, especially studying abroad, have to do with (dare I say it?)… money. I hate talking about money because it\’s awkward and weird and everyone\’s situations are different, but studying abroad costs a lot of money. So naturally I panicked and started brainstorming ways to save money. Because, even though I don\’t have to start really planning this for another year, I have to start somewhere. When I was freaking out about internships, I started looking for companies that I like and would maybe want to intern at (mostly to see if they even have internships) and reading the e-mails I get sent from the Fashion School with internship opportunities just to see what\’s out there. After freaking out about my future classes and upcoming meeting with my advisor, I\’ve been working on what I need to take and when and how I can make it all work. It\’s a stressful thing to think about, but writing it all down and organizing a \”life-plan\” per se, helps calm me and is more productive than A) ignoring it or B) crying about it forever. (Fun fact: I also did this my freshman year of high school and altered my next year\’s schedule as needed.)

I guess a lot of this comes down to me trying not to get stressed out. Even though my brain has switched into Fall-Mode, it\’s still summer. And with college I\’ve been given so much freedom to go out into the world and explore new things, like I did this past summer when, kind of on a whim, Olivia and I went to the Strawberry patch in Hammond. It was so fun, we barely had a care in the world (except worrying about the heat, getting sunburnt, making sure we were home on time, trying not to step in any mud, avoiding bugs, etc.). I guess I just long for that Summer Bliss, but with autumn quickly approaching, I need help coming up with a term of what I long for… Fall feels? (I feel like this sounds sad)… Autumn awesomeness?? (too cheesy)… Autumn ?? I really don\’t know…

Much Love, Jac

P.S. I would like to note, that Anna and I did buy strawberries for the fridge in our dorm, so my title is entirely accurate. 

Outfit Details: 

Dress: Forever 21 (it\’s on sale!), 

Top: Forever 21 (similar)

Sandals: Steve Madden (similar)

Hat: ASOS (similar)