Things I Learned at My High School Reunion

Last weekend I drove up to my old stomping grounds in order to attend my high school reunion. I went alone, no husband, no kids (this was a source of much argument, but it turns out it was probably the best thing for me). On the three hour return trip, I thought about how I would blog about five of the most hectic, crazy, fun, annoying days of 2009, and instead of separating this into a five part post (one for each day, of course) I thought I'd use the highlight reel instead. So here are the top 10 things I learned at my high school reunion, and the days that preceded and followed.

1. Fishbowls at a bar are not the same as fishbowls at a fair. The fair will give you a little goldfish to take home. The bar will give you four times of tequila and a very quick buzz.

2. If you aren't used to drinking alcohol, a quick buzz will leave you holding onto a lamppost, trying desperately to stay vertical, and no longer trying to censor your thoughts before they spew out of your mouth.

3. The lack of censoring after 20+ years of watching your mouth in fear of getting hit will allow you to feel totally free and "lighter" than you've felt in a very long time.

4. Friends will keep you running even when you need a chance to sit down and take a rest.

5. Gay bars are the best place to hit on guys without fear of rejection or pursuit.

6. Sleeping with a gay man will probably lead to some harmless cuddling.

7. Raffles aren't fun at all when all the popular people win the prizes and you feel like you're back in high school.

8. Reunions are made better with tequila shots.

9. Not making plans can sometimes lead to sitting outside a movie theater for an hour wondering what to do and then ending up eating cardboard pizza and sweating your ass off while losing a putt-putt.

10. Family can be fun and annoying at the same time.

Top 10 Tuesday

When I was a kid I thought the life you were given was the life you had to live. In that logic, the bad choices you made when you were young and stupid stuck with you and molded you into someone who didn't deserve the things you wanted out of life. You already screwed it all, now you just have to learn to deal.

I used to say things like "I wish I was a runner" or "I wish I had learned to dance." But I've come to realize that the mistakes you made in the past don't have to make or break your future. Last year I had the runner's thought again, and a small voice in my head said - Well, why aren't you then? You can make yourself a runner, you know? Truth was, it hadn't occured to me until that moment that who we are can be defined by us. We can choose to become a runner, or a dancer, or a whatever...IF we're willing to put in the work it takes to achieve those goals. So I started running.

Anyone that doesn't know me in person would not be surprised by that last statement. But I weigh over 300 pounds and, more than that, I'm one of the most uncoordinated people you might meet. As a child I had a wild talent for tripping up and down the stairs, on solid flat ground, anywhere, really. It earned me my Girl Scouts camp nickname of Trippy. So when I say that I started running, you should be a little scared and slightly amused. (At least, that's what I'm hoping instead of the roar of laughter I hear in my head.)

Now I didn't set out to run a 5K, but I set out to learn how to run. The only thing I was really training for was a trip to NYC with a friend of mine. (And let me tell you, the training paid off in the miles I was able to walk around that island in 5 days!) I was injured more times than I can count (my doctor prescribed me 90 capsules of 800mg Ibuprofen, mostly I think as an encouragement to continue what I was trying to do and work through the pain) but I kept trying, kept going. I didn't run full speed, or even the entire 30 minutes allotted. Instead I did a program that told you to walk mostly, with little spurts of running thrown in now and again. Each week, the spurts would grow longer, until at the end of the program (which I never reached), you would be running the entire time, gearing yourself up for a 5k.

Well, the time has come for me to change again, or so I've decided. It's going to be a long and grueling process, but I need it. I don't want to be a different person, I just want to be a better version of myself. And I know that its possible, if I put my entire self into it, give up my excuses, and be honest with myself every step of the way. So today I start my process, not by listing 10 things I want to change about myself, but listing 10 things that I absolutely love about myself. I am going to attempt to leave the self-deprication and criticism behind. I am going to attempt to show myself the same love I might show someone else in my situation. I am going to attempt to be my own support and comfort. I'm wishing myself good luck!

Top 10 Things I Adore About Me

1. I am a determined person. If I want something, I go after it, and I work really, really hard at it when it means a lot to me. (This usually leads others to call me "crazy" or a "workaholic," by the way.)

2. I am real with myself and others. I don't say that I am going to do something unless I truly intend to make an attempt to that end.

3. I really do care about others. I cry when others cry, and laugh with them as well, and while I may get jealous from time to time, I really want nothing but the best for the people in and around my world.

4. I learn very quickly. Not only in school and work, but in life, I have the ability to observe and learn from myself and those around me.

5. I love my children with everything I have. My children are the light at the end of my tunnel and my life would be incomplete without them. I claim them as an accomplishment, because only a mother understands what it really means to be a mother, and the hard work and sacrifice it takes to do right by your children.

6. I can make people laugh...most times. I am usually the one at a party cracking jokes and finding the punchline at the end of a seemingly meaningless sentence. Humor was always my weapon and my shield, but lately it's also become a fun tool to use...a parlor trick.

7. I love to write, and I'm pretty damn good at it. I'm not perfect, and I still have a lot to learn, but I've been making up stories for a long time (got in trouble a lot as a kid for lying my ass off...didn't realize until later it was because I loved the fiction, the storytelling, of it) and I think I've got a knack for it.

8. My eyes are the most gorgeous and expressive part of my body. It seems shallow, but I really think my eyes are my most beautiful feature. I *love* eyes....windows to the soul and all that.

9. I'm a good mediator. My mother still asks for MY advice on things she's going through, the behavior of those around her and how that should be interpreted.

10. I'm open-minded and willing to change my mind if someone proves me wrong. I used to be too afraid of saying something wrong, which led me to say nothing at all, but nowadays I let myself have moments of brilliance along with moments of ignorance, and I forgive myself when I turn out to be wrong. I'm not too proud to admit my mistakes.

So there they are, my top 10 things I like about myself. Now I'd like it even more if I was able to not delete this post. Sometimes I fear that compliments to yourself edge on boasting and narcissism. I've been told that it's good to love yourself, though...so I'm working on that first.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

A friend of mine recently contacted me through one of those social networking sites. No, wait, let me go back further. In tenth grade I had a brief friendship with two girls from Bonn, Germany, who participated in a foreign exchange program at my school. When the two left to return home, we all had every intention of continuing our communications via postal mail, but I have never been very good at keeping up correspondence through mail...too many steps, writing, folding, finding an envelope, buying the stamp, taking to the box. I have no reasons for it, I've just never been too good at it, no matter how hard I've tried. So, it has been 12 years since I have spoken to my German friends, but the other day one tracked me down through that social networking site.

We greeted with the regulatory "WOW! It's been so long! Great to see you! How've you been?" greetings, but my German friend wanted to know why I was no longer in Columbus. She asked two different ways why I had moved from Ohio to West Virginia, and I found myself wondering as well. Suddenly, the regular explaination of "For financial reasons" didn't cut it. So I sat down and I told her the reader's digest version of the last 12 years of my life, and most of it wasn't pretty.

As I was laying down the truth of it all, putting it in ways I had never allowed myself to explain it, somehow more free with honesty than I had ever been before, I realized how many stories I had told myself to get through. I realized how many times I had given myself an excuse in order to make it through the next few minutes, the next hour, the next day. I wondered if those stories hindered my progress by not allowing me to see the truth for myself, but I heard the doubt creep into my head even as I thought it. No, my mind said. You told yourself those stories, because if you didn't, it would have been too much to handle. Those stories were your protection. They softened the blow and allowed you to climb slowly out of the hole you were in. In a way, my stories were like a scuba diver coming slowly to the surface to as to allow the body time to adjust to the change in pressure. I needed to come up slowly, in order to come up safely.

Many of the stories I told myself were really excuses in disguise. Many of my stories allowed me to make mistakes, like getting pregnant too soon, or not taking care of myself or others. I played the victim a lot. I spent much of my time telling people how I had been wronged by so many people in my life. Sure, a lot of what I went through was harsh, and horrible, and out of my control. In some respects, I was a victim. But I used that label, that excuse, so that others would forgive me of my shortcomings. I used that excuse as a way to stay in my hole without interference. I can't get up today, it hurts too much. I keep thinking about everything that happened. In some respects, it was true. But many people have days like these, and the best of them get up anyways, despite the pain, in spite of it, they get up and they move their feet and they clear a path for the ones to come behind them.

The hard part of all of this is knowing when to change the story. Sometimes it changes on its own, through your actions. Sometimes decisions have to be made to change the stories into what you need them to be. I try to stick with the truth, and let that be my guide, but the truth changes as my story changes. Yes, I went through some very hard things, but I can chose in which direction that story will take me. Wherever I go, the story will follow and change, things will be added, and only the core of who I am will continue throughout.

Endings and Beginnings: The Circle of My Life

Next week will be the last week I will be required to show up everyday, on time, for my full-time job, until December. This realization has hit me several times, but as I clean my office and think about the notes I have to leave in order for the next person to know what to do, how, and where to find the files they will need, it feels so -- final. I know I'm coming back. I keep telling myself that, over and over, and yet, I feel like I'm leaving this job and these people, and it mostly makes me sad.

Let me be perfectly honest, I get frustrated a LOT at my current job. Office politics, state government politics, people's crazy habits and tempers, the tedious work I do when I know there is a quicker solution...all of these things send me flying off the handle after a long day at work. My husband gets the brunt of my rantings on work-related topics, and I love him for indulging me. But when it all comes down to it...the people here are crazy, and difficult, and at times, even a little dense in the head, but I love them in some strange way because of it. To know that I won't hear one tell me that she appreciates me four times a day, every day...to realize I'll never hear a "What the f..." out of another's mouth moments later, all of this I will miss because I have grown accustomed to the steadiness of it.

I will miss my boss, as well. I feel horrible for leaving her right now, when she needs me most, but she understands that I need to finish my schooling, for me, for my kids, for my future, and so she sends me off with a sigh, but with best wishes and a good, "Oh, you get out of here and do what you need to do." You really cannot ask for much more from a boss than what I get from her.

So as my final year of school begins, I take this time away from work and feel as if I'm losing something, or saying goodbye. I tell them all, I tell myself, "I'll see you later!" But I just can't help but feel a little sad.

Top Party Schools: Why Party?

The Princeton Review has released its list of top party schools in the US. Each year, senior high school students across the nation pretend not to care in front of their parents, while secretly investigate the list to learn where they're likely to have the best time for those 4-6 keg-filled years of college. Of course WVU made the list, but just above them is good 'ole Ohio University. It's probably one of the only places Athens will ever kick Morgantown's butt in statistics of "the better school for..." but they can rejoice over the recognition and fame it affords them.

Perhaps it was the way I was raised, perhaps it was getting pregnant just before my 18th birthday and having to skip the formative young adult years, but I just cannot understand the desire to sit around with your buddies every weekend getting plastered off cheap beer and horrible wine, only to wake up the next morning not knowing where you are, who you slept with, and why your underwear is on outside of your jeans. Don't get me wrong, a drink now and then in good company is great fun, but I'd have to imagine that one or two hangovers would be enough to cure my desire to drink myself into a drunken stupor ever again. What is the appeal? What keeps these kids coming back for beer after beer, week after week?

My number one theory has to do with alcohol's ability to lower one's reservations and inhabitions. How better to break the ice in a city where you don't know anyone and have no close friends who know about that horrible haircut you had in 8th grade or the dog you lost just months before leaving home? Drink a few beers, laugh about whatever random topic of conversation comes up, maybe "hook up" for the night, and instantly you have new stories to tell, new inside jokes with your new friends. If nothing else, for the rest of your time at college you will be able to go up to that person and say, "Hey man! Remember that really wild night we had freshman year?" It's a connection, a bond, however flimsy and superficial, that makes you feel connected with the people around you. How else could you endure the next four years of tests and homework, essays and research papers, late night cram sessions and early morning exams?

As an adult I've learned that it's difficult to make friends in a conventional manner. Ask me about the friends I currently have in the state I moved to as an adult, and you'll learn that 80% of them are people I have met at work, while the other 20% are from school. Making friends is difficult for one main reason - forming that bond, finding that common ground or shared experience, can be more like finding a particular grain of sand on the beach when you realize that we're all too afraid to give to much of ourselves to anyone else. Many of us hide our successes and failures for fear of alienating ourselves, or seeming boastful, or weak, as the case may be. But we need to realize that we have to share these experiences in some way, in order to connect with others who have similar experiences. Does this mean that you just randomly blurt out to strangers - "I killed my pet hamster when I was 5!" or "My dad used to beat on me and call me worthless, and I'm still really angry about that! Anyone else?" Of course not! You'll find yourself the proud owner of a one-way ticket to the looney bin if you try that one.

That's what makes daily, routine run-ins with the same people so useful. The people at work might let slip something like, "I don't talk to my dad anymore," and POOF! you've made a connection! But you have to wait for these moments in civilized society. But with a few drinks to lighten the mood, you can let things fly without a care for the consequences. It won't always work, but most times you will make those connections because of your loose lips and blunt confessions. Is it any wonder that most "top party schools" also seem to have the tightest "pal" groups on campus? Years later they see a friend from college in a faraway place and just the hint of recognition and flash of memory of "those wild parties" leads them into a hug and back into a friendship that will last them as long as its needed.

Single-Minded to the Point of Recklessness: GRE Tips From a New Veteran

As you can tell from my profile, I'm now a senior in college. Of course, to many people this would be the point where they sit back and relax, enjoying the ride and all that. Of course, I'm not like most people. I drive forward, sure of my destination, ready with 100 possible detours, if necessary. I don't want to arrive to the party late, so I've got my hair in curlers and I'm driving 80 mph. I'll be early, I assure you, wherever it is I end up...but I'll be there, and that's what is important.

On Saturday I took the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE. No one could ever call me unprepared. I was not about to find myself in an extemporaneous position. (Note the use of a GRE study word, however well it was used or not.) I gathered several books and teaching guides, I searched through countless useless webpages to find a few that were useful, and I made myself over 500 flashcards with various vocabulary words. For anyone who is set to take this test in the future, this is what I learned:

- Flashcards aren't going to do you a bit of good if they stay on your coffee table at home.

Take them everywhere, pick 5 or 10 or even 20 a day, and read them - over and over. Study them and, for crying out loud, make sentences out of them. Use them in your everyday language. Your friends and family will find you completely insane, but when they see high test scores, they will congratulate you and all will be forgotten.

- Do not buy or type your flashcards.

There are several methods of learning, and each person is different, but I have never heard anyone learning BETTER from being told rather than doing. The act of writing your flashcards engages your mind in the process. You are forced to look at the spellings of each word, forced to say (if even silently to yourself) each word of the definition. If they are good definitions, they will include synonyms of words you are more familiar with, and your job is to relate those two words in your mind. (A word like "chary" you'll be more likely to remember if you have a mneumonic like "chary wary." You probably know what wary means. If the word chary pops up on the test, you can replace it with the word you know and go on to find the answer.)

- The Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE is the best book for your money, but you'll need to find additional practice tests.

I purchased the Kaplan test review book months ago, before I had even registered for my actual test. What I liked about this book was that I was going to be given 5 practice tests. (I will tell you now that studying practice tests are the best way to practice the methods and time managment techniques you'll need for the actual test.) When it was two weeks before my scheduled day, however, I was unable to locate my book (which ended up being behind some other books on my desk...don't ask - you'll understand when you have your test looming in 2 weeks and you're missing something you desperately need.) I did what I promised I would not do, I went to the bookstore and bought another study book.

Of course, I was not going to buy the same version I already had (that would be a waste if I ended up finding the thing...which I did), so I bought the Cracking the GRE book. Best money ever spent. Talk about techniques! Their "hit parade" lists were amazing! Half of the words I didn't know on the test were in the 4 hit parade lists, another half of the remaining I didn't know, were in the "continuing" section of the hit parade. The final 5 or so...well, you can't have it all, can you?

What's more, the POE (process of elimination) techniques they teach got me through several questions that I would have simply passed (and kicked myself for) without the helpful techniques I learned in the book. Whether or not I got those questions right, I felt like I had a fighting chance at them. That confidence can do you wonders in a standardized tests you sit through for 3 hours straight!

The only problem is that you will need those extra practice tests. See if you can find them online (and definately complete the two provided online from the book and the one from ETS' own website - gre.org). Truth is, there are only so many question the ETS people can come up with, and a question in one of your practice tests might pop up (at least in part) on the actual test.

- Bone up on your junior high math.

Again, this is where your Cracking the GRE book will come in handy. I felt a lot more proficient after reading through some of the "refresher" material in the study guide. However, I will say that if you haven't taken math for a while, like me (it's been around 8 or 9 years) you'll probably be helped by Kaplan's GRE Math Workbook. The more practice, the better.

- Finally, rejoice when it's over.

The best part about this standardized test is that you get your scores immediately following your test, so you know how you did before you even leave the testing center. (Of course, your writing portions must be graded later, so you will get those grades in the next few weeks.) I was able to improve my grades from the practice tests I took at the beginning by at least 50-100 points! And that's really saying something!