Fall Semester Junior Year

     It's been a whirlwind semester. I think I went into this semester with a fair bit of fear, expecting junior year of college to be a repeat of junior year of high school, which was ever-so-slightly miserable for me (what with taking both physics and calculus, two of my least favorite subjects, at the same time). So far though, while it has been my busiest semester of college thus far, it's never felt unmanageable. I've weeded out the things I don't enjoy doing so that I'm left doing only the things I really want to devote my time, effort, and energy to. In the end, I'm left with Dream, GCC, school, my family, and my friends. These are the things I choose to devote my time to and while it might not seem like much, it's more than enough for me. I can still give all (or most) of myself to these areas of my life without feeling like I'm stretching myself too thin. Junior and senior year of high school, I just tried to do it all, even things I didn't enjoy in the slightest, like being president of Red Cross Club. I never want to do things just because they "look good" or make me busier. I enjoy having time to eat three meals a day, sleep in if I need to, and watch some Kim's Convenience in my free time. Having a schedule where I'm busy every second of every day would drive me right off the edge. Some people can do that just fine, but I cannot.

Semester Highlights:

Getting closer to family group members. This semester I helped co-lead a Bible study and it's definitely been challenging because we have a very quiet, shy family group with kind of spotty attendance, but I've gotten a lot closer to two members specifically (and also to my co-leader) which was unexpected but really rewarding and makes it feel worthwhile.

Dream--seeing how much it means to the kids. Even though Dream is more stressful this year since I'm co-leading it every Friday and making sure the kids are behaving and that the activities are planned out and go smoothly, I realize that I have the power to play a really important role in the kids' lives, and that's simply keeping an eye on them and noticing when they need someone to talk to and sometimes even getting them paired up with the right mentor!

Dollar taco night at Loco Pez x5. So there's this restaurant in Fishtown (coincidentally, the restaurant's name in English is "Crazy Fish") that has a dollar taco night every week on a random day. They post on Instagram between 3-5pm the day of dollar night, so you never know until kind of the last minute when it'll be (except, because my friends are smart and discovered the pattern, we can predict with 100% accuracy the day of the week dollar taco night will be). So one day in October Melissa saw that it was dollar taco night on the same night that we (Sophia, Melissa, Haley, and I) get smoothies at Tropical Smoothie Cafe, so after we got our smoothies Melissa drove us to Loco Pez and by a miracle we got a parking spot a block from the restaurant (normally on dollar taco night there's no parking anywhere near the restaurant and you basically have to uber there, unless you want to park a mile away). It was a 40 minute wait for a table but we just sat in Melissa's car and talked until it was our turn. We're all so busy that we barely ever get to spend extended periods of time together so it was nice to catch up, eat cheap food, and forget about school. The next three times we went, Sophia and Haley couldn't go so it was just me, Melissa, Melissa's boyfriend and his friends/roommates, but it was still really fun. When I went again with Haley and Melissa, I broke my record number of tacos by eating 8 tacos!! Granted, they are very tiny, but I was still super impressed with myself, just saying.

Nifty Fifty's. Nifty Fifty's is this amazing diner about 30 minutes outside of Philly where they have

over a hundred different milkshake flavors. The milkshakes are HUGE (imagine a 20 oz milkshake) and so good. I've only had their milkshakes and fries but apparently they have good burgers and chicken wings as well.

Visiting AB for her 21st birthday. By some miracle, AB, DL, and I were able to get together for one short Saturday afternoon, the very day AB turned 21! We did what we always do when we hang out, which is drive around, go to stores where we don't buy anything or buy the most random things, eat food, talk, and take too many pictures. AB had just moved into a new room the day before we arrived but somehow she'd already got it all set up and decorated and it was so cute and tidy and calming and reminded DL and I of her bedroom at home. We also ate AB's giant Sam's Club cake.

Driving down to Salisbury with DL. DL took the train from Lancaster to Philly and spent the night at my apartment on Friday and Saturday night, and on Saturday I drove us down to and back from Salisbury. The drive was really easy and DL is a good person to have shotgun because she never freaks out about my driving (still love you AB, but it's just too easy to freak you out, so then I have to do it on purpose just to annoy you ;P ), even when I'm eating Subway and swerving and spending four hours trying to get the Bluetooth on my phone to connect with the Bluetooth stereo so we can listen to something besides static, country, rap, oldies, gospel, or ads. 

Going home--seeing the girls & hiking with MF & AP. I only went home once between August and Thanksgiving but it was a beautiful weekend and I got to spend it babysitting two of the cutest, sweetest little girls I've ever met. On Sunday before driving back to Philly I was able to meet up with MF and AP and we went hiking and then got smoothies from Tropical Smoothie Cafe and walked around HomeGoods commenting on the quality of the furniture, lol. 

AP and MF hiking 

Starting Friday Morning Prayer. At GCC, there is morning prayer every Friday from 7am-8am on Penn's campus. I've never been because that would involve me getting up at like 5:30am to catch a train to be there on time. Instead, a couple people from Temple GCC decided that it would be a good idea to have morning prayer on Temple's campus, so I decided to book a room in October and we've been doing it consistently every Friday morning, 7am-9am (to accommodate anyone who has 8am classes, plus anyone who can't wait up before 8am). Only two or three people consistently come besides me and I don't know what will happen to it when I'm gone next semester, but I hope it continues because I really enjoy it. It's just a couple of us in a room at the student center, praying, journaling, doing devotionals, or lying half-asleep on the ground with worship music playing in the background. It's the perfect way to start my Fridays, which are usually pretty hectic, with classes, Dream, and FNL. It's also a good way to reflect on the past week and catch up on prayer requests that I've been "too busy" to pray for throughout the week.

Shout-out to Melissa for the calligraphy

TJ cooking for me. I would've survived this semester off of PBJ, veggie burgers, canned beans, rice, and pasta if it weren't for TJ cooking things that actually taste good. I spend grocery money on snacks and ice cream; TJ spends his on meat, rice, and veggies. You know, grown up stuff. 

Being tested in my faith and learning that the only voice I should listen to in my life is God's voice. Even people with the best intentions can unintentionally tell me lies that just reinforce my desire to do whatever I want and live however my heart desires (not that my heart desires to go out and get drunk on the weekends or something like that; more that my heart desires good grades and perfect attendance etc. and sometimes (because those things seem like good things), friends and mentors can reinforce my desire for those things without realizing what I really need is to let go of them).  

True North family group verse

Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving break absolutely flew by, but it was a really good week. I watched two horribly cheesy Netflix original Christmas movies, got together with AB, DL, and Sid, did a Turkey Trot 5k on Thanksgiving with my family, and went shopping the day after Black Friday with DL, her mom, and a little old lady named Carol.

Wow, we look so related in this pic, lol

DL is there in spirit.

Last Bible Study of the Semester

For our last Bible study (aka family group) of the semester, we all got together and ate instant ramen and laughed and told stories and shared about the semester and prayed for each other. It was really sweet and it made me realize how much I'm going to miss everyone next semester and how God definitely blessed me with the people he placed in my life this year.

Annual GCC Thanksmas Christgiving

Every year, people from Temple GCC get together sometime in December to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one, which basically means we eat Thanksgiving food, play Christmas music, and have a White Elephant gift exchange. I was the only one who came wearing anything festive, and let me tell you...I was very festive. I was wearing these hideous ornament leggings I'd gotten at Walmart for $1 last year during the after-Christmas sale, my grandma's Joy to the World Christmas sweater from 1985 (I don't actually know when she got it, but it is lovely), and fuzzy reindeer socks I got for Christmas last year. 

Thanksmas Christgiving dinner (ugly leggings featured front
and center)

Finals Week

Okay, I hated writing papers and studying but I also did a lot of fun things in the free time I had because of not having classes. I hosted a Girls' Night, a Christmas party, ate out at two new restaurants, hung out with my mentee and his brothers, built two gingerbread houses, tried to make homemade rolled ice cream (giant fail...we wound up making milkshakes), and went ice skating at Penn's Landing.

Our hideous $7 Aldi's gingerbread house...we were really
proud, as you can tell.

Semester Lowlights:

Stress of moving. Oh my goodness. Moving into this apartment was such a pain in the butt. Thank goodness we had movers, but TJ and I still bought a bunch of furniture, groceries, and miscellaneous things that we had to lug up four flights of stairs. In addition, our apartment was falling apart at the beginning of the semester. The A.C. didn't work during the hottest week of the summer, the ceiling in my bedroom leaked when it rained and started to fall apart before someone came out to fix it, my mirror fell off the wall and knocked the glass shelf below it off. I caught the mirror and watched the shelf shatter into a million pieces...We have house centipedes. I've killed three, TJ has killed one (in my bedroom). I swear they're out to get me. 

Carrying heavy things up and down four flights of stairs. See above. Carrying 50 pounds of groceries up those steps is NOT fun. But I've gotten used to it and definitely gotten more in shape (at least my legs and lungs) because of it. 

No A.C. during hottest time of the summer. This was a living nightmare. 

Leaky ceiling. See above. 

Broken bathroom shelf. I didn't have a broom so I had to sweep up the glass with a swiffer and paper towels. Still finding glass to this day...

Getting my first C on a paper (but then my professor let everyone redo it because apparently her policy is that she gives us corrections and lets us redo every single assignment...bless her soul). Gah, this was so annoying. It was a stupid two-page reflection paper and I got a 77 on it! I've been doing reflection papers forever and I've never gotten anything less than an A. But apparently education reflection papers are different than English reflection papers and you're actually supposed to have a thesis and an argument (in a two-page paper!) Luckily when I redid it I got a 98 (all thanks to my dear, sweet, merciful professor). 

Acne. I've had acne for over a decade now, but it's always been pretty mild. And then August happened, and for the next four months my acne was out of control. It definitely took a toll on my self-confidence and drove me crazy to wake up every single morning with a new blemish on my face.

A Few Things I Learned This Semester:

1. I'm a perfectionist to an obnoxious degree. In my head, I just keep my apartment "neat and clean" but I'm beginning to realize that to a lot of other people it's almost...sterile. Not in a bad way but in a way that when people come over they probably feel like "I'm afraid to spill something or put something out of place." Messes just make me feel claustrophobic and stressed so that's why my space is pretty much always tidy. It's why I make my bed every morning and clean my bathroom every week and always fold blankets up after using them. It's why it stresses me out when my mentee and his brothers come over, because they destroy the apartment. It's why I'm scared that I'm going to go crazy when I have kids of my own because watching kids eat and make a mess, or play with toys and scatter things everywhere...it seriously stresses me. I'm just itching to wipe up their messy faces and hands and put everything back where it belongs. I'm also a perfectionist about grades and school and how I present myself to other people/what other people think of me. I don't know if I'll ever fully get over these things, but it is nice to loosen up every now and then and realize no one has it all together all the time. And the people who do...they're intimidating, inhuman, unfun, and probably giant balls of internalized stress and chaos. 

2. Other people are also feeling what I'm feeling. Whether it's feeling burnt out and stressed, annoyed to death about my acne that won't go away, or just plain sad, someone else is feeling it too and it's good to just talk about things openly and honestly and realize we're all human and we're on the same page about a lot of things. 

3. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Like church. It's okay to skip every now and then. We need a break sometimes, even from things like organized religion. Also, taking a break from church doesn't mean taking a break from God.

4. Weather massively affects my moods. The first few weeks of this semester sucked because it was still 90 degrees every day, even at the end of August, all the way through September. I was sick of summer and of sweating. As soon as it cooled off, my mood improved by like 80%. I think I'm also always just a little bit happier on sunny days...they're so rare here though.

5. I idolize a lot of things. Grades, church, what people think of me, pleasing other people, having everything be just perfect in my life. I had to learn to let go of a lot of that this semester. I decided not to go to church a few times and the world didn't crash down around me. I got a few Bs on assignments and tests and guess what? I didn't die or bring shame upon my family! I'm realizing more and more that I have a much more negative view of what I think people think about me than what they actually think about me (if anything). People are generally good, kind people! They are not out here to judge me in any way.

6. We could all use a little more honesty. At the beginning of the semester, myself and two other close friends from GCC wound up talking about how burnt out we were about serving and church in general and it turned out that we were all feeling the same things. We wound up making/initiating a lot of changes because of our honesty with each other and the rest of the semester went really, really well church-wise and serving-wise.

7. Even hard things get easier. Case in point: fourth floor walk-up. The first time I walked up those four flights of steps at the beginning of the semester I thought I was going to die and had no idea how I'd do it every day, but now I average going up and down those steps probably 6 or more times a day and I don't really feel anything anymore. 

8. Sometimes it's nice to let my logic go every now and then: saying yes to things I maybe shouldn't say yes to. i.e.going out to dollar taco night at 10pm when I have to wake up at 6am. I won't remember the lost sleep, I'll just remember the good times and great food.

9. Continuously asking myself "What do I want to remember about this time?" The answer is not my GPA. It's my communities: my friends, Dream, GCC, Philadelphia. No old person sits around telling stories about their college days starting with "And I had a 4.0". 

10. How to listen to God. I always thought it was kinda bogus when people were like "God speaks in mysterious ways" because from what I could tell, He wasn't speaking mysteriously, He was just silent. But this semester I've come to realize that this is true. God speaks through friends, through Bible verses (this was another thing I'd never experienced myself, where God like "gives you a verse" that is so pointed that you know it's what you're meant to hear, but then it happened twice in one day and I understood what these crazy people were talking about when they were all "Read your Bible because God speaks through His Word!"), and God even speaks through silence and apathy. 

     This semester has been hands-down my favorite semester of college, just because I can trace this perfect curve of where I started at the beginning of the semester (pretty low) and see how God took me on this very unforeseen and really crazy journey to get me to where I am now, which is a lot happier and more sure of who I am and who I'm meant to be than I was just a few months ago. God definitely blessed me so much this semester and showed me so many new things about myself, my world, and who He is. He showed me how to be open and honest and vulnerable, that it's okay to not be perfect. He showed me how to pray and showed me how to listen. He showed me how to step out in faith, not knowing what the outcome would be but trusting Him anyway, knowing that His plans are so much higher and mightier than my own. He showed me that it's true that the more you give out, the more you receive, but that it's impossible to give from emptiness. You have to be filled with something to pour out into other people, and for me, God has to be the source of that filling. 

     This semester has also just been filled with a lot of good memories and new experiences and time spent with friends. It was blessedly a pretty easy semester academically which made it easier to relax a little and do fun things. I'm really grateful for that, because I have all of those memories to hold on to next semester when I'll probably be a little bit lonely in Spain. It's still a little hard to believe that this semester is over and I won't be back in Philly in January...I'll be in another country 3,500 miles away. But for now, I just want to enjoy the 11 days I have left here in the states and say how thankful I am for this past year in general and these past few months specifically. I know I say it a lot, but I don't know what I ever did to deserve the life I have. I've already won the life lottery. I don't ever want to forget that.

-SE Wagner