I have blogged the entirety of last semester about the struggles of life, college, and stupidity, this semester though I want to veer into a slightly different direction. For this semester I am considering writing about music. I was thinking about maybe dissecting different genres of music and trying to express there roots to everyone in detail. I was also considering just picking an artist or a song every week and relating it back to daily life here at Penn State as a student. Those are two options that fall under the category of music, but I am considering another option as well. This option would be sort of a do’s and don’ts guide to life here at Penn State. This blog could include things like girls don’t use the bathrooms at Hammond Building, just take my word for it, or how no one should ever eat dinner at Redifer at 6 because you will not find a seat and you will wait in line FOREVER! My passion is to give advice and try to assist people in day to day life so this could be an interesting way to try to help others.

Well here is a struggle that any college student that moved away will come across at some point in there school career and that is staying in contact with loved ones and friends. When you go to school you promise everyone that you will stay in touch, that you will call everyday… or at least every week and that you will visit all the time. Well within the first week it becomes blatantly obvious that your goal to stay in touch is more of a fantasy than anything.

When it comes to family you really do make an effort, you call for quick conversations between classes, you try and text in between intense cram sessions, and you try and respond to emails in a reasonable time frame. Lets face it though, you forget to return phone calls because you avoid them for sometime because you know it will not take only five minutes like they promised, it will in fact take at least 20 minutes, and you don’t always have that kind of time between classes. So you tell yourself you will call them later, well later becomes tonight, then tomorrow, and then they are calling you in the middle of the day again restarting the entire cycle again. Honestly its just difficult, plus if you come from a big family like me its impossible to call your sisters, parents, and extended family back in one day and still have time to complete important things like homework and classes, and okay maybe I put my social life ahead of my calls and letters to sometimes. But still its really hard to stay in contact, and then you feel the intense guilt of avoidance when you don’t respond fast enough.

As for friends its a similar story line, but with a different set of actors. With friends, you all promised to stay in touch, to visit all the time, and to share everything that has happened to you everyday so that you don’t fall out of touch. But the first week you only call once and only have a few minutes, the next week you text a little and message on Facebook here and there, and by the third week you have completely transgressed into liking each others Facebook pictures and statuses and call it quits there at keeping in touch. The truth is that when you hit college you get a whole new group of friends, and same goes for you friend if they to left for college, or if they are still in high school than maybe they just get caught up in that old group of friends. Plus when you hit college you change, and the change can be pretty drastic and usually happens pretty quickly. You don’t always notice it right away but it happens and when you change, maybe the reasons for certain friendships don’t exist anymore, maybe you have come to the point where its time to move on and so you lose touch.

When you hit college everything changes, you change, your time and schedules change, and so you begin to lose touch slowly with friends and family. It becomes a struggle to keep up with them through the transition period. But you are not alone, we are going through the same thing and chances are your friends and family will understand if it takes you a while to get back, and if not then they will have to learn to deal with it because college is a busy time and you are trying your hardest with this balancing act. You will get there when you get there.

Hi my name is Mary Taylor, and I get distracted. In one day I can avoid homework for a solid 4-6 hours at a time by doing the normal distracting things like Facebook and Twitter, but I also get distracted by things like funny pictures of dinosaurs

catching up on the addicting show Greys Anatomy (currently on season 6 by the way)

or my favorite activity of all…

SLEEPING.

I can’t just sit down and work on homework anymore because there are to many distractions!!! And sometimes I can’t even escape my distractions because they tend to follow me. This includes things like a laptop, do you know how much you can do on a laptop!!!

And that is not even half of whats out there on the internet. Now to avoid these websites sometimes I will try to unplug and turn off the internet to encourage getting work done. Well that is when I switch to this program

and once you start playing Sims, there is no going back. Your night of focusing and getting stuff done is officially over and your focus on anything that doesn’t involve so and so getting pregnant or cheating on their spouse is gone.

Oh and I forgot to mention the worst distraction of all….

This website is the devil in disguise, sure it is helpful when you write a paper or research a project, but that’s only after you spend hours searching pictures for funny pictures of Harry Potter

or funny pictures for your major

In the end it takes me forever to get anything done, this is just a sampling of my level of distraction, it can get worse depending on the load. And the issue is that my level of distraction rises in parallel with the amount of homework I have to do. So the more homework I have left, the more time I will probably be spending on my computer avoiding the mounds of homework.

And since I live on Penn State campus there is more than just computers to distract me, there are football games, hockey games, hanging out with friends or going to concerts. Penn State campus in itself is a giant distraction. Sometimes I just walk around and that’s all I have to do to waste a good 2 hours. And one of my friends put a PS2 in my room, which means the distractions are piling up to match the laundry that I also avoid in the corner of my room.

And then there are essays for scholarships and bonus projects, clubs in abundance, projects for those clubs and classes, and so much more to do on campus, if you list it then Penn State probably has it there to distract you. Honestly if I didn’t take classes I probably still wouldn’t have time because there is that much to do on campus. So for the rest of my days I will try and fight distractions, combat them with work and patience for my work load. I know its just a dream to ever really be able to focus, but hey a girl can try.

Laundry day, I avoid you,

Laundry day… just no,

Oh Laundry day I hate you.

If that short Haiku does not tell you how I feel about laundry then let me just tell you flat out how I feel about it all. For starters I HAVE NOTHING CLEAN LEFT!!! Literally ran out of yoga paints a week ago, and if that’s not bad enough I am about to run out of jeans, PJ’s, most importantly sweat pants, and socks. This means if I do not do my laundry tonight chances are I will walk into class tomorrow wearing a shirt three sizes to big, a skirt that is three color shades to wrong for my one clean shirt, and a sweatshirt that probably should have stayed at home or at least in my dorm room.

But seriously I hate laundry. It is so incredibly annoying because I wait until the absolute last day… or sometimes a little after that to do my laundry, so that basket is packed, I am talking barely gonna get that zipper shut, going to need three to four washers, not even sure the last time that shirt has been cleaned full. Then I have to lug that downstairs (okay actually to the elevator because I am lazy on laundry day and there are to many steps) to the laundry room while trying to balance my soap, dye catch sheets, and remember to grab my ID.

When you finally get down there, there may or may not actually be an open machine, or in my case four open machines to wash your clothes, that machine may or may not already have clothes in it, and someone may or may not hate you when you pull there clothes out to make it open. Then you have to pay two dollars a load (and I jam my laundry in there, so I am not even sure if it actually gets clean), you have to set a timer so you don’t become “that kid” that holds up the washer forever, and then you have to go all the way back upstairs because lets face it… the basement is super creepy.

So after the clothes are actually washed you have to go back downstairs, switch them into a dryer (which is never open by the way, I am pretty sure the one still has clothes in it from move in day), and set yet another timer so you don’t forget. Here is the catch, you clothes never actually dry in the dryer and so eventually you have to go back downstairs to have them run the cycle again which means setting another timer and remember to go back down again.

So after its all finally dry you lug it back up to your room, stick them in the corner, and by that time I just forget to fold, so they hang out in the corner of my room until I go through them again. I eventually get them put away especially after I get enough comments about how there must have been a tornado that ripped through my room to make it look like that. Then in one to two weeks, I do it all again.

So in the end I hate laundry, but it is a necessary evil so it will all get done…. maybe if you see me in that outfit I described earlier…. well you know why.

So this week my struggle has to do almost purely with canning. Canning is fantastic, you get to meet people, fundraise for THON, and dance like an idiot (which I actually really enjoy). But hosting, hosting is next to impossible. For starters I had to convince my parents that sure, 10 kids is fine, we could fit 10 kids in our basement. That may be a stretch of the truth though, we will find out this weekend. Then I was informed I must find a place to can, well this is where all hell breaks loose and I go a little insane. I called 13 businesses, I was given permission to can at one, I called 7 areas, I am allowed to can at 2, I mean come on all I want to do is raise money for the kids! But enough about that, I am sure it will be fine, I will just be stuck to my phone for the rest of my week.

Also sickness, now that is a struggle. Its like… should I go to class? should I do homework? Should I even wake up? I am so bad at judging  how sick I am when I first wake up, I mean I wake up and I am like yeah I feel better than yesterday, lets do it!!! And five minutes into the day I just die, but by then I am already up, already in class, and so I just get on with the day.

Then there is homework, as in once I am behind, I stay behind. Now trust me when I say that I have been behind since… pretty much day one. The issue is that when I get behind, I just tend to leave everything there. For instance math, I am so behind, I am talking probably a month on the homework and probably two weeks on the lessons, lets not even talk about the reading because that is just not happening at this point. I am behind, and I need to catch up, but at this point I am having way to much fun avoiding it all and pretending that I will have time at a point near in the future. And so I continue to go to hockey games, football games, and hang out with friends rather than do what I actually came to college to do.

And lastly I struggle with walking, I mean am I that lazy if I decide to take the CATA bus? Come on it pulls up right in front of my dorm, its right there!!! Admittedly I try to walk, try to exercise, and try to be active, but honestly on days when it rains or I am just lazy than yes, yes I use the busses. I mean I have tried to limit it to just really far away places like the BJC, but really when it gets cold out, that just may not happen.

Oh and I lied one last story, I was in physics the other day and we were doing a lab and so I asked my TA if something was constant for the whole lab, he said no. But it didn’t make sense if it was constant so I asked again, again, and again. Well after asking him four times, spinning in my chair twice, and breaking two pencils in frustration he came over and told me, “that problem is easy, you solve for the answer using this which is constant.” Well just a heads up to everyone, apparently there is a code to get things in classes, I would try the classical jump twice, ask three times, and skip like a kangaroo, but I think we all just need to figure it out.

So good luck to everyone and have a good week. Struggle on my friends, struggle on.

Technology, that is by far the struggle of the week for not just me, but I am sure many others as well. This week my computer has officially died along with its entire memory bank and my hopes of having an easy week. Grant it losing a computer is not the end of the world, there are much worse things that could have happened, but in an era where technology tends to rule, its definitely not fun having to find a computer lab every time you need to do homework. Plus to lose all of my pictures and documents, if I wasn’t to sleep deprived for all of this to register I probably would have broken down in tears when I heard the news, but alas my brain operates at an extremely slow pace as of late so I still have barely noticed.

So anyway going back to the computer lab experience, its really not to bad, I live really close to the lab so its not to hard to get there, its more the judging stares that I hate when I walk in. No they aren’t judging my papers, my pile of books, or even the tired look that is displayed across my face, but rather the pajamas that I have accidently run out of my room in. While I have not had my own computer I have had a few close calls with assignments being due, and so I tend to literally run into the computer lab and tackle a computer in order to submit my assignments on time. The issue is that this is often late at night or early in the morning that I remember this, so more often than not I am in plaid pajama pants and a shirt 3 sizes to big. Essentially I look like a bum when I go to sleep and so that is exactly how I show up in the computer lab when I go to turn something in. And so occasionally I get some way to judgy stairs as I have a panic attack about whether I will get my assignment in or not. I mean its not like I always look like that, I try and look relatively decent in a day, (except for in EDSGN but that’s because its an 8 a.m. so I just roll out of bed, I am going back to sleep later anyway!) but its like the 5 minutes that I go into public dressed liked an idiot, and so of course I always have to see someone that I know.Its kind of the same thing on laundry day, I mean its laundry day, how nice to people really expect me to look well all of my good clothes are dirty? And the answer is apparently half decent, because one laundry day my friend from high school texted me and told me to come and visit her in her boyfriends room.

Now I had been friends with both of them for years and so they had seen me in worse than the outfit I was currently in so I decided to visit while my clothes were drying. Now as I am walking up the stair it occurs to me that they probably have friends so I wanted to check and make sure none were currently visiting. After giving it some time and receiving o response to my question inquiring if there was anyone else there, I decided the coast was clear. To my wonderful surprise I walked into a room of nicely dressed people as I stood there in the doorway with my laundry detergent and me in old gym shorts to be greeted by other people that I had met or lived in my building. If that wasn’t great enough my wonderful but slightly judgmental friend then began her “your shorts are to short” rant that let me know that yes, yes in fact I was being judged. Well after that incident I have learned to hide in my room on laundry days in order to avoid this, after multiple lab incidents I have learned to try and avoid needing the computer past my shower, and now I attempt to hide in my room if I look… less than decent because moral of the story, you will be judged and you will see someone that you know.

Let me preface this entire blog with the fact that I like food and sleep, I eat on a regular schedule and used to sleep 8 hour nights and I am grumpy if I am hungry and anti social if I am sleepy. Now that all of this has been said you have to understand that I also over volunteer and forget to schedule time for eating and sleeping among all of my other activities and so I am pretty sure that my body officially hates me.In just today I have eaten crackers and a granola bar for dinner, drank five hour energy instead of sleeping, and now I am already preparing to go to sleep at 2 a.m. to wake up for an 8a.m.

Now I understand that this is actually quite a common occurrence among college students, but seriously if I chug one more cup of coffee instead of sleeping I think that despite the influx of caffeine I may just take a nap on the concrete steps outside of the library and call it a day. Not to mention I think I am supporting the granola bar business with my less than stellar eating habits. I know that peanut butter bars don’t necessarily satisfy all of the food groups of the pyramid, but for now its going to have to do, thats where five hour energy comes in right? It has plenty of vitamins to make up for what I am missing…. I hope.

But this struggle seems like nothing when I compare it to the true struggle of college, and that is keeping names straight. I have been walking with a kid to one of my classes for a solid month now, but I have no idea what his name is. I could ask, but at this point its just a little awkward. I even tried to introduce him to my roommate so that she could tell me his name later, but to no avail, neither of us know what it is, or even what letter it starts with. Once someone tells you there name you are sort of expected to remember it, well that doesn’t happen and so here are some tips on how to avoid the awkward “what is your name again?” conversation by avoiding the use of there name or just making it up and getting away with it.

I use the classic approach of just sticking with calling them “you” and greeting them with the classical “hey you,” or “hey whats up?” therefor completely bypassing the awkward name game.  Another approach is to also make up a nickname for them thats more fun to remember, I called a friend of mine Bucket because not only was it a fun nickname, it also made it easier to memorize her name. I mean keeping it interesting is definitely the way to go, but then you still have to memorize the nickname, maybe the best thing to do is to just tell them that you are going to call them a new name every day for fun, when in reality it just makes it so you NEVER have to memorize on name for them.

In the end though maybe its just best to ask them again, I mean I think most of us are used to people forgetting our names. On second thought though, its been a month so I think I will just stick with “you.” As for the sleep, well I will get there, I mean if you add up the 5 hours of sleep I got last night with the 5 hour energy I drank today its like I actually got ten hours right?

Another week has gone by and the struggle is actually letting up. Now when I say that it is letting up I mean the pressure has gone down from that of a hefty sized elephant sitting on me to that of an adult gorilla holding a record breaking bowling ball now sitting on me, as in it is less, but I still feel the pressure. For starters I probably should not have joined as many clubs as I did, and I know that many of you reading this understand where I am coming from. As a group those that were picked to attend main campus were those that were active in high school and translated that level of enthusiasm to school, so many of us have over volunteered and added to our already massive load. Just today I have attended three meetings , three classes, and somehow managed to go and get One Republic tickets for everyone. And everyone else I talk to has just as crazy a schedule, they are all running to meetings and dashing off to class, doing homework here and there to try and catch up, and running around like a fifth grader on Halloween candy just trying to fulfill all of the duties for the clubs and activities that they volunteered for.

It happens, I joined to much and volunteered for to much as we all do, I see those flyers they send around with there big letters of “HELP” or look at the flashy emails asking me to join there club, and I can not help but to say yes, to fulfill there wish and do whatever they ask of me. Currently I am learning about propulsion of a rocket and how a water filter can be built out of concrete and sand, to very different ideals and construction processes, but both being something that I couldn’t say no to. I mean this struggle also has to do with my inability to make a decision as well as my inability to commit to one singular option. I have never been one to put all of my eggs in one basket, so instead I struggle to juggle the baskets and attempt to not just drop them all and create one giant mess in front of me.

I have started to sleep a little more, as per the suggestion of well… everyone, but then I feel like I am missing out, like I could be doing something much more valuable with my life. And much of this sleep is restless as I worry maintaining such a large GPA or missing a homework assignment.

Now off of this serious note I will leave you with a good old college story to uplift your day, it is a story of one unsuspecting roommate and the revenge of another scorned by past experience. In summary I have locked my roommate out of our room twice and today she fairly sought her revenge and locked me out. In all I will chalk this one up to the struggle of living with someone else. As much as its great to have a friend 24-7, its still a struggle to get down each others schedules and habits. The result of this struggle includes, but is not limited to locking each other out of the room as one roommate is forgetful and also has ninja like stealth and can easily sneak by the other without showing a sign of leaving the room.

In all the struggle here at college is still very real, and so as always I encourage you to keep your head up and not letting it affect you to much. The struggle is out there, but it keeps life interesting and it only makes your stories funnier and your times at school more memorable, and so I love the struggle and hope you learn to love it to.

One month!!! I have been here for almost exactly one month!!! Believe me when I say that the only way that you would know that I have been here for that long would be by the stack of homework piled up on the desk, on the floor, and I am pretty sure I may have leaked some of this toxic pile of over due reading and past due math problems out the door. There is some good news from my past few weeks on campus, that is that I have officially figured out how take out works in the dining commons, the bad news is that I figured out how take out works in the dining commons, because now when I should be out having a social life with friends at dinner I hide in my room doing that homework that was due last week so that maybe, and I know this may sound crazy, but just maybe I will get in bed before two in the morning.

The struggle in all of this is how to balance friends and work. I am horrible at it, I always tip the scale to far one way and so then I am forced to nose dive the other side to try and make up for it. I mean really how are we all supposed to balance it all, with homework and tests coming at us left and right, and that guilty voice mail sitting on your phone from your parents about how you never call, who has time for anything? I laugh everyday when people ask me when I sleep, the simple answer is that I don’t. Most of us just run out of hours in a day, between all of the new clubs that we signed up for, running to classes, and trying to figure out how to use the bus system to help with time management (halfway there by the way, still mastering the whole blue loop and not ending up on Atherton instead of the Bryce Jordan Center concept), who really has time to do much of anything.

It took me and my roommate two weeks into school to turn on our television set, and three weeks into school to realize that it only had access up to channel 13, and at that point when housing asked when we needed it fixed by, we told them we didn’t really care, we never used it anyway.

Don’t get me wrong I love Penn State, it beats high school by a long shot, it is just a lot more work then anybody ever really let on. In all honesty I am writing this blog at 12 at night in the stacks at the library and it is not the last piece of homework that I need to finish tonight. In the end I still love college, I still love school, and I still want to be an engineer.

In the end life is just full of struggles, they happen and you just have to deal with them, at least we can relate though. I guess that is why I am so passionate about the struggle, it happens to all of us and so its kind of a bonding experience. Well struggle on my friends, struggle on.

So after an additional week at school the struggles have not ceased as they continue to unfold before my unsuspecting freshman eyes. One rather serious struggle for freshman students is there inability to pack. I am among the students who has yet to learn what is required in class and so I continue to lug book after book and binder after binder to every class in a book bag that feels as though it weighs 200 pounds, feeling especially on one of these hot and humid days. What is worse is that I tend to take people out with my bag, I am the reason that freshman are laughed at as I lug my humongous bag around campus and continually bump into other students and nearly take bikers out as my bag extends at least 2-3 feet into there intended path. And the involvement fair made it worse as the crowd of people was so dense that as I pushed, shoved, and kicked my way through, my back pack would bounce off of fellow students heads as I ran through. I never did look back though as I feared what the wake of destruction I was sure to be causing would look like. This is one of many freshman mistakes, another common one taking place happens when we all go to schedule our classes. When it comes to scheduling our classes many of us spend hours pouring over the computer looking at option after option, mixing and matching, making scratches and notes here and there trying to find the perfect schedule for our selves. It takes hours and it is aggravating, so after me and my roommate spent a collective of 4 hours attempting to create a schedule we were informed by neighbor that there is this thing called “Schedule Planner” on eLion that takes all that hassle out of scheduling, after hearing about this wonderful program we were near in tears of joy and I suggest to others to try it, it is really the best thing ever. In the end we all have our own personal struggles, and it feels as though a struggle a day keeps my sanity away, but I do love the struggle, without it life would be to mundane, to boring, as much as I hate to struggle deep down we all love it, it keeps life interesting and the stories rolling out.