Carpe Diem!

It has certainly been a long time since I wrote here, but I finally found some time to bust out a cup of tea and write amid the chaos that has been going on.

It's funny reading my last post on here. I was quite bitter and pretty pissed off and I will say that things haven't gotten any better, but I'm now learning how to get a hold of my life now and fix things.

First thing first, I finished all my application stuff!!!!! Woohoo! Although I barely made the GPA for most of the things that I applied for I was still lucky enough to able apply for them.Right now I'm going to test my luck and see if I can get the RA position, however, I don't think I performed as well as I could have for my personal interview but then again I always get really nervous and kind of awkward during interview scenarios. The interview for SPOP returner was really interesting this time around. I still felt like a newbie applying for SPOP when I walked into that room, but it helped me become more comfortable interviewing with people I knew this time around. Again I walked away from the interview amazed by their answers and I am hoping that they all get returner because in my opinion they deserve it. That interview made me miss being around the Gold year staffers this year. They were always so encouraging and just so...so inspirational. I learned so much from each and every staffer and every moment spent with them have helped me discover more and more about myself. I have said it time after time, but being a gold year SPOP staffer has been a huge blessing and an amazing experience.

Now onto my life...it's still not pretty. School is just becoming harder and harder by the second. Classes are getting harder to pay attention in, the coursework is harder, keeping up with the reading is becoming harder; life as a college student is just becoming hard in general. Hopefully that is going to change when I change majors because after last quarter I realized that I don't really like biology as much as I thought I did. I forced myself to like something that I really had little passion for and now I am suffering the consequences. This is one hard lesson I learned from this year, always pursue your passions. Forget all the "cons" of following that passion, if you really loved whatever you are pursuing you should only see the "pros." In fact, if it is truly your passion, you don't need to follow some sort of path to get there; you will find a way there. For me, I want to be a physical therapist but being a bio major is not the path I want to take to get there. I realized a year too late that I should have been in some other major than take the bio route to grad school. Yes being a bio major will help me because it opens up the doors for me but at same time, do I really love what I am studying? For me it's no, so why in the world am I in that major? I should of came into UCI as an Undeclared and keep my options open, instead I opted to be like all my friends and be a bio major. However, that's all "I should of..." instead of "What can I do now?" which is the attitude I should have. As Master Oogway so brilliantly put it, "The past is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called a present." For a children movie, Kung Fu Panda has a lot of insightful and meaningful material and I highly recommend it.

As far as where I stand in my ministry, I still don't know where I belong. It's the worst feeling for me. I see so many familiar faces but at same time I don't really recognize them at all. It is becoming increasingly hard for me to connect with a lot of the people in the Edge. By myself, I am not a really good initiator (this is most likely reason why I don't have a girlfriend by now) and I guess that is something that you need to be able to do to establish strong relationships in the Edge. Whenever I go to the large meetings, I feel like a newcomer to the Edge instead as a member of the Edge for one year. It is just a weird feeling and I just don't feel as comfortable as I used to be. Even at the winter retreat I felt alone and by myself almost the entire time. Well, I guess it is partly my fault why I am a little detached from that group of friends yet something is just really bugging me about the Edge but I can't figure it out. Like I said earlier, the Edge is an amazing ministry that has all the potential in the world to something well beyond great. I don't know what is bugging me about it but I really hope I can find out what it is soon.

On the brighter note, I realized that a lot of the answers and miracles we ask and seek are right in front of us this entire time. We can be those answers and miracles we ask for. Everyone has the potential to be great, just some don't know it yet. It took me almost 19 years to realized that I can make a difference and I have the ability to do it. God provides us with the opportunities all the time, we are sometimes too blind to notice. We all are special and we all can contribute in ways that many others cannot. In Marianne Williamson's "Our Deepest Fear," she said that "Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you." We don't need to worry about what others think about us because in the end, that will only hinder us not help us. Once we overcome that feeling, who knows what we are capable of doing. The greatest leaders of all time were the ones not afraid to stand up from the crowd. They knew that a lot of the public will disagree with them but they did it anyways. They became the answers and miracles they were asking for. So I guess what I am trying to say here is seize the moment when the oppoturnity is presented.