Porque?

I've been up to my ears in responsibilities due to preparation for my Chilean visa. It is SUCH a lengthy and complex process. But luckily I am not taking very hard classes this term. I did that last term and I think I deserve a break before I challenge myself for 6 months in another country. Ya...I think I deserve a little break. Once this car ordeal is over, I can also relax a bit. If all goes well, we should have our car back tomorrow. That is after I bike another 5 miles out there (again) to see if it is ready. I can't wait to have my baby back...it will be nice to have transportation again. You know, I always seem to feel so stressed out about life but as long as you get at least two things accomplished each day that move you towards your goal, you will feel much more sane.

Every day I get one more thing ready for Chile or I make one call for school or FAFSA or job applications. And I find peace in this because if I tried to get everything done all at once, I would go crazy. I told my best friend to do this too and I think it has kept her sane as well. Actually never mind she is just naturally kinda crazy ;) jk meg Pray that I get the Gilman scholarship and that I get Financial Aid for next school year. I will be hoping and praying too! Much love and thanks for reading...

Awesome Quote

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

This is so true. So many times in my life I have held myself back because of my fear of looking like a know-it-all or making people feel insecure. I need to let my talents out full force. I need to stop caring what people think about me. I need to live to the full potential of my talents.

Back for Spring Term

Howdy friends and family...It is time for Spring Term to begin and I must admit that I am still pretty burnt out from my 21.5 units during winter term. But Spring term always offers great opportunity because the sun is out and I can get in shape and everyone is super happy. I am taking a lot of cool classes this term including a Personal Training practicum, Spanish 25, an exercise physiology lab, and an anthropology class about Primate Life Cycles. I am also in HEAL again and I will be continuing as a TA for Kinesiology.

I am actually doing a million little things to prepare for the term. I never thought I would be this busy at the start of things but I feel like there is always something that needs to get done. All the same, I do not regret for one minute that I had the most relaxing spring break EVER! Just hung out with family and lazed around and it was beautiful. Man, it has been so long since I wrote I need a starting point...a foundation for this blog...if you will. I am just gonna start by writing down some quotes I recently came across. They offer a lot of meaning to my life I feel.

"It doesn't take any more time to dream a big dream than to dream a small dream."

"Everything you want in life is just right outside your comfort zone. What are you waiting for?"

“I’m the kind of person who needs everything to be justified and needs all of her time to be worth the energy. So, let’s say I date a guy who really does nothing but damage me. And you’ve spent time, you’ve spent effort, and you’ve put everything into trying to make that work. And it didn’t. So you write a song about it. It was worth everything, if you write a song about it.” --Taylor Swift

“I have always been fascinated with fairy tales and the idea that Prince Charming is just one castle away. You’re gonna run across a field and meet each other in the middle, and have an amazing, perfect movie kiss. And it’s all gonna be happily ever after.” --Taylor Swift

OK so that gives me a good starting point. Those Taylor Swift quotes really speak to me because that is what I believe and that is also what gets me into trouble. I believe so much in fate that I find myself incapable of action. If I like a guy, I am not willing to bring myself out of my comfort zone because I don't want to go against fate. It is bad because I am not working for anything...I am hoping that this abstract force in the universe does the work for me. I have to work to change this. I can make a little bit of an effort albeit out of my comfort zone...then I can see how fate works on that action.

I watched Under The Tuscan Sun over break and another quote from there also caught my attention. "Never lose your childhood innocence. It is the most important thing." I feel like I still have my childhood innocence within my reach but as I grow up, it is harder and harder to hold on to it. This is because with every experience, my knowledge of the world grows more rich and unfortunatly, there are many consequences that come from knowing more and more about the world. The world can be a dark place. True, it is what you make of it so people who want to see the good things can remain aware of only the good things. But for me, it is hard to ignore those dark looming aspects of the world...and the knowledge of these elements is what threatens my childish innocence. So I shall keep this quote in mind as I am growing up and experiencing so many things in these fast-paced 4 years of college.

The last thing that I want to address in this Blog is my physical therapy plans. I am as hot and cold about my future as a sink with two faucets. One day I can be all about physical therapy and then the next I am wondering why I would ever choose to pursue that. I just can't decide. The thing that I want to do for a job must incorporate helping people and health education. I know that with my minor I will be able to be a personal trainer and a group fitness instructor. But I have heard that this is only a side job. I think that is what led me to thing that I kinda HAD to thing about physical therapy as a way to support myself with a "real job". But I don't want to be a doctor...I just want to help people. PT requires physics, hard core science classes, and math. I am not saying that I am not willing to do the work because I know I can do anything I put my mind to. But here's the thing...

As mentioned above, my belief in fate is leading me to question if all those science classes are a way to show me that PT isn't for me. I feel after 4 years at UCSB, I will be more than ready to start in the health world and start learning about work in the real world. I don't want to be in school for another 1 year with super mathy, sciency classes just to go through 3 more years of schooling. Don't get me wrong, I want to go to graduate school but I want to go for exercise science. Another instance that brough about my change of heart (for the moment??) in PT was my correspondence with a PT in Denver. She said that if I wanted to start on my path to completing the pre-reqs for the PT program, I needed to move away from the Exercise Sciences and start moving towards the Advanced Sciences. This really caught my attention because to move away from exercise sciences would be, for me, like moving away from singing or from Lee Lee. I would be robbing myself of something I truly love and stand for.

PT DOES interest me but my questions are plenty. Is it worth all the suffering in those sciencey, mathy classes? Will I really be happy as a PT...as a DOCTOR? Does my personality FIT physical therapy? Can't I still help people in the way that I want by being a group fitness instructor or a health educator or a personal trainer? Maybe I am just scared to graduate and not know for SURE what I will be doing? But isn't that the excitement of life...applying and finding out where you are meant to be. I know a woman who moved to SB to be with her true love and she is now teaching Nutrition at a high school and focuses on educating obese teenagers. What an edifying occupation. I could find myself doing that if I just have faith. So I think that I am going to really take time to think this through.

I would LOVE to know what you guys think of anything I wrote about here. I know I can be long-winded but let me know your favorite topic that I wrote about at least. Y'alls opinion means the world to me. I love you all!

Well I always want to write more but for the moment, more thoughts shall not escape for me.

Physical Therapy

I am trying to figure out what I want to pursue in terms of a career. I graduate in June 2010, but I need to be thinking at it long before them. Grad school requires a year in advance to apply. Also, I have to consider the money that will be required for grad school. This is my main problem. I am really interested in Physical Therapy because i think it is a great combination of my talent for exercise science and my passion for helping others. I would be able to use my sharp mind to work in a doctor-like profession without having to attend Med School which I would just never attempt. OK here is the think: i was looking at PT schools and I found the sweetest one in Denver, CO!! How awesome would that be. it is called the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and it is very prestigious in the PT world. Anyways, the prereq's to get into the program are 1 year of chemistry, 1 year of physics, 1 semester of psych classes, 1 semester of calculus, 1 semester of upper division anatomy and physiology classes, and they recommend classes in Cell Biology. OK. That hurt just writing that. I don't really see the connection between physical therapy and all the chemistry and physics that i would be required to take, but at the same time, i dont want to bitch out on becoming a physical therapist just because i dont want to struggle through another year of schooling. that's the other thing. when i graduate, i already planned on staying in santa barbara for a year before i attempted to go to grad school. it would be during this time that i would be taking all of these classes. and then i guess i would be applying for the program in december of 2010 to find out if i would get in by june 2011. oh gosh i just dont know. how are we supposed to know for sure what we want to do in grad school? how are you guys deciding? what if you think what you love is not really want you love? can you imagine i get into the PT school in colorado and i find out it is not what i really wanted...or that i am just not cut out for it. i think that i could be a PT but i dont want to be a doctor. and it feels so doctoral because we have to take those crazy sciency classes. but no great goal can be reach without considerable effort. i need advice. much love, Rose

The Reason Why We Exercise

I have had many epiphanies today and they are all quite interconnected. I was in weight training class today and my teacher is super knowledgable about all that has to do with exercise. She was showing me exercises to be done on the stability ball and I realized that I had been doing alot of exercises wrong. For example, when I do a push up on the stability ball (which means that my feet are up on the ball) I had been dropping my pelvis. This means that I wasn't engaging my abs and once I brought my back into alignment by raising that pelvis, my abs started shaking. This led me to realize how much we neglect our abs. We should be contracting them in almost every exercise we do in the weight room...and having strong abs is one of the best ways we can support our spine anteriorly! Here's the thing...it is those balacing exercises or those exercises that you just use your own body weight as your "weight" that are the ones we really need to be doing. Even buff guys can't do some of the challenging moves my teacher showed up today. I will tell anyone the moves if you want to know but they really do require concentration and balance, and they really strengthen those abs!

OK on to my next realization--appearance. We can all look at people who either don't go to the gym or are always at the gym and pass judgement. Well lets take a closer look. the people that never go are just not aware of what they are missing. But what I find more interesting are the people that are always at the gym. In our society, we have the habit of immediately marking them as a person who has an eating disorder or an overexerciser. But why don't we ever consider that they've realized that a daily workout is their method of relaxation. Or that a workout is the way that they feel normal and balanced for the rest of the day. i want to be like this. i want to be able to go into a gym and not feel like a "girl". i want to walk in there any time of the day and get my workout on and not care what anyone thinks about me. and then i can walk out of there with my head held high. i am almost there i feel but i will still not enter the MAC gym after 5 pm to weight training because i am all but suffocated by the testosterone in there!!

So continuing with this whole appearance thing. The girls that have the great bodies because they work for them...well i was thinking...those girls that really do hit the gym so hard for THEMSELVES and THEMSELVES alone are my role models! they don't want to be thin or fit for a guy. ya it is an unavoidable thing that men who are interested in them will look at their body but the thing is that girls with perfect bodies often times don't let it affect who they are as people. these are the girls i admire because they are working out hard FOR THEMSELVES like i have said before. i dont think i am fully here. i still tend to see working out as a duty sometimes and i know this because there are weeks when i am too stressed out and i wont work out for like two weeks! this means that i am not exercising purely for myself and for my own enjoyment. if this was my sole reason for exercising, i would be able to make time for it EVERY DAY.

So if i decide to go full-force on exercise and health in order to perfect my body, it will be for ME and ME ALONE. Dedicating an hour a day to exercise is nothing when i consider all the stress i have. it isn't time that should be seen as duty. it is the ME time that i need. this is why i am going to make it a priority and work to be that girl that is so healthy that it shows to the world. im gonna get that hot bod but im gonna get it for me...not for any boy. because the boy i fall for will love me for more than my athletic attributes.

My Day

I had one of those days. It was a little bit depressive. I was a little bit out of it. I didn't really feel like being around people at all. And then I went over to the boy's house and found out that their days were weird and depressive too. Nice to know that I'm not the only one that has days like that sometimes. Finals are just around the corner and it really stinks because I can't shake this apathy towards school that has overtaken me! This is the time I should be super gung-hoe about studying (really though...who gets excited about studying?!) but I am the total opposite. Today I came home at 7 pm in a crappy mood and I'd been in the library for 4 hours reading. I told myself I was going to get my rough draft of my paper typed up...welp...I hung out with LA for like 3 hours and then got a text and went out to hang out and sing. Now it is 1:00 am and I told myself that I can't go to bed until I have a rough draft written up. Bummer. Tomorrow is gonna be a crazy long day and I know that I'm not going to want to fuss with it tomorrow. And it is due Thursday...along with an application and along with my huge presentation that is 40% of my grade.

Here's the thing...it is not the workload that is making me all stressed out. On the contrary, for taking so many units I feel that it is totally managale in terms of homework, etc. The thing that is really bothering me is my lack of regard for the importance of finals and the like. I can't make myself take it seriously because it is almost the end and I've already made it though so many tests, so many papers. All I can think about now is relaxing and hanging out with the parentals for Spring Break. That is what is on my mind...not booooring final exams. Oh gosh, well I've made it through finals week time and time again. I shan't let my apathy overtake me. I am going to work on my essay now...at 1:30...am...I am totally gonna pass out before I can get in bed! ARGH! --Rose

My First Blog Post!

Hey, I'm Rose Fair. I am new to the blog world, but I have definitely heard a thing or two about it! For me, I have accepted that it will always take me a convenient 4 or 5 years to catch on with the latest buzz. It took my family about 5 years to finally get a DVD player after it had hit the market. Also, I didn't have cable growing up until I was a senior in high school. My first Ipod was purchased when I entered college, and I just recently got a new laptop that has...drum roll please...a web cam and Skype! Oh ya, I am ready for the big time!

All this technology stuff can really make a girl's head spin! I have to say that as more and more gadgets fall into the hands of Americans, I am more and more content with my small town raising and my lack of necessity for those gadgets. Don't get me wrong. I can appreciate my new computer and my $30 Ipod shuffle from Ebay (I know, right!!) but at the same time, I am hoping and praying that we can all still find the time to take a walk in the park or to sit down with a friend for coffee. It is not so much that technology is bad--it is more that our manners are slowly faltering. Try talking to a friend for 20 minutes and NOT looking at your cell phone. I challenge you! And I bet if you try hard enough...you CAN actually do it.

Well, I am a busy college student who is surrounded by many blessings. I am fortunate enough to live with my sister in a cozy apartment in an action-packed city. I love my major and my minor. There are many positive things in my life, and now that I have figured out this whole Blog thing, I look forward to sharing some of those with the public. I have this habit of constantly observing the world and from this observation, I have gained many insights which I like to call Epifunny's. It always amazes me that humans are such strange creatures....and when you pair all my observing with the fact that I study Anthropology, it is no wonder that I have a lot to say about human behavior.

So please give me some feedback as I begin this whole blogging adventures. If there is one thing I DON'T have a problem with, it would be expressing my opinions! :)