My Simple, Happy, Beautiful Life

For my spring break, I took a spontaneous trip to Rexburg, Idaho. I haven't been there since who knows when, so I decided it would be a good time to visit again. I was reminded of how much things change yet stay the same this spring break. Being back in Rexburg, reminded me of my college days there yet things are so different. Most of the people I knew when I went to the university have graduated, got married and have kids now. I had a couple really good friends I visited, but it was interesting to see how much of my life has moved on. Being there, I felt like I was reliving my freshman year when driving past places in Rexburg. I was driving through memory lane. It's weird to think back and remember my freshman year. It wasn't my favorite of college years, yet it was so important. Being a freshman was freedom. I was living in the college dorms and had no parents to tell what to do. I could stay up late and eat cookie dough and no one could stop me. I could go to the dan...

I was texting one of my friends today about the graduate school program and she asked me about what I have learned. It made me think about the growth that has come since last September. My experiences in graduate school have been challenging and not what I expected at all. So anyone wanting to go to graduate school, here are some things that I have learned about graduate school that might be useful (especially social work). Have a self care plan. Make sure that you keep yourself healthy because you need to stay healthy to be successful. Exercise. Eat Healthy. Find some kind of plan that will keep you mentally, spiritually and emotionally healthy.  Learn how to separate between work, school and personal life. When you are doing an internship and classes at the same time, it can be hard to separate your social work life and your personal life. When you let your personal life be overtaken with social work, you will go crazy. You need to create some healthy boundaries between yo...

For my chemical dependency class, I had a homework assignment of attending a open alcohol anonymous meeting. I was a little scared for this assignment. I don't have any family members who have struggled with substance abuse, so my exposure to this field is very limited. The reason I took this class was because I knew this was an area of social work I needed to be exposed to. I found a AA meeting in my local community and planned to go a meeting. I didn't know what to expect from a AA meeting. You know how some people make fun of the phrase, "Hi, I'm (insert name) and I'm a alcoholic". That is pretty much all I knew about these meetings. I was afraid that people would look at my weird for being a visitor. Would I disrupt the meeting? Would I feel like a outsider? Will they look at my as stupid for not being a consumer of alcohol? These were the majority of my thoughts before I even walked into the building. As I was walking into the building, a group memb...

So, I haven't written in here for a long time. I thought I might write about recent events in my life. My winter break was fantastic and really long. I am not used to having a month long break so I didn't know what to do with myself. The first part of my break, right after finals, I spent way too much time watching Netflix. I would just lay there in my pajamas and enjoy doing nothing. When you are really busy, it is nice to do nothing at some point. After getting bored of doing nothing, my brother came home for Christmas time. We had lots of family time just talking, playing games and catching up. I experienced one of the most beautiful days in San Francisco. We went hiking in Marine County and looked over all the bay. It was absolutely stunning and brought a lot of new perspective. I love being outdoors because the perspective from nature reminds me of God's love for us. I had a friend from BYU visit for New Years Eve week. I have told her all about my hometown and ...

I have been reflecting on this idea of change frequently. I know that I have posted about change occasionally in my blog, but it is a constant process. Things around us are changing or we might be in the process of changing. If I have learned one thing since I graduated high school, I have learned to expect change. Since I have started my program, I have felt myself change. I am still me. I still have similar interests. I still love the things that I did before. I have a different schedule now though. That means, I don't stay up late like I did before. In my free time, I do different things. I have different priorities. I care more about social issues. I am more aware of the "isms' (racism, sexism...) around me. My goals are changing. My conversations with friends are changing.  The problem with change is sometimes you change while your environment remains the same. Do you know what I mean? For example, I feel like I am changing but I feel like my friends around me...

I am so grateful for my education that I received at BYU. As I have reflected on my experiences since I have stated my masters program at Sacramento State, I have realized all the valuable lessons I learned there. One of the most important lessons is that all truth comes from one source. Truth comes from a loving Heavenly Father who values our education. As some people know before most classes at BYU, we pray to invite the spirit to help us in our learning process. Because of the incorporation of the spirit, we combine secular and spiritual knowledge. It was a repeated occasion that I would walk away from a lecture with both spiritual insights and knowledge concerning my major. I took this for granted since it was almost a daily occasion. Now that I attend a state school where my religious beliefs are not connected within secular knowledge, I miss the opportunity to vocalize how my secular knowledge connects with my religious beliefs. I try to find connections between the two and s...

One of the most important lessons that I have learned in my first semester of graduate school is the social work spectrum. I had this narrow vision into what is considered as social work. I imagined myself "fixing" people's problems through therapy. I could imagine my long list of clients who love seeing me because I help them. I would become this miracle worker. That is what I always dreamed would happen. Some of my prophecy has come true, but for the most part my vision of social work was completely wrong. Social work is therapy but it is much more. I had a breakdown at my internship because my perception of social work was completely wrong. I thought that I was wasting time doing mindless activities. In my internship, I play bingo and domino's with clients, talk to them about their hobbies, paint their nails, color with them. I have more social work responsibilities, but these activities, I found useless. Why am I doing these activities that anyone can do with th...